ST. LOUIS — The leadership of community radio station KDHX announced Friday that they had dismissed the station’s volunteer DJs and content producers and would no longer air new programming.
In a statement posted on the station’s website, Board President Gary Pierson attributed the decision in part to a “decline in financial support.”
“Unfortunately, recent disparagement campaigns and senseless lawsuits have severely impacted fundraising,” Pierson added. Yet the board president also said that KDHX’s audience has “expanded in recent years, most notably online.”
Pierson said the station would instead air previously recorded programming. A KDHX spokesperson declined to answer questions from Current about how dismissing unpaid staff would save the station money or whether the station was considering selling its broadcast license.
KDHX leaders have been facing a backlash from listeners and station volunteers since February 2023, after the dismissal of longtime music host and station co-founder Tom “Papa” Ray. Ray claimed he was taken off the air for criticizing KDHX Executive Director Kelly Wells. Pierson later said Ray was dismissed because of a “long-standing pattern of bullying.”
Station leaders then canceled 10 more shows and dismissed additional hosts who they said had hurt the station’s financial stability. At least 14 more DJs resigned in protest, and hundreds of volunteers, former hosts, local musicians and business owners signed letters and staged protests outside the station in an effort to oust Wells and Pierson.
Amid the tumult, donations to the station dropped. In 2022, KDHX received $977,000 in contributions and grants; in 2023, it took in $808,000, a 17% decrease, according to its most recent tax filing.
An audit of KDHX’s finances shows that in 2023, the station had $42,000 in credit card debt and loans of $60,000 and $120,000. The organization’s revenue was $1.2 million in 2022 and $959,000 the next year.
The station has also faced legal challenges. In November 2023, a group of DJs filed a lawsuit seeking to enforce a decision made by station volunteers to remove two board members and appoint three new members. The parties settled the lawsuit in August 2024 with an agreement for two of the plaintiffs to join the board.
But after Courtney Dowdall and Kip Loui attended their first board meeting in October, the board leadership informed them they were suspended effective immediately, according to Loui.
The board members also “created a new rule that directors, including Dowdall and Loui, were not allowed to interact with the volunteers” without Wells’ involvement, according to a second lawsuit filed last month by current and former volunteers that aims to remove Pierson and other board members.
“The Defendants’ Orwellian rule has no basis in the Bylaws or common sense,” the lawsuit says.
Despite the recent battles, some longtime DJs stayed on the air until Friday’s announcement. Ed Becker had hosted the show Songwriters Showcase since 1988. He said he avoided getting involved with the politics that sometimes plague community radio stations.
On Sunday mornings, he drove 45 minutes from his home in Mount Olive, Ill., to St. Louis and played music that ranged from rock to folk, he said.
“I was proud of being a DJ,” Becker said.
The offices used to be filled with people and camaraderie among DJs, Becker said, but have been mostly empty in recent years.
“I don’t know what their goal is, truthfully, except the downfall of the station,” Becker said of Pierson and Wells.
The League of Volunteer Enthusiasts (LOVE) of KDHX, a group of longtime volunteers, will hold a forum Tuesday at Off Broadway, a St. Louis music venue, to discuss next steps.
“We can come up with a plan to pay down the debt,” said Roy Kasten, who hosted a show on KDHX from 2004 until he was among those dismissed in September 2023. “There are thousands of people who have committed to support the station financially if there is new leadership.”