Pubcasting donor says KCPW owners should play fair with local supporters

“In a moral sense or in a fair game sense, we who pledged on pledge drives and gave money to building the station deserve a chance to raise the money to buy it,” says Steve Denkers, a philanthropist whose family foundation has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Salt Lake City’s KCPW, in today’s Deseret Morning News. Denkers, a major contributor to public broadcasting outlets in Utah through the Stephen G. and Susan E. Denkers Family Foundation, was responding to recent news that KCPW licensee Community Wireless has demanded that Wasatch Public Media, a new local nonprofit, match the bid terms of California-based religious broadcasters. Supporters of the local effort to purchase KCPW and continue operating it an independent NPR news station rallied outside the KCPW on Tuesday, and many told the Morning News that neither Community Wireless board members nor KCPW staff are responding to their inquiries about the pending sale. “They are not returning calls, and that bothers me a great deal,” said one donor.