FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT OF KHSU’S MASS FIRINGS• MORE 1999 RATINGS COMPARISONS

KHSU's mass firings in progress

(pic by Kevin Hoover Mad River Union)

There was a witness to last Thursday’s (4/11) mass purge of employees and volunteers at KHSU on the campus of Humboldt State University (HSU) in Arcata, California. 

A local newspaper – The Mad River Union – exclusively published [link] notes made by station volunteer Ryan Lee.

Lee happened to be in the building using a production studio, and listened in on what transpired. (Scroll down to read Lee’s verbatim notes.)

Craig Wruck

Lee’s account of meeting underscores that planning for the mass terminations had been going on for months. It also shows the major role played by HSU VP for Advancement Craig Wruck. Some people feel that Wruck’s motive was revenge, stemming from over a year of grief he received dealing with fallout from the firing of Katie Whiteside. 

Near the end of the meeting, Lee put a small portion of termination actions on the air. He was then discovered and expelled from the building.

What follows is Lee’s “log” of what he saw and heard. Lee typed much of the note in lower case letters. The Mad River Union published Lee’s account of the events without corrections and with vulgarities. We are publishing it “as is.”

‘

Verbatim notes by Ryan Lee

April 11, 2019:

happened to be in the khsu studios this morning when a staff meeting was held in the feuerworker building…present for the meeting were vp of advancement craig wruck, hsu HR man David Montoya, an unidentified armed campus officer , jessica eden, lorna bryant and jeff demark…no one noticed i was there so i was able to listen in to what went down…

the meeting started with wruck saying that the university is still committed to community radio, and then telling jess, lorna and jeff that they had been terminated, along with 2 other paid staff, citing diminished funding as the reason for the changes…

jeff noted the station needs to have 5 paid employees to meet regs...

peter fretewell was absent as he has been for most of his tenure as khsu general manager…

jeff noted that most of the fiscal shortfall was due to mis-management a and the chaos in and around the station since fretwell’s arrival, saying the firing of katie whiesdie had cost the station around $80,000…and he noted that the advancement department's bad investments of khsu money had also been a big hit to the bottom line…

wruck also stated that most if not all volunteers were “terminated” also…terminted staff and volunteers have been locked out of the studios, and staff needs an escort to enter wagner house…

it was all very corporate, cold and calculating in a manner that lorna noted mirrored what was going on with the lardass administration…

jeff brought up the recently ended pledge drive, saying that because they had been lied to by upper management, that any funds received in the recent fund drive should be returned, because they were obtained under false pretenses…jess agreed there is no way khsu should keep that money…

queried about plans for the future, wruck had no answers…he stammered and said “i don’t know" a lot…it is up in the air as to what will happen to programming, and when pressed on it, did say they had been getting syndicated shows ready for a couple of months already…so much for transparency…

wruck said maybe they would partner up with some other folks but no details…

jeff  said he feels duped…and disappointed…

jess said the dishonesty by management has been really disappointing and that she feels, after talking to two of the auditors the other day, that there is a lot of dishonesty in the audit report too…

she also noted how many good people were working at khsu, and how much good energy and time they have put into khsu to put out excellent programming in good faith…and added a "bad legacy”…

jeff said that fretwell said a year ago things were going to get a lot worse before they got better…and that at the time, he felt that fretwell would tear the place down…

jess pointed out to wruck that he was the source of most of bad decisions/change/problems…

lorna openly challenged wruck and said he had never issued a public apology to her as he said he would…wruck made some kind of bs apology…

jeff said ”this will not play well in the community...

wruck handed out final checks…

dronkers is gone too as far as programming is concerned...

then he noticed me and said who are you? i said i was a volunteer and i was there as security for the staff, as they had previously been abused by the management…i was told to leave, it was a private staff meeting…

so another clusterfuck by hsu administration, as always, out of touch with the community

HELP SPARK NEWS PLAN FOR THE FUTURE Please take our Reader Survey https://forms.gle/npJmHB9r2ZhkrnhQ9

THREE MORE COMPARISONS OF RATINGS DATA FROM SPRING 1999

We continue to receive reader requests for more 20-year comparisons from Spring 1999 and current surveys. Today we have three markets where Diary methodology was used by Arbitron in 1999 and Fall 2018. So, these comparisons are “apples to apples.”

Two Oklahoma markets show the major increases of weekly listeners to NPR News stations over the past two decades.

In Oklahoma City, both KGOU and KOSU have increased their estimated weekly listeners by large percentages since Fall 2018. 

At that time KGOU had much better coverage of the OKC metro area. In recent years KOSU has built repeaters and translators to provide more extensive coverage of the city.

Tulsa is 100-miles northwest of OKC on the Oklahoma Turnpike. 

The estimated number of weekly listeners to KOSU in Tulsa have gone up but not as much as they did in OKC.   

Now 24/7 NPR News/Talk KWGS is by far the news leader in the market.

Around 10 years ago KWGS became all news/talk when the licensee purchased a station, KTWU, and moved Classical music to that station.

Note that KRPS from Pittsburg, Kansas, also reached listeners in the Tulsa area in 1999.

KLCC has been in competition for listeners with repeaters of KOPB, Portland for many years. 

It is clear now that KLCC has the upper hand in Eugene.

KOPB gave KLCC a major scare in the late 2000s when they added a full-time repeater, KOPB-AM. 

KOPB’s new local presence caused KLCC to cancel its music programming and switch to NPR News/Talk full-time.

Two other stations that are still factors in Eugene today appeared in the book in Spring 1999. KWAX is probably still doing fine with Classical music. KRVM-FM still rocks the Oregon Ducks day and night.