[BC] LPFM Operations

[Glen Kippel]

On 9/6/06, Rich Wood <richwood at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> What are they "underwriting?" If you underwrite a show on NPR you
> don't get to determine the show's content. In this case it's a
> hellfire and brimstone preacher paying for an infomercial which he
> creates. I believe that would qualify as commercial time.
>
> -----------------


IWSTM that you are correct.  KHCS has about a dozen business supporters, who
each get one or two 15-second announcements daily ... just identifying the
business, the nature of the business, and a phone number.  Well within FCC
guidelines.  There was one Person of Gender who kept sending letters calling
us liars for saying the station was non-commercial but she kept hearing
"commercials."  Never mind that most of them were PSAs.  There is that
drawback to doing any sort of business-support announcements.

For awhile, we aired a program that was sponsored by a local jeweler.
Eventually the program was dropped, partially because I got tired of keeping
a record of that (sponsorship) for FCC purposes.  After that, whenever
anybody asked for a sponsorship I would tell them that we don't do that, but
we maybe could do an adjacency.  Perhaps.  If the time is not already
taken.

And whenever anyone would ask how much it cost to be on the station, I would
tell them it was either free or an infinite amount of money, depending on
the purpose and quality of the program and whether or not it fit within our
programming requirements.  I would tell them to get me a demo and that would
usually be the last I would hear from them.  I absolutely would not permit
any schlock on the station, and no local preachers made the cut.  Anybody
who wanted to hear them could just jolly well hop in their car and go to
their church.  And if I decided that they just wanted to be on the air to
promote their church instead of promoting Jesus, I would tell them we would
run PSAs for their special events (special speakers, concerts, etc) and
that's all.  Have a nice day.

Oh well, that's over now, anyway...

GK