WDUQ Buyer Looks for Comments

The entity chosen by Duquesne University to purchase its licenses to broadcast on 90.5 FM in Pittsburgh is looking for the region’s feedback. Earlier this month Duquesne University announced that it plans to sell the license currently used by WDUQ to a new group know as Essential Public Media. The group is a joint venture of the WYEP board and Public Media Company. Public Media Company is a nonprofit recently launched by Colorado based Public Radio Capital, which helps community groups buy public broadcast licenses. Essential Public Media has launched a website with links to news stories about the sale, a video of the sale agreement news conference and a place for the public to leave comments, ideas and suggestions. WYEP Board Chair Marco Cardamone says this is one of the first steps in the process. “ We wanted to follow up from the press release with some presence for anybody who heard about the name to log on and to give us, as we said there, any comments about anything that they think about related to this whole issue,” says Cardamone, “it’s really a listening post for us, our first attempt to start listening to others.”

Cardamone says they have not yet advertised the website and he has not checked the page to see how many comments have been left. He says he expects there will be new information released sometime in the early spring. “Within the next 60 to 90 days we plan to have another announcement and press conference perhaps,” says Cardamone.