WLIU going up for sale after 20 years
Long Island may lose its only NPR affiliate
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Citing some $1 million in annual budget deficits, Long Island University is hoping to sell its radio station, WLIU 88.3 FM -- Long Island's only National Public Radio affiliate -- by October.
But there may be hope for East Enders who have enjoyed WLIU's local news, commentary and self-generated entertainment programming for over 20 years.
Wally Smith, the head of LIU's Public Radio Network, which includes a station in Nassau County, is spearheading an effort to save the station and its 14 full-time employees.
Mr. Smith is forming a nonprofit group, called Peconic Public Broadcasting, with the expectation that it will bid on the station's license and equipment when it all goes up for sale soon.
And early fundraising efforts have proven successful, Mr. Smith said.
"We're very optimistic," he said this week. "We're feeling very, very positive that we can make this work and keep this thing in the hands of people on the East End."
"Once [the nonprofit] is in place, we'll establish a trust fund, so that people could actually make investments in the station and have the money protected until it's clear that we'll be able to actually be in business," he said, "or they'll get it back."
The lease on WLIU headquarters in Southampton is scheduled to expire on Oct. 3, about the same time the university is expecting to end its involvement with the station.
"[This decision] certainly wasn't a no-brainer," said Robert Altholz, the university's vice president for finance and treasurer. "We have been thinking about this, thinking about whether there were any other alternatives, roughly for over the last year or so."
And he said the decision had nothing to do with the university leaving the East End in 2005.
It was strictly a financial move.
"It's not a function that the campus has no presence out in Southampton anymore," he said. "If the radio station, which provides just wonderful programming and represents the university so well, could have sustained itself at break-even, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing now."
A sale of the station would likely result in it being used as a "repeater" to re-broadcast another station's programming, with the engine behind it -- and his and others' jobs -- being dissolved, Mr. Smith predicted.
And if the university can't sell by this fall?
"The station would go dark," Mr. Smith said. "I and others who are interested will work very hard not to let that happen."
mwhite@timesreview.com
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