[BC] WFMT, was early FM...

[Barry Mishkind]

Gordon,

I remember when this was happening ... it was a time before the FCC 
granted any station an "expectation of renewal" for their license, 
unless they did a demonstrably bad job.

During the late 1960s and 1970s, there were all sorts of protests and 
filings to prevent stations from being transferred or even change 
format. The threat of a possible format change even brought out 
threats to attack all the licenses of a company.

Since it was in Chicago, I can't really say with authority that the 
people behind the WFMT threats were the same type of enviro-whackos 
we see all the time today ... but I do remember it was almost a test 
case for whether a licensee had the right to select a format or not 
(like Canada?).

The "listeners' group" you mentioned.  Did they have their hands clean?

barry


At 05:51 AM 10/24/2005, Gordon Carter wrote
>A slight correction here....
>
>WFMT was originally a ma & pa station.  It was founded, owned, and
>operated by the husband and wife team of Bernie and Rita Jacobs.  They
>sold the station to the Tribune company when ill health forced them to
>"retire".  After Bernie's death, Rita continued to produce some programs
>for WFMT.  I had the privilege of meeting her a few times.
>
>Even though the Tribune Company spent quite a bit of money on the
>station (they built new studios and transmitter sites fairly early on)
>and vowed they would keep the station classical, a listeners group did
>not trust them.  It was the legal action by this listeners group that
>forced Tribune to donate WFMT to the parent company of WTTW-TV (One of
>Chicago's PBS affiliates).
>
>Gordon S. Carter, CPBE, CBNT