Dark horse wins
long
to-do list
in Baltimore
How does Marc Steiner feel now that his Maryland Public Radio Corp., hatched just seven months ago, will own and operate Baltimore's WJHU-FM?
"Be careful what you wish for," he says, unleashing one of his loud and ready laughs.
Steiner's work to secure local ownership for WJHU — and patch together the needed $5 million from contributions and a bank loan — has not diminished his sense of humor. That's good. He'll need it to realize his lofty dreams for the station.
Maryland Public Radio, which Steiner leads as president, will not own WJHU until the FCC approves the transfer of its license from Johns Hopkins University. That will probably take a few months, but he and his staff are busy planning already.
For one, they will have to upgrade WJHU's dated equipment and broaden its weak 10,000-watt signal. Steiner's bigger challenge, though, lies in reinventing WJHU, which weathered ups and downs under its former ownership by the university. Steiner wants to expand its local programming, start a news department, diversify his staff and free its "creative juices," he says.
This will all take more money, so Steiner intends to learn how to keep WJHU's integrity intact while boosting its underwriting and fundraising.
He admits that nothing in his long, varied career has demanded so much of him. Since 1993 he has hosted and executive-produced a weekdaily talk show on WJHU, and before that he worked as counselor, ad man, therapist, truck driver and civil rights activist, among other things — all a far cry from running a radio station.
"Raising money really makes you much more sensitive to the difficulties of building something," he says. "I've learned that very abruptly and very quickly."
From the start, Steiner's corporation was a dark horse in the competition for WJHU. The university began moving toward selling in March, when it halted a search for a general manager after seven months.
That raised flags for Steiner, who immediately suspected Hopkins was about to sell. "I really wanted to keep this locally controlled, as a community station," he says. So he met with the university's vice president and other officials to announce his intentions to buy the station.
"We weren't taken very seriously at that moment," Steiner says. "A public radio talk show host says he wants to buy the station?" He laughs again. "Good luck!"
Major pubcasters that showed interest all had deeper pockets and far more experience running stations than Maryland Public Radio. They were WBUR in Boston; WAMU in Washington, D.C.; Maryland PTV; and American Public Media Group, the parent of Minnesota Public Radio and its California sister, KPCC in Pasadena.
Of course, it helped Steiner that in the end the two competitors who made the first cut, WBUR and WAMU, did not move to the final round of bidding. WAMU was unwilling to invest what it would take to maintain and expand WJHU's local programs, and WBUR executives said they didn't have enough time to plan a formal bid. But Steiner's group still had to find the money to buy the station, and prove it could keep it afloat.
"They were the answer to all the criteria that we set at the beginning of the process," says Hopkins spokesman Dennis O'Shea. He says the university wanted a buyer who would keep WJHU's news/talk format, strengthen its local programming and commit to making necessary capital investments.
All those elements are on Steiner's to-do list. He's determined to start a news department and turn the station into an incubator for new local programs. He says the station's 13 staff members, as well as Baltimore residents, are eager to test ideas and pilot shows. NPR may still follow through on a deal it proposed in May and partner with WJHU to pilot shows on the station, promote it with a co-branding ad campaign and involve it in training and internship programs.
Steiner also wants to add more people of color and twenty- and thirty-somethings to the station's staff. Diversifying "is the only way we have to go as a public radio system," he says. "If we're going to connect with the future of this country, we've got a lot of changing to do."
Steiner will be what he calls "lord of programming," overseeing a program director and news director and guiding the creation of new programs. Anthony Brandon, a Baltimore resident who owns commercial radio stations in the West, will serve as part-time g.m. Brandon is also v.p. of Maryland Public Radio. WJHU Marketing Director Martha Rudzki is secretary and treasurer.
Equipment and facilities pose their own problems. WJHU signed on 15 years ago and is still using much of its original equipment, O'Shea says.
The station would also benefit from a greater reach throughout Maryland. Steiner intends to boost WJHU's 10,000-watt signal to 15,500 watts, but that's the highest power the FCC will give it. Maryland Public Radio is negotiating to acquire a couple of other frequencies in the state by using grants, underwriting and loans from banks. Steiner would not say where the frequencies are located.
"It's a complex financial picture, but one that's not going to cost us too much as a corporation," he says.
This all seems possible to Maryland Public Radio now that WJHU is freed from Hopkins. This is not the first time the school had questioned its role as a broadcaster. In the early '90s it cut the station's budget and tried to sell it, but that didn't work out.
More recently, say staffers, Hopkins' bureaucracy slowed down the station, and Steiner says the university discouraged the station from competing against it for support from foundations and corporations.
Rudzki expects WJHU's new independence to ease fundraising. Having a simpler bureaucracy will simplify applying for grants, and she cites other cases in which more listeners have pledged more money to public radio stations that broke from large institutions.
Steiner also says past managers lacked spirit. "There's been a fear of taking leaps and being more entrepreneurial, more aggressive and creative in the programming you want to create," he says.
That will change if Steiner's group can sustain its momentum.
"We all see potential in the station, and we're finally going to get to realize that potential," Rudzki says. "Hopkins certainly helped us to get onto the highway, but, for whatever reason, couldn't afford to put the gas in the car. We're now able to put the gas in the car."
Hopkins agrees to sell WJHU to community group
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has agreed to sell its public radio station WJHU to Maryland Public Radio Corp. (MPRC), a community group led by station employees.
The station sold for $5 million, but the money will not change hands for several months, when the FCC approves the transfer of the station's license.
The president of MPRC is Marc Steiner, who hosts a talk show on WJHU, and the group also appointed Baltimore resident Anthony Brandon to manage the station. Brandon is president of American General Media, which owns 47 radio stations in Colorado, California and New Mexico. MPRC also announced a group of nine advisors.
Web page posted Feb. 22, 2008
Copyright 2007 by Current LLC