One of the last Beautiful Music stations in the country is pleading for funds to remain on the air.
Kenneth Jones, GM of Jones College’s Beautiful Music 90.9 WKTZ-FM and Adult Standards 1220 WJAX Jacksonville has sent a letter to their listeners explaining that the station is having difficulty meeting its financial goals to keep the stations running. Jones in part states that between October 1 and 20 the station raised only $30,000 of its $200,000 goal.
Jones comments that should they be unable to reach their goal he has advised the college’s board to consider a format change or sale of the station.
The letter follows:
We started our most recent campaign on October 1st. As most of you are aware we are a non-commercial station Licensed by the FCC to broadcast on 90.9 FM in Jacksonville Florida. Our frequency is in the non-commercial band stations of our type cannot broadcast commercials but can acknowledge our sponsors as long as the announcements do no contain commercial content. Commercial content would be calls to action, qualitative or quantitative remarks or guarantees. We obtain our support from our listeners like you. We are not part of the public broadcasting system or PBS and do not receive government or tax money. For many years the station operations had been subsidized in part by Jones College the licensee. In recent years with budgets tight I have been asking more and more for the support of our listeners.
We had been meeting our budgetary requirements until last year. We fell just short of our needs. Letters go out to our contributors at the end of each year and for the most part our listeners have been able to make up the difference. Discussion of the possible future of the station in our annual board meeting take place each year.
The board asked me my opinion and it is the same then and now. We cannot expect our students to pay increased tuition so that our listeners can enjoy the beautiful music of Jones College Radio. Our option would be to sell the station or change the format of the station to attract more young adults to the college that could then support the College through advertising savings. Even non-commercial stations can advertise for non-profit organizations such as Jones College.
From October 1st we have collected just over thirty thousand in donations, or 15 percent, of our goal of two hundred thousand. This would meet our current needs and allow us to stay on the air. Our listeners number 68 thousand this does not include our streaming listeners who listen on the internet.
The amount we require adds up to less than 3 dollars a listener. AS long as donations continue at the current rate our stations future is not certain.
If you have a question please ask it here and I will answer if I can.
Kenneth Jones, GM
