Money talks: the story behind the WNHC bid

WPLR's money hangs in the balance as protestors try to block a potential WYBC takeover.

By Jessica Winter

LIZ OLINER/YH Reverend Al Sharpton led WNHC demonstrators on a march to President Levin's office on Wed., Feb. 4 to protest the potential takeover of WNHC by WYBC.

As Sharpton's mounting baritone echoed across the plaza, and the crowd chanted "They send their children to Yale and your children to jail" and "This station is not for the elite," a certain bombastic guitar riff could be heard in the distance. The protestors looked around; some appeared perplexed, while others shouted louder in defiance of the sudden distraction. Soon any onlooker could place the source of the intruding music: a student in an upper-floor suite of Berkeley had placed his blaring stereo in an open window overlooking Wall Street. He was blasting an album by Radiohead, the kind of alterna-rock outfit one would hear on the "old" WYBC, probably would not hear on the "new" WYBC, and certainly would never hear on WNHC. The sight and sound of Al Sharpton doing aural battle with an anonymous Yale student's stereo crystallizes WYBC's ever more complicated predicament, in which they attempt to perfect a fiendishly difficult balance between student and community interests.

Competing with WYBC to purchase WNHC's license is the Stamford-based Buckley Broadcasting Co.; their bid, while undisclosed, is slightly lower than the $650,000 WYBC has offered, but WNHC employees hope Buckley's efforts will prevail. "It would be preferable for me because then I'll have a job," Yusef Shaw, host of WNHC's "Inside the Community" talk show, said matter-of-factly. "Yale will not employ me." WNHC assistant program director Darryl Huckaby elaborated, "Buckley will keep the current format, which serves the black community. All it would be is a change in ownership. Yale has their own agenda, which is to make the station a training facility for Yale students."

"There are so many misconceptions out there," WYBC General Manager Mike Corwin, SM '99, countered. "People are making it sound like we want to take this station and shut it down. They've already filed for bankruptcy. They will not be operating the way they are now in the long-term future, no matter who gets their license."

Corwin laughs when he hears about the common assumption among those present at Wednesday's rally that Buckley will keep WNHC's current format intact. "Any time Buckley has acquired a station they've put on their own syndicated programming and hired their own employees," he asserted. Indeed, Buckley has not placed in writing any commitment to preserving WNHC's format and staff roster, and among its 16 stations in the northeast, none follow an "urban-contemporary" format; their flagship station, Hartford's WDRC, plays oldies from the '50s and '60s.

"Buckley is lying," former WYBC Treasurer John McGann, CC '98, said bluntly. "In the radio industry, when there is a change in ownership, everyone is fired, from management on down. And this is what will happen [to WNHC] no matter who takes over. These people are being played."

McGann has been traveling WYBC's bumpy, as-yet unending road toward a second station for years now; before his stint as treasurer he was also station manager and general manager of WYBC. According to McGann, negotiations with Edie Rozier, president of WNHC's parent company, Willis Communications, to purchase WNHC began in early 1997. But when the Yale Daily News broke the story of the impending purchase, negotiations broke down: since Willis hadn't yet declared bankruptcy, any appearance that WYBC was honing in on the community-based station promised to make for a public relations disaster.

The day the YDN story broke on Fri., Feb. 21, Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg--who assumed that a WYBC Board of Governors member had leaked the information to the student press--"walked into the Board of Governors meeting and resoundingly bitched out everyone," McGann recalled. According to McGann, Trachtenberg forbade the station from progressing any further with the WNHC deal. At an executive board meeting later that week, "she told us if we did anything more she'd bring Ex Comm into it and get us kicked out of school. It was half a joke and half reality. She didn't expect us to go against her wishes," former General Manager Kuba Stolarski, CC '98, said. "Her hands were tied," McGann said. "We had talked to the Yale PR office, and we knew if the public got wind of it we'd be dead. The University was not prepared to take the fall for a huge PR scandal. They didn't want what is happening now to happen." Trachtenberg would only comment that reports of her earlier intervention upon WYBC's dealings with WNHC are "a distortion of the truth."

The difference between then and now, of course, is that since July WNHC has been officially bankrupt, "so in the University's eyes, we're in the clear" to proceed with negotiations, McGann said. But WYBC faces competition only because Buckley was alerted to WNHC's availability by last year's publicity.

Buckley and WYBC meet in bankruptcy court on Wed., Feb. 11, where a judge will decide which station is best fit to purchase WNHC's license. The criteria of the decision is based not only on WYBC's solvency but also its status as what McGann called "a viable contributor to the community." These concerns partly prompted WYBC's recent change from eclectic DJ-determined nighttime programming to the more uniform "CHR-rhythmic" format. "Our first concern in the switch was increasing our listenership. CHR-rhythmic is the most popular format for people ages 18-34, and shows the strongest crossover between racial lines of any format," McGann said. "But how we were going to look as far as getting the second station was definitely a secondary factor."

LIZ OLINER/YH If WYBC acquires a second station, it will have to give up more FM programming to WPLR.

Acquiring a second station does not just guarantee the return of a forum for autonomous deejaying by Yale students. WYBC is in the midst of renewing its joint selling contract with WPLR, under which WPLR sells the college station's advertising and grants WYBC $10,000 per month plus 20 percent of ad revenues. Negotiations for a new contract are predicated upon attaining another station: WYBC would receive $250,000 up front to acquire the second signal and a small increase in their monthly income to cover additional operating costs. In return, WYBC would concede more programming to WPLR's control, and would receive zero percentage of sales of their own advertising. But if the current bid for WNHC falls through, negotiators for both stations must return to the drawing board.

Student DJs displaced by WYBC's December format change seem ambivalent at best about returning to WYBC under the guise of a second station. "I don't really agree with the purchase of the new station." Christine Michalopoulos, TC '98, said. Michalopoulos is the former format head for "Frequency," which was eliminated from WYBC programming in the changeover to CHR. "It's bad enough that they took away the student voice. It just seems like bidding on WNHC is another example of the power-hungry, commercially-minded aspect of the executive board. They want to rank up there with the big radio stations and that's the wrong objective for a college station." Former Frequency DJ Rajeev Muttreja, SM '00, claims that the executive board's effort to buy an AM station "shows that they don't know how to help our listenership [among students] at all. Students are scanning the FM dial."

What is more, the Yale College Council's recent decision to co-sponsor Spring Fling with WYBC did not constitute a resounding show of support for the station's recent programming decisions; the vote to join WYBC was a tepid 13-6, with five abstentions. Muttreja and other displaced DJs argued against a YCC partnership with the station, with WYBC program director Emad Abdelnaby, DC '99, representing the pro-WYBC contingency. "Things got rather heated," Muttreja said of the debate, which climaxed with YCC representative Jeremy Fain, DC '99, swearing at Abdelnaby; YCC President Kimberly Taylor, TC '99, recalled, "I think I used my gavel more in that meeting than I have in any other."

Taylor continued, "We perceived what we were voting on not so much as a moral issue but as a business deal. We are going to serve Yale students. Whether or not WYBC is doing that is not part of our concern."

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