KFUO/LCMS: Who filed Monday’s petitions?
Due to space considerations, some information about the “Petitions to Deny” the license transfer of KFUO-99.1 FM from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod to Gateway Creative Broadcasting - which were filed with the Federal Communications Commission late Monday afternoon - had to be omitted from the story in today’s Post-Dispatch.
In response to reader inquiries, I’m putting the most relevant passages here:
“The petitions are not lawsuits. Sources within the groups fighting the sale of the station said that separate lawsuits on other grounds might still be forthcoming.
“One group of petitioners, the Committee to Save KFUO-FM, is made up of local members of the LCMS. It’s led by Robert H. Duesenberg, retired vice president and general counsel at General Dynamics, and includes several professors and a half-dozen Lutheran pastors.
“The other, the Radio Arts Foundation, a new not-for-profit entity formed around the core of the old Radio Arts Board, which raised more than $800,000 to support classical music on KFUO and sought to buy the station from the LCMS. Its leaders include Regional Arts Commission chairman Donna Wilkinson, Robert Archibald and Noemi Neidorff. …
“…There are two petitions, said Duesenberg, in order to represent the interests of the two groups of supporters. “I wanted to have a petition filed by an association that was comprised exclusively by members of the LCMS,” he said. The Committee additionally cited programmatic issues, including broadcasts of church services and Bach at the Sem concerts.”
The lawyer for Gateway (aka Joy FM), A. Wray Fitch, declined to comment until he’d seen the petitions. Sandi Brown, Joy FM’s manager, and Kermit Brashear, spokesman for the LCMS on this issue, have not responded to requests for comment.
Here are the names of the signers of the Committee to Save KFUO-FM.
There wasn’t space to list everyone on either committee in the news story, of course - but now some conspiracy-minded MoSyn readers are asking why there’s a “secret committee” of Lutherans opposing the sale. There’s no secrecy, and no cause for paranoia; everything on the petitions submitted to the FCC is a matter of public record.
Besides Robert H. Duesenberg, the signers are Gary W. Weber, Robert Bergt (of “Bach at the Sem” fame), Brandt C. Klawitter, John D. Obermann, Donita C. Obermann, the Rev. King Schoenfeld, Mark E. Ruff, Roger O. Ruff, David R. Boisclair, Deanna Schoenfeld, Joan Bergt, Lorraine Duesenberg, C.L. Bischoff, Mark Laverty, and Gregg Dippold.
I was pleased to read Sarah’s article on the pending petitions and will try to do whatever I can to save our station.
I tried, in vain, to contact the board members both by e-mail and by phone with no success. I don’t feel that we can afford to lose this valuable asset of our community without doing everything legally that is availiable to us. Please find the time to join in with all of us!
Interesting bit of double-standardness (read: hypocrisy) on the part of MoSyn people who are asking about a “secret committee of Lutherans” who oppose the sale, given that they clearly had no problems with the secretiveness with which Kermit Brashear conducted the sale of KFUO-FM away from any sort of public scrutiny and open bidding.