Miami school board sues over station purchase in Palm Beach County

The School Board of Miami-Dade County is suing South Florida Public Media Group over its proposed acquisition of an FM station in nearby Palm Beach County. 

In June, SFPMG filed an asset purchase agreement with the FCC to acquire West Palm Beach’s The Flame 104.7, a commercial station broadcasting under the call letters WFLM, for $6.45 million. 

South Florida Public Media Group, founded in 1974 as Friends of WLRN, manages Miami’s WLRN. The school board is licensee of the dual-service public media group.  

In the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the Circuit Court of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit in Miami-Dade County, the school board seeks a court order requiring SFPMG to deposit $645,000 — the same amount it placed as a deposit for WFLM — into the endowment benefiting WLRN. It also asks the court to bar SFPMG from spending the $5.8 million that would complete the purchase. 

“Defendant has diverted $6,450,000 from a permanent endowment, failed to provide to the Miami-Dade School Board financial records sufficient to identify the contributions to and withdrawals from the endowment, and misused property belonging to the Miami-Dade School Board to pursue its own plan to acquire and operate its own radio station — that will compete with WLRN-FM for donors and listeners — an action fundamentally at odds with its contractual obligations, fiduciary duties, and legal commitments,” the School Board’s lawsuit said. 

In an emailed statement to Current, SFPMG CEO John LaBonia said that the station “reiterates that it does not agree with the School Board’s assertions or allegations that the purchase represents a breach of SFPMG’s contract and obligations as the sole vendor and manager of the School District’s broadcast properties. At this time, SFPMG is looking at options to respond appropriately, we maintain that we are doing what is best for public media in South Florida.”

When WLRN filed the asset purchase agreement with the FCC in June, LaBonia told Current that the purchase would be funded with income from a spectrum lease that’s been in place since 2008. 

In its lawsuit, however, the school board points to earlier commitments on use of the spectrum revenues. Two resolutions adopted by SFPMG in 2013 “make clear that Defendant established a permanent endowment to support its mission and committed to that permanent endowment ‘all revenue from long-term leases of Educational Broadband Services licenses held by [Defendant]’ with WLRN as the intended beneficiary,” the lawsuit said. 

WLRN has been looking to restore public media in Palm Beach County for a decade, LaBonia told Current in June. The acquisition would provide unduplicated public radio service to 800,000 people, “many of whom are currently unserved by robust public media coverage,” WLRN said in a news release at the time. 

In June, LaBonia pointed to the sale of American Public Media Group’s Classical South Florida network to a religious broadcaster in 2015. “We just can’t imagine an area like Palm Beach County that doesn’t have its own public media service,” LaBonia said.  

But the school board’s lawsuit notes that a translator rebroadcasts WLRN on WOLL HD-2 at 105.5 FM. 

“Defendant’s plan to acquire and operate WFLM would divert donor contributions and listeners from WLRN, directly undermining the fundraising and operational efforts of WLRN,” the lawsuit said.