[BC] WFMT, was early FM...

[Gordon Carter]

As far as I know, the listeners group was squeaky clean.  There were
some very recognizable names in that group, which I would rather not
mention.  

The case was settled out of court, but had been in litigation.  No one
knows officially why Tribune suddenly gave up, but there were lots of
rumors.

Personally, I think Tribune had every intention to keep WFMT classical.
I saw the money and effort they were putting into the station, and don't
think they would have been doing that to destroy it.  In fact, it was
during that time that I was hired.  I was actually interviewed by
Tribune people as well as WFMT's Chief Engineer.

Gordon S. Carter, CPBE, CBNT
Chief Engineer
WFMT and The Radio Network
5400 North St. Louis Ave.
Chicago, IL 60625
773 279-2071

-----Original Message-----
From: broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net
[mailto:broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Barry Mishkind
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 6:29 PM
To: Broadcast Radio Mailing List
Subject: [BC] WFMT, was early FM...

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


_______________________________________________
This is the BROADCAST mailing list
To send to the list, email: broadcast at radiolists.net
For sub changes, archives and info on this other lists:
http://www.radiolists.net/