WGTS seeking to buy itself

Friends of local Christian radio station WGTS-FM (91.9) are working to come up with $25 million in hopes of buying the Takoma Park outlet from Columbia Union College.

The college, an affiliate of the Silver Spring-based Seventh-day Adventist Church, last month yielded to community pressure and ended negotiations with American Public Media Group, the parent company of Minnesota Public Radio, which made a multimillion-dollar bid for WGTS earlier this year.

In a highly anticipated vote, the college’s trustees agreed to examine the financial challenges facing the private liberal arts school before selling off any assets.

Columbia Union — which was founded in 1904 and has 700 students — has been hit by rising costs of insurance and energy, as well as aging infrastructure and deferred maintenance, officials said. The school operates on a $4 million endowment and has an annual budget of $21 million.

The college is no longer in talks with the American Public Media Group, spokesman Scott Steward said.

The trustees’ decision last month did not rule out a future sale of WGTS, however. They fired its nine-member board of directors, replacing it with members of the board of trustees.

“We have an active campaign now to raise $25 million to purchase ourselves from the board of trustees,” said Dr. Gerard Fuller, who has hosted the Saturday morning program “Breakaway” on WGTS for about 40 years.

Dr. Fuller, a dentist in Silver Spring, said he sent a letter to the chairman of the college’s board of trustees asking him what they “hoped to accomplish that has not already been accomplished” by firing the longtime directors of WGTS.

The station, which broadcasts contemporary Christian music and original programming from the local Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church, has about 250,000 weekly listeners in the D.C. area and is the second-most-popular noncommercial Christian station in the country.

It supports itself by raising more than $2.5 million each year in donations.

Earlier this past summer, Columbia Union College rejected a buyout proposal from the station’s then-directors that included $10 million upfront. Dr. Fuller told Channel Surfing he is “optimistic” his group will be able to raise $25 million by the board’s next meeting in November.

“We’ve had a number of meetings, we’ve had a number of contacts and we feel that with divine help this is doable,” he said.

Education on demand

Washington-area cable provider Comcast Corp. added English lessons to its on-demand programming lineup in Montgomery County.

Four hours of English tutorials, produced by English For You, are available for free to digital cable subscribers in the county.

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