By Michael Bentley
In early December Plowshare’s Public Information Committee (formerly the Democracy Now! Committee), in its campaign to improve WVTF-FM public radio news, won a long sought after ruling by the Office of the Inspector General of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Our campaign, now in its 3rd year, welcomed this ruling. It came in response to a complaint that we filed with the CPB on October 15, 2010. The Inspector General now has ruled that since WVTF is indeed owned by a private organization, the VT Foundation, WVTF is required to have a community advisory board (CAB), that is constituted and functions according to guidelines in the Communications Act.
Both Station General Manager Gleixner and his superior at Virginia Tech, Larry Hincker, repeatedly have told us that WVTF is not required to have a CAB – we have this on audiotape. Hence we were surprised to learn from the Inspector General that Mr. Gleixner claimed that their Friends Council (FC) is really a CAB. We know however that the FC is not a CAB, for, in part, its members are not representative of the listeners and, since its sole purview is fund raising, it doesn’t cover the scope of a proper CAB. We have followed-up by reporting this to the Counsel for the Inspector General’s. We learned that in part because of our complaint, the CPB will conduct a full audit of WVTF next spring.
Our Committee has been represented at all three FC meetings and we have not abandoned our original effort to bring Amy Goodman’s award-winning news rogram, Democracy Now! to WVTF. However, we are now attempting to arrange a meeting with Blue Ridge Public Television to ask them to consider broadcasting the program.
The next WVTF Art Open House events will be held at the studios off Franklin Rd. on the third Friday of the month from 5:00-7:00 pm. Please join us at 4:45 pm at the entrance on Kingsbury Lane. We will leaflet about an hour. We would appreciate also if you would email or write to the station to indicate your support for establishing a proper Community Advisory Board and for airing Democracy Now!. Please ask to have your correspondence placed in the station’s “public file” and also send a copy to Plowshare at plowshare@plowshareva.org. Here is the address:
Mr. Glenn Gleixner, General Manager, WVTF-FM Radio
3520 Kingsbury, Roanoke, VA. 24014
E-mail: geg@vt.edu
Democracy Now! offers both domestic and international news and in-depth analysis and is aired on more than 850 stations, including over 50 NPR-affiliates. WVTF now covers nearly two-thirds of Virginia and we believe its listeners would welcome this kind of programming, which would boost WVTF’s appeal to a younger, news-hungry audience. You can listen in and/or read program transcripts at http://www.democracynow.org/. Our Committee welcomes you to join us at the next WVTF Artist Open House.
