WLIU 88.3 FM
Earlier this month Long Island University announced it would sell off its public radio outlet WLIU, tired of sinking $1.3 million a year into the station. Now, according to the Southampton Press (via Current) the university has given the station’s management a little more time to try and put together a nonprofit corporation to buy WLIU. The terms of a deal struck between LIU and Stony Brook – Southampton, where the station rents space, allows WLIU to stay in its studios and on air through to December 3.
Although WLIU management now has two more months to put something together–the original end date was Oct. 3–that still doesn’t seem like a lot of time to find funders to replace LIU’s $1.3 million annual contribution. As I commented before, I hope that the station can remain on air as a public station and that maybe this situation pushes the management to a more open community-based model that will both cost less and rely less on expensive national programming.
