Judge overseeing KDHX bankruptcy delays ruling on sale
Tristen Rouse / St. Louis Public Radio
KDHX's studios.
A group of former volunteers for KDHX, the St. Louis community radio that filed for bankruptcy in March, have at least a few weeks to try to block a proposed sale of the station’s license and tower to Christian broadcasters.
Double Helix Corp., the nonprofit licensee that owns the station, has an agreement with the Tennessee-based Christian broadcasting network K-Love. Depending on how quickly the transaction is completed, K-Love would purchase KDHX for between $4.35 and $4.8 million.
On Monday, Gateway Creative Broadcasting, which already owns two Christian stations in the St. Louis area, submitted a competing bid for $5.5 million to the bankruptcy court.
Double Helix and Gateway had agreed to a $5.2 million transaction in December. A draft letter of intent stating that price and signed by KDHX Executive Director Kelly Wells and Gateway GM Brett Dempsey was filed into the court’s records.
Meanwhile, the League of Volunteer Enthusiasts (LOVE) of KDHX argues that such a sale would violate state law, the organization’s bylaws and the station’s mission. KDHX, which was founded in 1987, focused on independent music programs hosted by volunteers.
LOVE of KDHX includes DJs who were fired or resigned in protest following the 2023 dismissal of host and station co-founder Tom “Papa” Ray. Controversy over the termination of DJs and cancelations of shows prompted many listeners to stop donating to KDHX. A power struggle over governance and the future of the station is the subject of a lawsuit pending before the Missouri Circuit Court.
In a court hearing Wednesday, Robert Eggmann, an attorney representing Double Helix in its bankruptcy proceeding, asked Judge Kathy Surratt-States to schedule a final hearing for May 13 on the motion to sell KDHX to one of the Christian broadcasters.
Tom DeWoskin, an attorney representing LOVE, asked for more time so that his party could develop a plan that would allow KDHX to “honor its mission” and “get its financing back up to where it should be,” he said in court.
“There are many Christian broadcasting radio stations in the St Louis area,” DeWoskin said. “There’s only one KDHX.”
DeWoskin argued that the proposed sale violates a temporary restraining order issued in the lawsuit challenging changes to Double Helix’s bylaws. Plaintiffs in the suit, former KDHX DJs and content producers, seek a judgment that invalidates the new bylaws, removes almost all the board of directors and reinstates annual members who were terminated from the organization.
Since the Double Helix board approved the sale without the consent of all members and without informing a new board member, Courtney Dowdall, of the vote, the proposed sale is not valid, DeWoskin said in the bankruptcy hearing.
Eggman denied that the board violated the restraining order.
“We need to get this process rolling, and if they have money, then show us the money and show us what your plan is,” Eggman said, referring to LOVE of KDHX.
In a February court filing, an attorney for the Double Helix said the organization had less than $7,000 in cash. The station owes more than $2 million to creditors and would use money from the sale to repay them, according to Eggman.
Judge Surratt-States scheduled a May 13 hearing and said she would not rule on the motion to sell on that date.
LOVE does not plan to try to outbid the Christian broadcasters, DeWoskin told Current. Instead, the group hopes to submit documentation on financing and reorganization that would demonstrate that Double Helix does not need to sell its assets. LOVE also hopes the court will rule that the board violated the restraining order.
There have been local offers to help stabilize KDHX, including a $150,000 loan from a pair of restaurant owners and a developer. Their goal is to pause the sale and allow the community to keep the station, said Steven Fitzpatrick Smith, one of the restauranteurs. Smith owns The Royale Food & Spirits and is a former KDHX volunteer and donor. He co-wrote a letter co-signed by more than 90 business owners calling for a change in KDHX leadership.
In March, the three business leaders who offered the loan to KDHX met with board member Joan Bray and board president Gary Pierson, who rejected their offer, said Smith.
On April 5, listeners to 88.1 FM, KDHX’s frequency, got a sense of what’s to come if K-Love purchases the station. The Christian broadcaster aired its programming on the station for several hours and the broadcast featured requests for donations.
Before issuing her ruling Wednesday, Judge Surratt-States reminded Eggman that she had not approved a proposal to allow K-Love to provide programming to KDHX prior to closure of the sale. That broadcast should not have occurred, she said.
Eggman described it as an error and “not happening anymore.”
It sure would be nice if a wealthy member of the St. Louis community would step up and pay the stations debt, and be a local hero that we all would love for saving our beloved station. Of course, that would have to be on the condition that all the Kelly Wells minions, and Kelly Wells, were fired. One can dream!
You left out the salient points like what behaviors by the ED are documented as happening that caused the division, what happened to all the money, how the board, allowed this gross dereliction of their fiduciary duty to go on, while helping it, never trying to hold anyone accountable, or how the volunteers weren’t just typical nonprofit “volunteers “. They started and mantiained a working thriving treasure that the whole region loves and has benefitted from for over 35 years, connecting the people by music and good will and diversity.
They thought up the idea of KDHX, a community that was democratic, and not about profit, wrote the by laws, learned how to build a tower, then built it with their own hands, used their detailed knowledge and love of various kinds of music to educate and share freely as DJs, without once asking for or desiring any money…(The groups bidding 5+ million are doing it because WE BUILT SOMETHING VALUABLE THAT THEY WANT TO TAKE AND PROFIT FROM)
It has been a level of corruption, negligence and deceit that deserves to be reported with a deeper study than just taking the ones who have motive to lie’s word for it, or even a court, that ignores the legal responsibilities of adhering to all the laws that take precedence over contingent issues…..
When money disappears in a charity, a trail of bad faith and serious withholding of information and communication, access and any recourse or due process, how can we just report on them as if thats inconsequential, and let them rush to cover all of that up, with NO GOVERNING BODY WILLING TO DO THEIR JOB TO INVESTIGATE?…Or those we count on to,…journalists?
If you have nothing to hide, you dont hide, you dont RUSH THINGS, and you dont offer a half a million dollar BONUS to illegally hurry up a legal verdict and takeover..
Do some digging.
The world is watching those who can be trusted to care enough and dig into the actual facts.. They will be the ones who are believed and who we look to .
If newer groups who share similar reputations … top-down deep-pocket powerplay politics in the guise of “Christians”, are allowed to get away with helping cover this all up,…(some of it close to, or over the line for fraud and self-enrichment, obstructing justice, certainly abuse of the very people who did all the work, secretly claiming to change bylaws so they could syank the deck, whithoyt actually changing anything…they nullified their acts when they bypassed the legal procedures
required to to that, solicted donations indrr fakse pretenses ..paid influencers to misrepresent things and hide facrs and access) …then we will fault everyone who had all the facts available and chose to stick their head in tbe sand and enable a level of con that st louis hasn’t seen since Stan Kroenke hijacked us, or Steve Stenger went to federal prison.
Passion! I love it! I stand with the former KDHX volunteers, (unbelievable passion!!), and would echo the Comments by Julia Schlegel. The hand-made sign I pinned to my sweatshirt at a rally for those dismissed volunteers, outside in the rain, in February, read simply “All’s Well that Ends Wells’ Tenure!”