TALK RADIO WRNI imbroglio sparks more questions BY IAN DONNIS

When WBUR general manager Jane Christo revealed plans on Friday, September 17, to put Providence-based WRNI (1290 AM) for sale on the next business day, the abrupt announcement suggested that quickly divesting the station was a priority. Expressions of concern from Governor Donald L. Carcieri and Attorney General Patrick Lynch this week led Aram V. Chobanian, Boston University’s interim president, to put the brakes on the transaction (BU holds the licenses for the two stations). But if Rhode Islanders — who raised more than $3 million to make WRNI a reality — are less concerned about the precipitous demise of their six-year-old public radio station, they continue to have plenty of questions about the situation.

Critics, for example, want Christo to square her stated rationale in offering WRNI for sale (the station has matured to the point where it should be taken over by local community concerns) with less than stellar financial indicators (’RNI ran deficits of $9.4 million over its first five years, as the Providence Journal reported last week). They wonder how broadcasting infrastructure acquired with the help of local donations can be offered for sale, possibly to a for-profit company. Since Tom Ashbrook, the host of WBUR’s On Point, was paid $135,000 by the WRNI Foundation in fiscal 2002, observers even question the underlying numbers.

As Gene Mihaly, the president of the Foundation for Ocean State Radio, which helped to bring WRNI to Rhode Island in 1998, puts it, "We’ve never seen the books, so we really don’t know how much has been spent on what. We want to see the books. We want to see the numbers. Those of us who have watched WBUR from the middle distance — not from afar, but not from within — have come to conclude that this is a very lavishly run administrative apparatus [with] a lot of money on the administrative side, as opposed to the program side."

Speaking of the 990 tax documents filed by WRNI, "I have questions whether those numbers are accurate," Mihaly says. "If Tom [Ashbrook’s] salary was put on the WRNI side of the ledger, I would say it is just another reason for questioning the amounts attributed to WRNI . . . How things were allocated between the two stations, I have no way of knowing."

Will Keyser, an outside spokesman for WBUR, says Boston University lost more than $9 million on WRNI — a greater sum than even the combined $3 million in community donations and $2.4 million used by WBUR to buy WRCP and WERI in Westerly in the late ’90s. "It’s laughable for anyone to look at the public record and say that that $3 million went to Boston, because $9 million came from Boston," he says. "The indisputable facts are that the WBUR group committed a sum of funds in growing WRNI that far exceeded the support provided by the community. Those are the indisputable facts laid out in the public filings."

Keyser attributed WRNI’s losses to the cost of infrastructure, the bursting of the dot-com bubble, and declines in underwriting and listener donations after 9/11. Ashbrook’s salary was paid through WRNI for one year he says, since Special Coverage, the first program he hosted, was "a WRNI program," even though it did not originate from Providence.

Keyser says that filings to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — showing that WBUR ran almost $5 million in the red from fiscal 1993 to 2003 — are exaggerated, in part because they require the disclosure of all expenses without allowing an opportunity to disclose all of an organization’s revenue. As a result, he says, "You get an inaccurate picture." Keyser says he would discuss the filings in greater detail after satisfying requests for information from Lynch’s office.

Although he called Christo’s initial handling of the WRNI sale "at least from a citizen perspective, a case study in bad faith," Lynch says he is taking a wait-and-see attitude until his office receives and reviews an expected raft of documentation related to the public radio station. "We have time to analyze it," he says. "With Boston University’s assurance that it is not going to proceed [with the sale], it allows all of us to step back."

Mihaly and other WRNI backers have been meeting to discuss possible prospects for the station’s future under different management.

Meanwhile, as WRNI continues to operate with minimal staffing, disgruntled small donors have received a courteous letter from Christo, citing the station’s growing listenership, increased signal strength, journalistic accolades, and other accomplishments. It’s quite a contrast to how, as one former staffer told once an acquaintance, "Dealing with WBUR, even though it’s public radio, make US Steel look warm and fuzzy."