Regents Give Preliminary Approval to Duluth Public Radio Sale

The University of Minnesota Board of Regents has given preliminary approval to a plan to sell public radio station KUMD/103.3 (Duluth) to the parent organization of Duluth’s PBS station.

The vote to approve the sale came after an 11-minute discussion during a Regents meeting Friday on the University of Minnesota Duluth campus. According to the letter of intent (beginning on page 33 of the agenda packet), a second Regents vote will be necessary to finalize the university’s approval.

Before voting, the Regents discussed whether the university could retain the rights to the KUMD callsign for possible future online use. Some Regents also expressed concern that the letter of intent does not guarantee that UMD students will have involvement in the station following the sale.

The Duluth Superior Area Educational Television Corporation, licensee of WDSE/8 (Duluth) and WRPT/31 (Hibbing), will pay $175,000 for KUMD. According to the letter of intent, the buyer will invest between $1.6 and $3 million into new equipment, facilities, and marketing for the station, which is said to need a new transmitter and other equipment.

KUMD’s current five employees will be hired by DSAETC and the radio station will be moved from UMD’s Humanities building into the WDSE building on the UMD campus.

UMD will retain the station’s vinyl record collection and “other recorded media.”

As detailed here previously, KUMD currently carries a broad Adult Alternative format with student programming in the evening. It is the only one of the seven public radio services in the Twin Ports area that offers predominately local programming.

Following Friday’s vote, WDSE sent a statement to supporters saying the next step will be to develop an asset purchase agreement.

“WDSE•WRPT sees the potential for our station and KUMD, together, to provide Northlanders a complete, full-service public media experience, unique to any other media offering in the Northland. The two stations are poised to become stronger together and to serve the community in a distinctive way that this area has not experienced before – a multi-media organization owned by the community,” the statement said.

The merger would create the only joint public radio-TV operation in Minnesota. All of the states bordering Minnesota have state-owned radio and TV networks, while Minnesota’s PBS stations and Minnesota Public Radio are owned by independent non-profit groups.

While joint public radio-TV operations not owned by a state entity are rare in the Upper Midwest, there are numerous examples nationwide, including WGBH Boston, WHYY Philadelphia, WQED Pittsburgh, WETA Washington, KQED San Francisco, and KPBS San Diego.