AMAZING PUBLIC RADIO SCAM: PAYOLA, FRAUD & GREED

I became General Manager at KCSN-FM, Northridge – in LA’s San Fernando Valley – in July 1989.  Several KCSN folks told me told there was a major scam at the station in previous years.  One day I heard an underwriting credit on the air for “West Valley Mini Storage.”

I thought I knew every underwriter on the station but I’d never heard of “West Valley Mini Storage.”  I asked a station old-timer and learned the station traded announcements for a storage locker for “old files.”

I visited the storage locker and it contained dozens of banker boxes filled with receipts and documents – all the paperwork from an audit by CPB detailing the scam. Here is the story: