On July 18, 2007, it became public that WGTS-FM 91.9, a 50-year nonprofit listener supported independent radio station service of Columbia Union College, a small, religiously-affiliated liberal arts college in Takoma Park, Maryland (just outside Washington, DC), may be sold for at least $20-25 million to American Public Media Group (APMG), the parent company of Minnesota Public Radio (MPR). SaveWCAL learned of this announcement from SaveWCAL supporters on July 18, 2007.

Does any of the following sound familiar? It should...

• A small, religiously-affiliated liberal arts college with financial difficulties that has a jewel of an independent radio station with 50 years of service operating "in the black" with an enthusiastic and generous membership
  
• A secretive sale process with the College board of trustees (not the board of the radio station) where only one bidder (APMG) is being seriously considered
  
• Station staff have apparently been instructed not to talk about the situation

Although rumors and talk had been around since late June 2007, the Washington Times broke the story in an article by Kara Rowland titled "WGTS license likely for sale" [http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070718/BUSINESS/107180017/0/EDITORIAL]

A group has been formed to oppose the sale, SaveWGTS, and they have begun a SaveWGTS blog. The WGTS blog has been gathering historical information about the station. Some helpful web sites include:

• SaveWGTS: http://www.SaveWGTS.net
• SaveWGTS Blog: http://www.SaveWGTS.org/blog/
• WGTS Blog: http://www.wgts.org/wordpress/
• WGTS Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGTS

WGTS' current power is 23,500 watts at 696 feet (HAAT). Since 2004, WGTS has shared a common antenna with American University's WETA, and WAVA, located on the top of WETA’s tower. WGTS currently has nine full time employees and 12 part time employees. WGTS raises $2.5 million dollars annually and has over 250,000 listeners in the Baltimore/Washington DC area with a potential listening audience of six million.

An announcement, apparently signed by APMG and MPR President Bill Kling, was sent to the Public Radio listserv by the Ken Mills Agency around noon on July 18, 2007. The MPR news web site published a news story on July 18, 2007, by Bob Collins and Annie Baxter titled "MPR parent looks to expand east" [PDF, ?? pages] [http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/07/18/wgts/]

SaveWCAL notes: The MPR news team seems to have completely missed the striking similarities between the WCAL and WGTS stories... Others haven't. For example, in the July 23, 2007, edition of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul City Pages blog, The Blotter, journalist Jonathan Kaminsky has published an entry titled "Bill Kling: Oops, I did it again" [PDF, 3 pages] [http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2007/07/bill_kling_oops.php

Compare the current APMG actions with Kling's comments in an August 19, 2004, MPR interview that had the WCAL sale as a major focus:

KLING:  Well, we can’t and won’t buy anybody that doesn’t offer themselves for sale. If they do, and if it fits strategically into what we are trying to do in terms of public service, and if we can find the funds to do it, I would rather keep stations locally owned, locally managed, locally focused, than to have them bought up by out-of-state networks, which have more narrowly focused agendas [emphasis added by SaveWCAL]. So, that’s the way it is. We certainly can’t afford to force anyone to sell, and we don’t intend to.

The SaveWGTS folks are apparently aware of the SaveWCAL story as links appear on their site to our web site and articles about our efforts -- and the WCAL story is being referenced in articles appearing in the DC and Minnesota press.

While Bill Kling says that MPR listeners will not be asked to pay for the potential acquisition of WGTS, SaveWCAL wonders where APMG will find the money for the $20-25 million or more purchase price -- especially as MPR, an APMG subsidiary, claimed it was going to "struggle" to pay $10.5 million for WCAL in 2004 and used public Saint Paul Port Authority Bonds to refinance the WCAL/KMSE purchase in 2005. Meanwhile, MPR's 2004 Audit report stated that the market value of the earned endowment for MPR held by APMG was $85,610,000 (yes, more than $85.5 million dollars!) as of August 31, 2004 -- the month the sale of WCAL charitable trust assets was announced.

Charlottesville, Virginia, station WNRN has stated that they will file to block the sale with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) until the FCC addresses issues regarding frequency interference that the station claims it has with WGTS. [http://www.dcrtv.com/]

RELATED ARTICLES

• WGTS license likely for sale (Washington Times)
  
• God, Reason, Classical Music and The News  (Washington Post)