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A True Account:
How Academic Management Styles
Make or Break Their Telecommunication Programs
By Wayne A. Hepler
Assist. Professor, Telecommunication Arts
Butler University, Indianapolis
(317) 927-5974
January, 1994
A True Account:
How Academic Management Styles
Make or Break Their Telecommunication Programs
i
ABSTRACT OF THE PAPER
What follows is the true account of two midwestern
universities and the impact the crucial decisions of their
administrations had on their telecommunication programs and their
students. In accordance with the guidelines of the Student Media
Advisors Division, the paper covers both
managerial and historical aspects of two student operated radio
stations.
The paper opens with the events surrounding the sale of
one private university's FM radio station as compiled from
first-hand accounts of the parties involved, including the
seven-year old plan that served as the foundation for the
process, the FCC's revised duopoly policy that made the sale
possible, and the mostly skilled administration of the sale that
led to newfound income for the school's fledgling television
station and the departure of unnecessary radio staff.
The following section details the contrasting account of
a public university's decision to acquire an AM, versus FM, radio
station, detailing the lack of specific planning by the
administration, its disregard for the informed opinion of its own
radio-television department, and the school's mis-handled
construction of a transmitter tower over the objections of the
professionals in the field who were providing it.
The concluding section then analyses the management
styles of the two schools' administrations while deducing
specific guidelines for skilled oversight of academic media
operations based on the experiences of the two programs.
Please note that the use of a wider, more readable font
made for a deceptive final page count.
ii
On one average morning in the information age of the
1990s, John and Jean Doe pour through the newspaper and glance at
the TV news. Their alma mater has sold its 50,000 watt National
Public Radio affiliate--a commercial frequency--reportedly for
millions less than its highest offer years before. Though the
university has a fledgling TV station airing five hours a day,
there will be no radio station in return for the 100-plus
students who pay tens-of-thousands of dollars for their private
university education; no station for the thousands of listeners
who patronized it for years; and no station to appease the
numerous alumni who fervently supported this operation that
jump-started their careers, from New York to Los Angeles to the
school's own backyard. What is the response of the Doe's, the
students and the staff to the sale of "their" station, and how
will this affect their futures?
A half-day's drive away at an open-admissions university
in one of the last metro areas to acquire a public institution,
John Jr. learns through the grapevine that his school chose to
forego obtaining a similar FM public radio station a decade
before, opting instead to construct an AM tower in a deep trench
and pass up what few FM options were left to it. What is the
response of John and the 100 or so other Radio-TV majors, and how
has this affected their futures?
What today's academicians are doing with their
capital-intensive, often controversial telecommunications
programs, has had significant repercussions for the students and
parents trusting them with their children's futures, not to
mention the professionals attempting to make these hands-on
programs more than the target of criticism from those in the
field. The scenarios depicted above are the actual accounts of
two such programs and the events that came to define them. How
their administrations responded, the decisions they made and why
they made them, provide eye-opening insight into the attitudes
and management philosophies of those with the final say regarding
the path of hands-on telecommunications programs in America--and
the students enrolled in them.
For reasons that will become obvious, and in respect to
the individuals involved, the actual names, institutions,
locations and dates depicted in this article have been changed.
Any similarity to other individuals or institutions is purely
coincidental and unintended by the author.
STUART UNIVERSITY AND WKJA-FM
For nearly fifty years, Stuart University, a private
school of 2,200 in a medium-large, midwestern metropolitan area,
has maintained a radio-television program in the College of Fine
Arts that, while not achieving the accolades of its much larger,
state-run competitors, has none the less achieved certain respect
among academic programs in America--particularly as the rare
breed of private institution with modern-day facilities.
Stuart's cornerstone facility, WKJA-FM, a commercial
allocation, was donated to the university in the early 1950s when
FM was little more than a lowly tax write-off sidekick to AM
radio. Thirty years later, WKJA achieved NPR status and
ultimately developed the new age and classical format that one
local media critic hailed as the most progressive and original
air sound in a largely mundane top-50 radio market. True, to
some of Stuart's larger counterparts, television and multimedia
were old news by the close of the WKJA era in 1992. But what
Stuart had done with radio it had done right. The accrediting
association overseeing Stuart's region in 1991 found
undergraduate Radio-TV majors rating the department a glowing 3.8
on a 4.0 scale. Said one alumnus involved in the process, "The
department always encouraged ideas and always (always) was there
to lend a helping hand, even when they seemed buried under a
tremendous work load. The small college atmosphere...allowed
hands-on training and learning that I don't think I would have
been given if I had attended a larger university." Indeed,
distinguished Stuart alumni abound in the media, and a
significant portion of them produced, wrote or performed over the
airwaves of WKJA-FM. It is not surprising, then, that many of
these same alumni also remained staunch financial supporters
years after graduation.
At various times in its Public Radio history, WKJA won
the see-saw ratings battle with its two neighboring National
Public Radio competitors, including the station's final sweeps
prior to its sale. With the help of some of the loyal alumni,
WKJA usually achieved its underwriting goals as well, and did so
with an on-air contingent comprised completely of students, plus
a fulltime staff of five, three of whom also taught as parttime
adjuncts. The fulltime faculty regularly numbered two or three
for roughly 100 RTV majors. Using an additional five or six
professional adjuncts, the program was, to say the least,
efficient. A small, three-camera television studio was added in
1989, but unquestionably the cornerstone of the department's
instruction and training for over forty years was WKJA-FM.
It is understandable, then, that a certain love for the
station developed among the faculty, staff, students, listeners
and alumni. (Stuart alumni are renowned for their devotion to
Stuart interns, for example.) Thus, it is also understandable
that few onlookers understood why--and how--the sale of WKJA came
about in 1992. The popular perspectives among the print media
seemed to center on financial greed or a lack of regard for the
station's unique audience appeal in an era of format
fragmentation. "Listeners and city lose," read the headline of
one media analyst's column, saying, "The only alternative (in
radio stations) was WKJA. It's ironic that in an America
encouraging multiculturalism, public radio these days recognizes
only one color--the green of cold, hard cash." More positive
analysis accurately focused on the increasing importance of the
expanding television field and hailed the station's sale as a
step in the right direction by Stuart.
Alumni and listener reaction alike ranged from confusion
to rage. Department Chair Dr. Richard Envoy, the staff and
faculty can all attest to the excessive number and nature of
phone calls that poured across WKJA's phone lines. Why, then,
did Stuart University sell WKJA-FM? Were students and listeners
sold out? Did the sale benefit the program?
THE RATIONALE FOR SELLING WKJA
Many of the misgivings and misunderstandings of the WKJA
faithful can be blamed on short memories, for in 1986, a
commission on the future of Stuart University--including "more
than 200 civic leaders, university experts, alumni, faculty and
friends of the university" --determined that a 50,000 watt
commercial allocation was costly overkill as an NPR vehicle for
student instruction. Thus, the commission agreed with the
Radio-TV Department that selling WKJA and acquiring a television
station were wise notions, considering the booming expansion of
the video field and the significant dollars the sale could bring
to support a video track, which did not exist at this date. No
one disagreed that WKJA was an excellent public relations
vehicle. No one argued that it hadn't met the instructional
needs of a long line of telecommunications students. But by
1986, the argument taking shape was that the great training
ground was gradually becoming, to put it bluntly, an
independently managed studio of baby-sitting board ops. By the
time of the sale in 1992, the evidence would seem to support that
judgement. The station and its manager were completely separate
from the department and not subject to Dr. Envoy. Most student
radio responsibilities consisted of time, temperature and
back-announce breaks every second or third song during the
afternoon progressive music program. And for obvious reasons,
few students wanted to be handed the evening classical music
chores with even fewer breaks around longer musical selections
(which actually served as a quiet study opportunity). News
aspirants made out better, with a full half-hour, public affairs
interview program and brief newscasts during the afternoon.
Mornings were left to the usual NPR Morning Edition and
Performance Today programs, and overnights, with few loyal
listeners, were the domain of alternative music aficionados. In
short, despite continued ratings and fundraising success, the
students weren't gaining much practical experience at Stuart
University on
radio. Thus, while there are many reasons why universities have
radio stations, the question was why Stuart would have the
station under these circumstances if the goal, as confirmed by
the commission, was to benefit students?
The answer is that by 1991, Stuart's RTV students weren't
actually benefiting from their time with radio as much as they
were from producing, hosting or shooting video tape for WTU-TV,
Stuart's new, full-power television station acquired through the
usual filing process. Students had already been airing TV
programs on the city's educational cable channel two years before
that. Not only was WKJA of less academic benefit now, but as a
reported 13-million dollar bid on the station in the
pre-recession 1980s proved, it was the potential revenue Stuart's
administration could put to better use in a blossoming video
program (and elsewhere). But there was no WTU-TV then, so the
university's administrators rejected it (and other) offers, a
strong indication that Stuart's administration did want the
station for student purposes, and meant business when it said it
would not sell without something of student value in return.
This fact was virtually neglected in the media hype that followed
the station's sale.
DUOPOLY AND A NEW ERA
Also non-existent when the highest offers were made on
WKJA was the Federal Communications Commission's duopoly
ownership policy. But that changed--everything changed--when in
1992, the FCC allowed multiple ownership of radio stations in the
same market. According to Stuart University's Chief Financial
Officer, Victor Wittenwald, just as university administrators
were considering the possibilities created by duopoly--now that
they had WTU-TV--Broadcast Metroplex, Inc. came calling in the
person of owner, Jack Setter.
Most area residents knew Broadcast Metroplex as "B-101,"
Metroplex's dominant adult contemporary radio station, among the
nation's top-rated in its format for the past decade.
Metroplex's interest in WKJA not only made sense in light of
WKJA's better-than-average notoriety and superior signal (perhaps
the best in the market), but most importantly, WKJA's allocation
was commercial, allowing the sale of advertising time never
desired by the university. The million-dollar question, quite
literally then, was how much WKJA was worth in the
recession-ridden 1990s. Stuart's answer was six-million dollars
before ever receiving an appraisal, the thought being that such a
figure would be enough compensation to partially finance a new,
long-sought fine arts building, including a new facility for the
aging RTV Department.
As it turned out, Wittenwald and company's figure wasn't
far off target: the appraisal came in at two-and-a-half to five
million dollars, depending on financing arrangements.
Predictably in 1992, Jack Setter and Broadcast Metroplex offered
five-million dollars, half of it financed. Seeking six-million,
Stuart in essence said thanks but no thanks, and said it again
when Metroplex offered five-and-a-half million. But in a few
months, Jack Setter and company finally arrived at the
six-million dollar mark, now with seventy percent of it financed.
Stuart accepted and agreements were drawn up, pending final
signatures and the compulsory approval of Stuart's board of
directors.
By now the buzz was beginning to circulate among Stuart
and scattered other market insiders. Even though Stuart had
originally never advertised, let alone begun to seriously
consider the possibilities, the fact was that negotiations with
Broadcast Metroplex, Inc. were now four months old, and secrets
with far fewer repercussions than this one have often reached the
public in far shorter time spans. None the less, Stuart had
largely shielded the deal from the media and the competitors
Metroplex sought to ambush. Thus, the annual spring meeting of
Stuart University's board of directors included President Simon
Brief's presentation for the closing signatures on the sale of
WKJA-FM.
But a not-so-funny thing happened on the way to President
Brief's forum: Jack Setter backed out, literally on the eve of
the board's meeting. The reason was the sale of B-101's direct
competitor, FM-96, to none other than Jack Setter and Broadcast
Metroplex. There was wide speculation that WKJA was used to
"encourage" FM-96 management to take the money and run. To say
that the Stuart brass were shocked is an understatement, but will
suffice for the purpose of this document.
Thus, the board of directors commissioned President Brief
to seek out an interested party in what would necesarily become a
public process, including the hiring of a media broker. In an
apparent attempt to avoid that process, two other media owners
contacted the president privately, one of whom made the same bid
as Broadcast Metroplex. When the latter was told a public
bidding process was about to get underway, the story finally hit
the fan of media scrutiny. In a seeming conflict of interest,
the frustrated party blasted Stuart's handling of the sale in the
city's weekly business publication he also owned. Still, no
deal was yet done.
Ultimately, says Victor Wittenwald, six bidders entered
the fray. And in a twist of fate, the best offer was
significantly higher priced with significantly better terms than
the original offer: $7.15 million dollars from New Mills
Broadcasting, Inc. New Mills wanted in to leverage its position
as the lone beautiful music provider by converting WKJA into a
new age format targeting younger demographics. The paperwork was
drawn up and signed (though final signatures would not occur for
nearly half a year). Amidst the triumphant comeback by the
Stuart administration, however, was the tragic timing: RTV
students inevitably heard the leaks just before finals week that
spring. What followed were the lowpoints of the entire process.
RUMORS, DEPARTURES AND TRANSITIONS
By now, a process that the original parties wanted short
and sweet had become anything but. Thus, the sale of WKJA had
become loaded with rumors, largely from other parties among the
media as well as alumni and former RTV employees. Naturally,
many of the rumors were called to the direct attention of WKJA's
general manager, John Milburn, and development director, Harriet
Sauer, the two staffers most isolated from the entire process
because of their positions as station employees, their minimal
roles in the education process of the RTV Department, and their
previously announced stands against any sale of the station.
Milburn's father was a successful media manager and, with
the help of a timely power vacuum, Milburn himself had become the
interim station manager four years before when the RTV Department
chair/station manager had been fired. Milburn was to return to
his production duties upon the resurrection of the struggling
department.
But that resurrection became muddled even before Dr.
Richard Envoy came to head the RTV faculty in 1990. By then,
Milburn, successfully maintaining WKJA's role as a major player
in public radio and teaching one section of audio production as
an adjunct, had become considerably more than interim. Without
having had a department head or even much of a department (in
fact, at one point there was one fulltime RTV faculty member),
and working in virtual isolation at WKJA's off-campus location,
Milburn had also crafted the second-highest salary behind the
department head. When he later became aware of the commission's
recommendation to sell the station, and of the early (if
rejected) offers, Milburn was quoted on more than one occasion as
saying that he would stir up student rebellion against any
pending sale of WKJA. It was tragic but understandable, then,
that as an independent and potentially hostile general manager,
Milburn was seen as dispensable and kept in the dark about the
WKJA negotiations until word leaked out.
Similarly, Harriet Sauer was another veteran who
administra-tors saw as being of limited benefit to the new
television operations. She had come to the job with minimal
training and without a college degree, and dug herself a hole as
an isolated employee of a radio station, versus a team player
working within an academic department. Since she never taught a
college-level course and visited campus only on occasion, she
sealed her fate as an unnecessary member of a changing staff.
Thus, while both Milburn and Sauer were frequently
suspicious throughout the sales process, sadly, neither pursued
other employment possibilities as a hedge against the ultimate.
In fact, it wasn't until a premature article in a trade magazine
was faxed across the WKJA phone lines that Milburn and Sauer
became "officially" informed of the negotiations with Broadcast
Metroplex. The uneasiness around the workplace became
nerve-racking tension the rest of the way, which dragged on
another three months.
Since, by the very nature of their jobs both Milburn and
Sauer were on a necessarily intimate basis with students, the
fallout among those RTV majors who revered them was occasionally
severe. After all that had transpired, including the information
blackout Milburn and Sauer perceived as hostile, they, let alone
the students, did not have an accurate picture of the
transaction. Envoy's fear that students would take sides indeed
took place in the final days of the semester. But since by then
the sale had wound down to its final hours and a significant
number of students closest to the outbound staffers were
graduating, the eventual effect of Milburn's and Sauer's
displeasure was minimal when students returned to the fall
semester and a new carrier-current, student-run radio station.
Dr. Envoy, as intended from the start, is now the general
manager of WTU-TV in addition to his responsibilities as head of
the department. The students' carrier-current radio station is
also aired throughout the region over WTU's second audio program
(SAP), and is overseen by one of Milburn's former staffers and a
faculty member. A fulltime marketing director, formerly with the
campus development office, was hired for WTU at year's end.
WHAT BECAME OF WKJA?
As predicted, New Mills converted WKJA into a new age
music station targeting young adults. The actual change, in
fact, came overnight, when the new WKJA aired a mind-boggling
music mix that, for example, included Born Free and Stairway to
Heaven in the same set, as an attention-getting prelude to the
new age format that aired the following morning. In the face of
such night-and-day change, needless to say complaints came in to
the WTU offices loud and often. As part of the terms of the
local marketing agreement (or LMA), the new WKJA staff operated
out of a spare audio studio in the WTU building until the start
of the fall semester, making for an interesting summer: no
Milburn or Sauer, a switch in offices for five of the seven
office occupants, and an uninitiated if friendly collection of
air personalities freshly hired for the new WKJA--not to mention
a steady ringing of the phone with a never-ending stream of
questions or complaints.
For whatever reasons, administrators laid low after the
start of the LMA, rather than trumpet the significant impact more
than one-half million dollars' worth of newly purchased
equipment was having on the students and the department,
including a completely revamped master control room and TV
production studio, two digital audio work stations, WTU's long
overdue entry into the beta video field, and the crowning
achievement, a similarly equipped remote television truck that
was fully staffed and operational by the start of the fall
semester. Some of the critics who claimed Stuart would take the
money and run were soon witness to WTU's fine arts and sporting
event programs produced courtesy of the student remote crew.
Those students who feared practical audio training would
leave with WKJA were soon sweating out real-life assignments in
the digital audio studio. And those majors who always wanted to
do a contemporary music format instead of public radio were soon
on the air, both on campus and around the region, via the SAP
channel (which local retail electronics departments have used to
demonstrate their televisions' SAP capabilities). No, the public
relations power, and to some extent, the real-life pressure of
performing on a powerful FM NPR affiliate, certainly did not
exist. But no student was left keeping uninspired watch over a
passive radio format either. As Victor Wittenwald put it, "It
was a matter of priorities. President Brief made it clear that
ours is an educational mission and the students come first, even
before the listeners. WKJA was less beneficial in the education
of our students after WTU. Dr. Brief stood by the students and
sold WKJA to muster up the resources for, among other things, new
facilities of greater benefit to the students. To his credit,
Dr. Brief firmly believes that an unwillingness to make the tough
decisions kills a university." (Italics added.)
In the final analysis, if WKJA had its public
relations power, certainly so does WTU-TV, a full-power
television station on cable systems that reach subscribers to a
50-miles radius. If WKJA was a community service, so is WTU,
with PBS and locally produced cultural, interview and educational
programs quite different from its PBS counterpart. And it is the
very sale of WKJA that has already played a large part in
financing the construction of a new fine arts center as well.
And Victor Wittenwald reports that a master planning process for
the future of Stuart University was conducted during the first
half of 1994--with special attention paid to WTU and the College
of Fine Arts.
CSU AND THE STATUS QUO
Depending upon your outlook, "status quo" is either your
delight or dread in the midwestern city of Linden. The state's
fourth-largest city is a far cry from the transplanted
population, politics, arts and sports community that mark Stuart
University's setting. And the Central State University
telecommunications story certainly has its departures from
Stuart's. Yet the nature and impact of the decisions made at CSU
draw distinct parallels to Stuart's situation, with immensely
different results.
For years, Linden was the largest metropolitan area in
the United States without a public institution of higher learning
--until 1961. That's when CSU's first classes commenced in a
downtown building, later to move to a northern suburb. To some,
CSU represented a desperately needed break in higher education
from the status quo of a region mired in status quo. To others
who labelled it "North Side High," CSU was merely a mediocre
extension of the area's already existing secondary education
system--a safe, secure sameness. "Most of all," wrote the editor
of the Linden newspaper, "is the V word we've often
heard--vision. We don't have it. We are deluding ourselves if
we think we can maintain the status quo as some would like. Our
population for decades has been no better than stagnant."
Today, a majority of CSU's 5,100 students come from the
immediate area (though two other states are within reasonable
driving distance). Many of its radio-TV students seek or acquire
jobs right in Linden's #97 television and #100-plus radio market.
Unlike Stuart University, CSU's Radio-TV Department is
one of three--along with jouralism and speech--in the School of
Communi-cations, which resides in the College of Liberal Arts &
Sciences. (By contrast, Stuart's Radio-TV Department resides in
the College of Fine Arts.) Since 1981, the heart of CSU's
hands-on electronic media instruction has been its donated, 250
watt, daytime AM radio station. Sharing the clear-channel, 990
frequency with a southern radio station, WCSU was required by FCC
regulations to power down after sunset--so far down that, much
like the commercial industry, no CSU station manager ever saw fit
to stay on the air at night. That, along with its
characteristically less desirable AM sound quality and a
crippling tower placement, always made "U-99" of questionable
appeal to the student body--and some would say of diminished use,
as well. Why then does CSU have an AM station, and how did it
come to acquire it? As you will see, there are two significantly
different accounts depending on who is asked. Certainly the
passage of more than a decade's time is a consideration in this
matter.
As far back as the late 1960s, Linden civic leaders
were orchestrating an effort to obtain a FM stereo license for a
NPR affiliate. By the late 1970s, the board of directors of PBS
television affiliate WWNN--including CSU President Dr. Harold
Sprout--had succeeded in airing WWNN-FM. But as former
Radio-TV Department Chair Dr. Matthew Emmis relates, WWNN's
controversial president, Stan Ruck, had negative feelings about a
radio operation. "After all," says Dr. Emmis, "nobody (in the
area) even knew what public radio was, never having heard All
Things Considered or Morning Edition." Thus, says Dr. Emmis,
with an eye on the radio station's coffers, Ruck let go of a
number of radio employees during his one-year stint--excluding
his choice for station manager, Matt Allen--en route to one
particularly memorable day in June, 1981.
Allen says that when he attended the June meeting of the
WWNN board of directors, known as Central Media, Inc., he
represented half of the entire fulltime staff of WWNN-FM, Ruck
chose the occasion to inform the board that, because he believed
it was only proving to be a financial drain on WWNN-TV, he
intended to shut down the radio station. At that point, says
Allen, "Board members screamed at Ruck and literally threw four
checks at him totalling around $400, saying there was more where
that came from." Allen says it seems Ruck did not realize that,
not only would his disposal of WWNN-FM cost the board a public
radio station, but it would also cost them the FM allocation,
placing in jeopardy the entire future of public radio in the
region. In addition, says Allen, much of the radio station's
equipment was owned by a local organization for the deaf, who
benefitted from programs aired by WWNN-TV. Obviously, Ruck
received a far stiffer response than he bargained for, and it
wasn't long before two new survival plans for the radio station
were making the rounds in Linden. One, quite publicly, called
for the city library to assume ownership. The other, quite
unknown, was for CSU to assume responsibility for WWNN radio on
its own north-side campus. Here is where the accounts of what
transpired take divergent paths.
Allen and Dr. Emmis agree: upon Ruck's shocking
announcement, Allen made a house call to CSU's modest
communications facilities. Believing that WWNN-FM, let alone his
job, were at stake, Allen had called Dr. Emmis to toss out the
carrot of WWNN-FM's affiliation with the university. Naturally,
Dr. Emmis was most interested in having a FM Public Radio
affiliate as part of his under-equipped program. Allen toured
CSU's facilities twice. Dr. Emmis was hopeful. But there were
three catches.
First, say Allen and Dr. Emmis, Bruce Stenmark, the
widely known head of a regional broadcasting corporation based in
Linden, had donated 990-AM to CSU just prior to the WWNN
controversy. Could Dr. Emmis now reject a donation from a
respected public figure? (Would the administration even consider
both?) Worse for Dr. Emmis's and Allen's purposes, despite
private rival Linden University's ownership of an eclectic FM
station, a maverick professor there was also expressing interest
in WWNN's FM frequency. And most significant of all, President
Sprout was indeed a member of the board of Central Media, Inc.
Would he attempt to field such a hot potato as assuming the reins
of WWNN-FM, and at the same time play Indian giver with the free
AM frequency just given him by Stenmark?
According to President Sprout, that seemingly no-win
situation was never an issue. In fact, "It was a win-win
situation," says Sprout. "There was never a possibility to
acquire WWNN. The station's supporters desperately wanted to
keep it and conducted a very successful campaign before the 990
frequency came along." If that was true, why did Allen ever make
the call on Dr. Emmis? Why, as Dr. Emmis remembers, did CSU's
own Vice President of Finance and Administration, Adam Grife,
later instruct Dr. Emmis to "walk before we run" and go with the
AM frequency over WWNN? (For his part, Grife finds the events
difficult to recall years after the fact, and defers to Dr.
Sprout.) Says Allen, "Dr. Sprout just wasn't interested." And
Dr. Emmis says more specifically that the publicity-conscious
President Sprout and his fellow administrators, "lacked
perspective and were not aware of what they really had. There
was a basic failure to understand FM as the emerging technology."
Thus, the last FM suggestion Dr. Emmis says he made to
Grife was a time-sharing arrangement, with either WWNN or a local
high school making scant use of its FM license. Dr. Emmis
received a second rejection. And so, whether CSU administrators
were weighing the potential longterm political risks against
immediate academic gains, or simply believing the donated AM
frequency to be what Sprout called a sufficient "student
laboratory," CSU administra-tors ultimately determined not to
attempt to acquire a FM National Public Radio affiliate.
And what of WWNN-FM? To its credit, the board of
directors of Central Media, Inc. did salvage its NPR affiliate
via the city library. Though Matt Allen remembers Stan Ruck as
being ahead of his time with regard to innovative fundraising
strategy (such as renting station equipment for a fee), Allen
also remembers the Public Radio manager being removed from his
administrative post amidst questions of financial inpropriety in
the years following his surprise announcement.
In the fall of 1981, two years after FM listenership
had overtaken AM in America, CSU went on the air with WCSU, its
250 watt, daytime AM radio station. Little did anyone suspect
that this was actually only a beginning.
WCSU'S TORMENTED HISTORY
Believing in the public radio model as "the way the
community benefits from the presence of a college radio station,"
Dr. Emmis installed such a format on his new AM station. Thus,
WCSU became Linden's first classical and jazz, daytime-only AM
music station--an unusual categorization to be sure--boosted by
daily and weekly specialty programs hosted by local celebrities.
One boost WCSU definitely did not acquire was in its
signal. Perhaps ironically, almost one year to the day Ruck
made his surprise announcement, a storm of a different type blew
through the area and knocked WCSU off the air--and more. "I
remember driving out to the station through the rain and fog,"
recalls Dr. Emmis, "and not seeing the tower in its usual
location (several miles from campus). But I reassured myself
with the thought that it had to be the fault of the fog." When
Dr. Emmis arrived at the station, he found out his eyes had not
deceived him; the station was off the air and its donated tower
lay damaged on the ground. Only eight months after CSU debuted
WCSU-AM, the station was without a permanent tower for nearly
seventeen months, using a temporary one that may actually have
been better than what followed. What followed is arguably one of
the most noteworthy oddities of college broadcasting. Again,
accounts dating back over a decade differ.
No one debates that Stenmark's corporation agreed to
front the money for, then lease a new tower to, CSU. In
addition, says President Sprout, Stenmark's corporate engineer,
Cliff Michaels, saw to the engineering study needed to place the
tower on the CSU campus. Ideally, any AM tower would rest
in a low-lying, marshy setting, the terrain most conducive to an
AM radio signal. It would seem that CSU's administration and
maintenance personnel took that information literally, because
upon completion of the engineering study, says President Sprout,
the site chosen as least obtrusive to the growing campus and the
flight pattern of the eastside airport, was a steep grassland
just inside the east boundary of the campus. That's not how
Michaels and Dr. Emmis remember it. "The site was--and still
is--a large crater with trees on it," says Dr. Emmis (one
present-day look confirms this assessment). "It took the better
part of a week just to clear the trees," agrees Michaels. Though
President Sprout sadly recalls losing 800 other acres to the June
storm, he remembers only a few trees in the area of the tower.
However, Dr. Emmis recalls tower construction teams bemoaning CSU
maintenance requests to clear too few trees to allow for the
tower. "And," says Michaels, "worse than that, the ground itself
was mostly rock with little topsoil, and the radials (that extend
underground away from a tower) need good soil in order to give
you a good AM signal. The temporary tower we jerry-rigged after
the storm was probably better than this tower because it still
had good radials."
Apparently, says Dr. Emmis, in an attempt to create the
"perfect" conductor, as well as an aesthetically pleasing
terrain, CSU's maintenance staff (and presumably the
administration) wanted to place the tower down the steep, rocky
embankment, surround it with a lake, and then put the necessary
electrical equipment up the hill in what was then a wooden
maintenance barn. President Sprout confirms this as the original
design. While the maintenance staff may have meant well, this
site would seem not only an engineering nightmare, but an
insurance hazard as well, for it included all of the elements
necessary for a disastrous fire: high voltage (in a wooden barn),
water and dry grass. This also left the tower reaching only 50
to 100 feet above average terrain, say both Michaels and Dr.
Emmis. (In fact, one memorable professor search featured Dr.
Emmis repeatedly pointing out the tower through adjacent trees
before the candidate could make it out). Considering the tower
itself was 330 feet long, if Dr. Emmis's calculations are even
modestly correct, the placement of the tower would seem an
unimaginable mistake, especially considering the annual barrage
of lightning strikes it has since taken near an area known for
tornadoes. What's more, CSU's student apartment complex was
later constructed on the land that borders the tower.
It is no small relief, then, that the maintenance staff
backed down on its plans to surround the tower with a lake. But
the tower was placed on the original, crater-like site that
ultimately did become a very dry grassland--especially after the
draughts of the 1980s. Worse, says Dr. Emmis, "The electrical
equipment for the tower costing thousands of dollars was
entrusted to a small, wooden yard barn worth a few hundred
dollars, not up the hill, but at greater risk right next to the
tower itself." In addition, says Dr. Emmis, there was no fencing
around the barn or the tower to prevent (or protect) intruders,
who later took to stealing tower lights, until the FCC ordered
the installation of a fence during WIWS's first week on the air.
As grass is so inclined, the grass on the site regularly grew to
a height of a few feet or more, the mowing of which summer
maintenance crews are on record for having repeatedly postponed
due to the unmanageability of the terrain. When crews did mow,
they cut a path only a few feet wide to allow minimal access to
the barn and tower, which the station's parttime engineer still
declined to visit because of tick infestation.
Dr. Emmis says several years later, the yard barn began
to slip down the hill--one of the "last straws" hastening his
exit to other employment--but maintenance did install concrete
blocks to retard the slippage. All of this was done without an
access road as well; visitors merely stopped their vehicles along
the road at the top of the hill and made the long walk down to
the tower. Today, corporate engineer Cliff Michaels says the
tower placement process was "a comedy of errors." And though he
is judicious about whom he tells, Dr. Emmis calls CSU's AM radio
and tower procedure, "a case study in mismanagement."
CSU's OTHER FM POSSIBILITIES
In the years after the disastrous storm of 1982, Linden
University's progressive FM station continued to expand its
listenership and support, while Dr. Emmis continued to seek out
FM possibilities. Perhaps Emmis's most viable prospect was the
license held by the local high school whose students operated
only a few hours a day during their school year, and even less,
if at all, during summer vacation. Dr. Emmis, who is a
twice-published author of media law texts, says that when he
tested the waters for taking over the license on bonafied legal
grounds, the publicity-conscious administration declined as it
had during the WWNN controversy, rather than risk coming off as
the heavy. So Dr. Emmis again sought to share time with the high
school station, at which the station's teacher-manager also
balked. What Dr. Emmis did negotiate was access to the high
school's FM frequency for CSU nighttime and weekend play-by-play
sportscasts, which continue today. Considering the national
recognition CSU's middle-division athletic teams earned in
ensusing years, this was a significant achievement.
When Dr. Emmis finally departed CSU in mid-1989, the
ensuing faculty manager, Andrew Boone, attempted to pick-up the
FM search where Dr. Emmis left off. But Boone was given only
false hope when the university's Washington-based media lawfirm
shockingly informed him in 1990 that an overlooked FM allocation
was available. When Boone inquired as to what the frequency was,
the attorney said he did not know and would call back with the
information. When Boone called him back, the attorney attempted
to persuade him that the "available" allocation was actually an
already existing FM station operating in Linden for years.
Boone then pursued a lead from the veteran engineer
servicing WCSU, who told him that the area's truly last available
FM allocation was under seige in a Washington, D.C. courtroom.
To Boone's surprise, Emmis's successor, Dr. Mel Solomon, got
President Sprout's approval to contact the judge in early 1991,
only to find that one of the original applicants had appealed the
judge's denial, effectively stalling the license for years.
In the years after Boone's departure, Dr. Solomon
generated overdue support for new video facilities at CSU. With
the addition of the advertising segment of the department created
partly on the basis of a proposal Boone had submitted, the
Communications Department at CSU is now the equivalent of the
second-largest college at the university. No further action has
been taken in pursuit of a FM license.
More than twelve years removed from the arguably
"win-win" situation of 1981, Dr. Harold Sprout says WCSU has been
"very positive as a laboratory" for CSU's radio-TV majors, some
of whom, like Stuart alumni, occupy media positions throughout
the country. "The university," says the president, "chose to
keep it more instructional and compliment the (city's) public
radio station." Evoking memories of Stuart's student-based
decisions, President Sprout also says using WCSU as a public
relations vehicle was something he "never pursued," (ironic in
light of the public relations tool WWNN might have been on the
CSU campus). But he also believes WCSU has the potential to be
more of a community service vehicle today as a talk radio station
for various experts, including CSU faculty.
CONCLUSIONS
What can academe learn from the experiences of Stuart
University and Central State University? It is possible to get
caught-up in each institution's episode and lose sight of the big
picture; perhaps that is some indication of the significance of
these accounts. But in fact, it is precisely because of the
impact of these episodes on their programs that academe's
response to events just such as these is critical to the fate of
hands-on telecommunications programs.
Stuart University's response began with this:
1. A SPECIFIC, APPLICABLE LONGTERM PLAN IS CRITICAL.
The most important lessons borne out by these schools'
experiences lie in the two administrations' different attitudes
toward long-term planning and the highly scrutinized decisions
that come with the territory. No doubt every educational
institution is concerned about favorable reviews from prospective
students, present students and the press, especially in the
present economic climate. Yet, in a major media market, Stuart
successfully sold a 50,000-watt, commercial FM frequency with
relatively little controversy and minimal need for damage
control. Why? Because the administration acted on a
well-conceived, long-range plan that had been germinating for
seven years. What the uninitiated may have seen as a greedy
transaction actually came after the rejection of wealthier offers
because the acquisition of another, more suitable station--as had
been planned--was not possible. When the arrival of television
made that unattainable trade-off irrelevant, Stuart acted and
gained what certainly seems to have been the best possible offer
under the market conditions of the day. Detractors can argue
that, luckily, an outsider initiated the eventual sale, or that
the $7.15-million price could just as easily have been $6-million
had Broadcast Metroplex not pulled its last-second stunt. Yet
when Metroplex did its about face, Stuart's response to the
infuriating turn of events was swift and productive, even if the
end result took painfully longer than planned. In addition, the
Radio-TV Department most wise in the ways of the media was
consulted and informed throughout the process.
In Linden's constricting, status quo environment, CSU had
in place the university-wide "Year 2000" plan, but there is no
evidence to suggest there were specific, hands-on policies for
dealing with the notoriously capital-intensive facets of an
electronic media program. Thus, while Stuart's top
administrators were intimately involved in Stuart's process,
CSU's department chair was put in the position of having to
conjure up support to adopt the FM station his own president
remembers as not even being available to CSU, despite the
contradictory testimonies of three other first-hand witnesses.
While CSU, then, never attempted to attain FM, the FM station
(and students) at the private, crosstown rival much like Stuart
University, ultimately flourished in critical acclaim and the
airplay of local retail establishments.
The FCC's duopoly decision that triggered the sale of
Stuart University's station was not an academic ruling. But how
many college administrations were ready and waiting with a useful
plan, and were prepared to act on it at a moment's notice, as
Stuart did with the Metroplex offer? Bad decisions are a part of
management, a part of life. But any successful manager will tell
you that good preparation makes up for a multitude sins. Or as
Blanchard and Johnson relate in The One Minute Manager, "A
problem...exists if there is a difference between what is
actually happening and what you desire to be happening."
Without its concrete, specific plan, Stuart University would have
had no particular "desire" to sell WKJA because it was the
commission's plan that initiated the idea. Without specifics at
CSU, an uninformed president did not know what to desire, and the
department that did was never consulted. King Solomon said it
hundreds of years B.C: "Where there is no vision, the people
perish. As Stuart and CSU bear out, so it may be said of
telecommunications programs more than 2000 years later.
As the two programs also indicate, Stuart President Dr.
Simon Brief said best:
2. ADMINISTRATIONS UNWILLING TO MAKE TOUGH
DECISIONS RISK KILLING PROGRAMS.
How often do two donated radio frequencies fall into the
lap of a university telecommunications department? As CSU now
knows, it doesn't happen often, and while playing it safe with
the AM station did not "kill" its program, the CSU administration
likely did bury any hope of obtaining a FM frequency or otherwise
advancing the program without the advent of costly new
technology.
Has CSU's low-risk, AM radio decision benefitted students
who have had no other on-air facility? Yes. But stopping there
is equivalent to Stuart neglecting to sell WKJA and forfeiting
both the $7.15-million dollar's worth of capital gains, and the
greater intangible gains, that resulted. After all, CSU had an
AM frequency in its possession. And too, there was always the
overlooked possibility that CSU might have adopted both the AM
frequency and the FM frequency (whatever sequence of events one
believes). For its administration to have at least pursued the
possibility of adopting WWNN-FM involved nowhere near the risk of
Stuart selling its established, 50,000 watt NPR affiliate.
Perhaps the dawn of digital technology will place CSU's program
on an even playing surface--twenty or thirty years after
committing to AM radio.
And while CSU's may not be a "dead" program, there are
some telling signs. All three members of the 1989 CSU Radio-TV
Department, including the chair, left within a year-and-a-half of
each other. The spanking new advertising major that Dr. Mel
Solomon asked Boone to initiate, exceeded RTV in number of majors
in its second year of existence. Refusing to waste more time on
the dormant radio phase of his program, Dr. Solomon did as Dr.
Envoy did with Stuart's newly inherited finances, investing in
the booming video area of the field. And neither Dr. Emmis,
Boone, or Boone's successor has ever received comment from
President Sprout regarding student miscues or anything else on
"U-99." While that is the kind of non-interference many station
managers long for, it's also a time span of fifteen years. Says
the renowned management consultant, Peter Drucker, "Executives
who do not make the effort to get their people decisions right do
more than risk poor performance. They risk losing their
organizations' respect." One need only harvest the
disappontment of "U-99's" student staff to understand the
demoralizing effect the administration's decisions and
disinterest have had on generations of CSU Radio-TV majors. In
fact, it was Dr. Solomon who applauded Boone's city-wide
billboard campaign expressly for its morale-boosting impact on
the student staff. Maybe "killed" in Dr. Brief's terms is a
relative thing.
A natural follow-up to this point can not be overlooked:
3. ACADEMIC ADMINISTRATORS MUST KNOW HOW TO TAKE RISKS.
When pondering CSU's situation, it would
certainly appear that the reaction its administration feared from
a certain "public" (WWNN's board), the potential negative
publicity from its own unattempted rescue, and its status quo
philosophy, undercut its actions from the start. Clearly CSU's
administration shunned the risky road. Not that the tower
debacle or Grife's "walk before you run" insistence on AM helped.
However, uninformed administrators must have the fortitude, the
sensitivity, or both, to know when to stick their noses out of
the water or lay low and come up for air when no one will shoot.
Thus, a true risk-taker, then, isn't someone simply determined or
carefree enough to take risks. That can actually be foolish.
The real risk-taker is the one who knows just how far to walk the
plank without going too far. That takes courage, skill and
experience, which helps explain why all "qualified
administrators" are not necessarily skilled risk-takers. CSU's
cautious president may have been a skilled diplomat. He may have
been deft in avoiding unnecessary conflict. But he obviously
lacked the ability to be a risk-taker. And unlike Stuart's
administration, he declined the help of the experts in the field
to compensate for his lackings.
Is there no place for caution in the art of risk-taking?
Certainly caution, in itself, is not negative. But it is
negative when used as a defensive substitute for the high-level
skills needed to deal with public outcry, or worse, to deal with
the temptation to react to potential outcry that may never come
to pass but may motivate an unprofessional reaction. The old
comic strip Pogo popularized the adage, "We have seen the enemy
and he is us." This made be said of those modern-day
telecommunications programs whose administrations take foolish
risks or none at all, and then are hardly prepared for the
onslaught of public opinion that follows, let alone the disfavor
of its own telecommunications department. Is it any wonder,
then, why it often comes down to "Them" versus "Us"?
Finally:
4. ACADEMIC ADMINISTRATIONS MUST PREPARE FOR
THE FOLLOW-UP TO THEIR DECISIONS.
Follow-up is the stuff of which professionalism,
corporate ladder-climbing, and ultimately, whole careers are
made. Haven't we all, at some point in our careers, grimaced
when asked a second or third time by a superior, "Did you
remember to...?" Or how many of us have been impressed by
professionals who did more than was asked of them, finding a new
way to meet an old need that always slipped between the cracks?
Why is it, then, that top administrators often fail to realize
that making difficult decisions is usually not the end of the
task, but safeguarding the perception of the decision is?
In the case of the sale of WKJA, there was no significant
public relations follow-up by Stuart's publicity personnel, and
therefore, no grand announcement or warm reception for the
benefits the sale brought Stuart's students--the goal of the
entire process. In fact, when the new equipment began to arrive
in June (a testimony to the resilience of a weary department),
the ever-present ringing of the phones was the only noticeable
evidence that a major transaction had occurred just a month
before. And by the time the eagerly awaited remote truck arrived
in August, it was a foregone conclusion that no legitimate public
relations campaign would toot the truck's horn, so to speak.
The error seems to cross three boundaries. First, with
all of the pressure that comes with such costly,
capital-intensive and public decisions, it is easy for those
removed from the impact of their actions to put it behind them
once they've made their decisions: out of sight, out of mind. In
Stuart's case, WKJA was literally removed from the
administration--in its off-campus location. Second, the demands
of Stuart's television station were also beckoning, with funding
and programming needs, as well as the pending cable-broadcast
wars, all on the immediate horizon. It was easy (and necessary)
to forget about WKJA. And third, contrary to Stuart's philosophy
during the sales process, administrators unwittingly left their
"communication experts"--the Radio-TV Department--out of the loop
by leaving the post-publicity to the centralized department
responsible for it. This is not to denounce the attributes of
centralized information centers. It is to say the follow-up was
apparently not done, or done meekly, while a telecommunications
department was left out of a process it could have enhanced.
PARTING THOUGHTS
It can not be assumed that modern-day telecommunications
programs serve no purpose without an abundance of
state-of-the-art equipment. The point is not AM or FM, DAB or
DBS. It is this:
if an administration is going to commit to a relevant, hands-on
telecommunications program, then it commits to weighing risks and
siezing every opportunity to maintain and improve that program
whenever worthwhile opportunities are possible. It sounds so
fundamental, but the cases of Stuart University, and especially
Central State, prove it isn't.
This was a question posed by one privy to the schools'
two stories, and it seems a fair one: If Stuart went on to sell
its FM radio station, why should CSU have wasted its time and
money on a FM station? After all, they both ended up with some
form of "student" station, WCSU-AM and Stuart's SAP station.
One answer lies in the inherent benefit of the FM
signal Dr. Emmis accused President Sprout of not understanding.
Colleges and universities teach young adults, and if young adults
are drawn to any part of the radio dial, it is FM. Though talk
radio, largely the domain of the AM band, is drawing increasing
numbers of younger listeners, it is still a desperate second to
FM among the typical college-age student. Therefore, college
students are far more drawn to FM as their vehicle for
instruction.
Hand-in-hand with that argument is the fact that more
overall listeners tune to the FM band, again despite talk radio.
Therefore, student broadcasters have more of an audience and
thus, more of the occupational pressure to perform
professionally. Just telling students, "This is on the air,"
when they know there's a significant--not token--audience,
produces the tell-tale tension and arched eyebrows that prove
this point. Yes, many newly hired graduates perform in small
markets with small audiences. But it's far easier for students
to gear down to that experience than to suddenly gear up for the
greater pressure of the large-market audience if universities
haven't done their jobs preparing them in the first place.
And finally, Stuart didn't give up radio and it preferred
not to dispose of its FM station. But after years of benefitting
students, Stuart had the FM station to sell when the station
could do more good gone than continuing a process of dwindling
returns. As pointed out earlier, no one is saying WCSU didn't in
some way serve its students. But CSU could not hope to gain the
magnitude of Stuart's benefits from the sale of its AM facility,
even if it wanted to sell it. But that would not be true if CSU
owned WWNN.
In the final analysis, the academicians with the
expertise to handle the risk and public reaction of a genuinely
daring admini-strative act rewarded their telecommunications
students in ways that less-willing or able administrators may not
be able to reach for years. In so doing, they benefitted
hundreds, perhaps thousands of students who will use the poise
and diversity of skills the media demand in countless other
areas. And isn't preparing students for the rest of their lives
the whole point of academic programs?
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