BTST My alma mater, ISU had a full blown commercial TV station (ABC
affiliate for the region) and a commercial radio station. When NPR
cranked up the radio station went to NPR. About 15 yrs ago, one of the
board of regents who control the 3 state U's figgered out a way to make
a bunch of money for himself by selling off the TV station. Nobody
exposed the unspoken deal, and the howls of protest did no good, as the
gooberner, a graduate of the other (rival) U, was all over the deal to
strip the rival U of its prized possession. So they sold off the TV
station.
Before that, the U was supposedly the only journalism/mass
communications program where students could work at a university owned
commercial tv station. (and they could work at the university FM
commercial station or the Am/FM NPR station. THe NPR and the TV station
are so old they have 3 letter call letters, and a W west of the
Mississippi. (Broadcast stations east of The RIver are supposed to
start with W and those west are supposed to start with a K. I think
this was started in the 30s by the socialist FDR.
Dan Penoff via Mercedes <mailto:mercedes@okiebenz.com>
June 9, 2016 at 11:31 AMvia Postbox
<https://www.postbox-inc.com/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=sumlink&utm_campaign=reach>
I have been a supporter of our local NPR station (WUSF) that’s hosted
by my alma mater, the University of South Florida. While they carry
most of the national programs and PRI stuff, they do a lot of good
local programming on a shoestring, mainly relying on the free labor
pool of interns from the College of Communications. They also have a
TV station under the same license.
The University is trying to screw them over by allowing WUSF to go
into a frequency spectrum auction for the FCC, which would effectively
destroy the TV portion and probably dismantle or severely cripple the
radio station due to the loss of shared resources. It’s not a sure
thing, as someone has got to want their part of the spectrum bad
enough to pay for it, but the sucky part is that it’s nothing more
than an effort on the part of the University to generate some cash.
While I pay little attention to the national stuff, I think that most
of their reporting is going to focus on the current issues of the day,
and some they’re going to avoid due to the controversy they whip up.
Again, that’s coming from the national guys in DC, too.
I used to read for their radio reading service for the blind. They
gave out SSB type receivers to the visually impaired for free and had
a completely separate media stream that was nothing but locally
produced content. I read an hour or two a week and had my own gig
which did short stories and sometimes some articles from major news
magazines. There were other volunteers who had regular gigs reading
parts of the local newspapers every morning, too. They farmed out the
service in 2007 and closed us down, unfortunately.
And yes, I am sometimes surprised at the political references made on
APHC, but do realize that it’s an independently produced show and has
no connection with NPR other than to be syndicated through it.
Dan
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