Shelter Island Reporter

There's little more than a month left to save Long Island's only NPR station. 


If $527,000 is not raised by August 31, Peconic Public Broadcasting will lose its opportunity to acquire what has been WLIU. Then Long Island University could turn around and offer what has been its station to others.


“We're hopeful and optimistic that people on the East End want the radio station to be here and we believe that the support is here even in the face of a difficult economic climate,” says Wally Smith, long-time general manager of WLIU.


It would be a shame if the Peconic Public Broadcasting deal cannot go through.


Dr. Smith and the team seeking to preserve WLIU have been working very hard at fundraising. And now is the crunch time.


The crisis for WLIU was triggered last summer when Long Island University, which earlier closed its Southampton College campus where the station was based, decided to put WLIU's valuable slot on the radio dial up for sale.


That led to the creation by citizens here of Peconic Public Broadcasting, a non-profit entity ultimately chosen by the university as the purchaser of WLIU, predicated on its coming up with a purchase price of $850,000. Originally, that was to be by June 30; that was later extended to a hard deadline of August 31.


So far somewhat more than $300,000 has been raised.


With the warm weather and more people on eastern Long Island -- many of whom join year-rounders as ardent listeners of WLIU -- the fundraising has been getting better, said Dr. Smith last week. He had just received a $10,000 contribution from a North Fork listener. He emphasized that Peconic Public Broadcasting is looking for contributions small and large.


They can be made online through peconicpublicbroadcasting.org; by mail to: Peconic Public Broadcasting, 71 Hill Street, Southampton, NY 11968; or by phone by calling Liz Lattanzio, development director, at (631) 591-7003.


A hurdle for Peconic Public Broadcasting was the decision by Stony Brook University this spring ordering the station to move out of the studios on the campus, which it had acquired from Long Island University and renamed Stony Brook Southampton. It was an outrageous decision considering the same Stony Brook administrators several weeks later decided to all but close Stony Brook Southampton. 


The WLIU studios were gutted, with some $200,000 of “some of the best acoustical material available” thrown into a dumpster, notes Dr. Smith. 


Meanwhile, new studios were set up at 71 Hill Street in Southampton.


“They're actually fine,” said Dr. Smith. “It's much more informal. It has changed the psyche of the staff being here on street level in the village. It's not unusual for people to walk in and say hello. The mailman comes in and [program host] Bonnie [Grice] says hello to him on the air. We feel a bond with the community that we didn't when we were isolated in that gorgeous facility on the second floor of the campus. We didn't realize how separated we were from the ground on which everybody walks and works.”


A problem that has affected fundraising is that appeals cannot be made on WLIU's air for capital funds for Peconic Public Broadcasting because WLIU is still owned by LIU. FCC rules, explains Dr. Smith, preclude a non-profit radio station from appealing for capital funds for a separate non-profit entity.


At a time when radio has been homogenized through consolidation and monopoly control on Long Island and across the U.S., WLIU stands out.


It offers a special tapestry of broadcasting -- music from jazz to show tunes to classical, talk shows, reports on arts and culture, humor and news. It must be saved.


Like farmland, a radio station license is a limited and precious resource, notes Dr. Smith. “We are trying to save the license for the East End community. If we don't, not only would we lose a voice for the community, but we would surrender yet another piece of the local landscape to a potential outsider.”