Wednesday, April 2, 2008

WYSO for sale?

This was buried in the final paragraph of a recent DDN story on the Antioch issue:

The original deal before negotiations reached impasse was $12.2 million for most of the college's assets.

It did not include WYSO, which the university wanted to keep because it was considering selling the radio station's license, Bates said.


Presumably a license sale would be to a commercial or Christian broadcaster as one would not imagine a non-profit having the cash available. This would mean the end of WYSO as a public radio station.

Note Antioch University didn’t say they are going to do this just yet, just that they want to retain the license for a potential future sale. Why would they sell? For the money, and if their mission is to be a hipper version of the University of Phoenix: providing adult-end via a national network of learning centers. This wouldn’t involve holding a local public radio license.

Interesting that this has not become an issue spinning off the larger Antioch controversy, as to what is Antioch Universities intentions regarding WYSO?

Would the end of WYSO leave a hole? There is a 24 hour public radio station WDPR, which has 100% classical programming and good programming at that. WDPS has a mix of programming, a lot of jazz, but some world music, too. I think some of this is local, some syndicated. WDPS is not 24 hour, on five days a week & going off the air around 4:00 PM.

And the internet is a radio source now and in the car there is satellite radio. So maybe not a big deal for people who are wired enough to get broadcase via other media.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is actually a rather large deal. WYSO is a tremendous asset to the local community and has an outreach much larger than our local area. Since they now have an internet stream available, WYSO reaches a worldwide audience.

The ACCC has been trying to meet the demands of Antioch University's Board of Trustees and has been continually rebuffed. One has to wonder whether the WYSO sticking point was more fabrication than reality. As the ACCC meets the demands of the Trustees, the demands of the Trustees seem to evolve.

As Antioch College is suspending operations for the oncoming 2008-2009 school year, full support should be given to the ACCC to prepare for any eventual fall-out from the Antioch University system, in the form of an all out auction of the Antioch College campus and/or WYSO radio license.

I don't think I need to expound upon the detrimental effects on Yellow Springs if Antioch College were to fade away....