University
of the South, located in Sewanee, Tennessee, used to own a radio station. That
changed on December 24, 2019 when university administrators mailed the station
license back to the FCC.
Since
the university was on holiday break, most students first heard about the
giveaway of the license when they returned to campus in January 2020. According to reports in
student newspaper, The Purple, students
were shocked by the news and there was little interest in the streaming
station.
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| Emily Cate in happier times |
WUTS
station manager, Emily Cate, told The
Purple:
“We’re losing our
license, what happened? Now it’s gone. There’s no way we can ever be 91.3 FM
ever again, and that’s honestly heartbreaking.”
WUTS
had been on the air since 1972.
Sewanee is a small town with a population
around 2,500 people. It is located in a rural area approximately 120 miles
southeast of Nashville.
WUTS was the only station of its type in the region.
In
early February, the university distributed a press release that tried to put a
smiley-face by saying that WUTS will become a streaming audio channel.
The
university’s stated reason for giving back WUTS' license was a mounting stack of pending FCC
Fines that totaled over $100,000. The university’s rationale was “if we give back
the license, then we don’t have to pay the fines.” This may or not be true.
The
actual reason why the license was given away is flawed oversight by university
management. For instance, the leaders of the university were not aware that compliance
with FCC rules requires the licensee to have a Public Inspection file.
University
of the South turned such matters over to the student staff. According to Cate,
the WUTS staff found out that they were responsible for the Public File at the beginning
of the academic year in September 2019.
Cate
told The Purple [link] that the
university created an atmosphere of confusion in the months prior to giving away WUTS' license.
Assistant
manager KT Pritchard described what happened in The Purple:
“No one was really looking out for the
station. We were talking with our ‘liaison’ to the FCC, and he explained to us
that we need to start getting a public file in order, but we didn’t really know
how to do that.”
“It was suggested to us
that we forge public documents [to create a public file], but we didn’t feel
comfortable because that’s a federal crime.”
On the other hand, we forget that most universities are facing some serious economic trouble. Class sizes are about to shrink dramatically due to a coming demographic crunch and belts must be tightened. Add to that that many smaller campus radio stations are having trouble attracting students- over the air radio no longer has the cool factor cache it once did and few students even have AM/FM radios in the dorm room anymore.
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