While the specifics of WESU’s future remain undecided, the station will make a major shift as of Feb.1 to fix a number of the station’s current problems. WESU’s Board of Directors hopes to turn the station around by hiring a general manager.
“We’ve talked about the possibility of using WSHU feeds, but that is still in the process of negotiations,” said Jesse Sommer ’05, General Manager of WESU.
According to Sommer, on a daily basis WESU is in violation of FCC regulations.
“I was listening the other morning and heard the f-word go out in a song,” he said. “We don’t have any managerial oversight and we need some.”
The station needs the Administration to hire a general manager who can provide such authority. The appointment of such an individual will only come after Bennet fully supports WESU’s programming. At this point, according to Sommer, the Administration is only supporting a limited association with WSHU—Sacred Heart University’s NPR affiliate.
“What happens next is WESU students are to develop a specific plan for programming and operation for the station,” said Justin Harmon, Director of University Communications.
According to Sommer, politicization of WESU’s future and misrepresentation of the issue has not helped the future of the station or the negotiation process.
“I am concerned that people have been very vocal about their stance against NPR, but have not been very vocal in their support of WESU,” he said. “WESU will settle on it’s own mission,” Harmon said.
Some of the station’s most pressing problems include board members and DJs missing meetings, DJs missing their own shows, the station not broadcasting 24 hours a day, a lack of fundraising abilities, thefts from the station and a general disorganization, in addition to regular violations of FCC regulations.
As negotiations currently stand, it is likely that WESU will use about six hours of WSHU feed on Monday through Friday. The rest of the airtime will be split between students and community volunteers. One-third of any money that is raised during those six hours of WSHU feed will go to WSHU, while two-thirds will go to WESU.
According to Sommer, some of his initial understandings of the situation were inaccurate. WESU will not be broadcasting direct a WSHU feed, but will gain a password from WSHU that allows WESU access to the NPR satellite. Students will be able to choose which NPR programs they use and when.
These understandings were clarified several weeks ago in a meeting between Sommer, Luke Snelling ’05 and George Lombardi, the Station Manager of WSHU.
After researching the history of WESU’s FCC license, the Board of Directors discovered that the transfer of the license in 2003 to the University was not illegitimate, as they had initially thought. According to the Hartford Bureau of Incorporations, the Wesleyan Broadcasters’ Association went defunct in 1990 due to mismanagement. From 1990 to 2003, according to Sommer, WESU renewed its FCC license illegally, without students or the University realizing that this was the case.
Recent research by Evan Simko-Bednarski ’07 has shown that the Wesleyan Student Association (WSA) may own the WESU transmitter, which is the tower on top of the Science Center. According to Simko-Bednarski, when WESU needed a new transmitter around 1987 it secured a loan from the University through the WSA. Since the University charged an interest on the loan, Simko-Bednarski argues that Wesleyan saw itself as a separate legal entity from the WSA. Therefore, the University would have to prove that the WSA defaulted on their loan in order to prove ownership of the transmitter.
According to Harmon, when the FCC license was transferred to the University in 2003, all the station’s assets were also transferred.
“At this point, the WSA has confirmed that we signed the check to purchase the transmitter for WESU, and therefore the transfer legally belongs to WESU,” said Nora Connor ’07, Chair of the Community Outreach Committee.
In view of an earlier declaration to support the improvement of WESU without NPR influence, Connor said that “the WSA is not prepared for our transmitter to be used for NPR programming at this time.”
The station’s active leadership will remain on campus over winter break to work on hiring a General Manager, and restructuring the Board of Directors, Sommer said.
WESU links current press releases and lists of achievements on their website at www.wesufm.org.
Leave a Reply