Great Moments in WFMU History #28

Public Radio's Anti-WFMU Conspiracy - by Ken Freedman and Liz Berg

In 1988, a consortium of neighboring noncommercial radio stations discovered an error in WFMU’s FCC license, and held a top-secret meeting to discuss how they could uproot us. Four stations reported this mistake to the FCC, along with a diabolical bid to cut our power in half, while conveniently doubling each of theirs. It turned out that the error was actually in terrain measurements of the U.S. geographic maps used to determine how much WFMU could boost our power when we applied to increase from 10 watts in 1962. WFMU’s power increase took effect in 1965, and strangely didn’t appear to encroach upon the signals of these four other stations for 23 years.

WFMU was forced to hire lawyers to defend ourselves in this turf battle, and legal fees for the month of December, 1989 alone added up to a hulking $50,000; an amount that represented half of WFMU’s entire budget for the year. Finally, the FCC ruled in WFMU’s favor in 1992, but the whole fiasco had caused the station to rack up $400,000 in total legal fees. In an unprecedented display of heroism, the station’s dedicated listener base helped us through those dark days by tripling their pledge dollars during our subsequent fundraising Marathon.

Artwork by Takeshi Tadatsu

Comments

[Dale Hazelton]

It's a crime that you couldn't sue those other stations for you legal fees. Maybe you still can. It sucks that you can only defend yourself in this country if you can AFFORD to.

Tell us what those stations are se we can boycott them....

[zombot]

yeah seriously, tell us those stations. sounds like the mindset of commercial radio, so it's kinda surprising from noncommercial stations, but i guess desperate times leads to cannibalism.

[anonymous]

If I recall correctly it was WWHY and WFUV.

[yazoo]

links to the whole sordid affair:

http://www.nypress.com/16/2/nyc/nyc1.cfm

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01E6DC1530F934A25752C1A9649C8B63

How ironic that Vin Scelsa, the grand daddy of FMU as a freeform institution is part of that Bronx based cabal. In fact, WFUV is where WNEW-FM dj's go (went)to retire.

[yazoo]

links to the whole sordid affair:

http://www.nypress.com/16/2/nyc/nyc1.cfm

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01E6DC1530F934A25752C1A9649C8B63

How ironic that Vin Scelsa, the grand daddy of FMU as a freeform institution is part of that Bronx based cabal. In fact, WFUV is where WNEW-FM dj's go (went)to retire.

[polly]

I guess I'm jumping forward in history here. It's hard to follow where this issue stands now. Did the WFUV booster get installed, cause problems for WFMU signal?

[polly]

I guess I'm jumping forward in history here. It's hard to follow where this issue stands now. Did the WFUV booster get installed, cause problems for WFMU signal?

[polly]

I guess I'm jumping forward in history here. It's hard to follow where this issue stands now. Did the WFUV booster get installed, cause problems for WFMU signal?

[polly]

I guess I'm jumping forward in history here. It's hard to follow where this issue stands now. Did the WFUV booster get installed, cause problems for WFMU signal?