Category: Commentary/Editorial || By

Opinions expressed in today's Almanac are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of the directors of Tube City Community Media Inc. or any other person or organization.

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After less than two months on McKeesport-licensed, White Oak-based WEDO (810), the daddio of the raddio is off the air again. The Post-Gazette reports that Porky Chedwick's weekly oldies show has been discontinued because it didn't have a sponsor.

"It wasn't a good situation," Chedwick told the newspaper's Adrian McCoy, adding that he was working "week to week" on a trial basis. "I don't want to broadcast under those conditions. I want to be off the air."

WEDO's general manager, John James, told the P-G that as a commercial station, WEDO needed "business or corporate sponsors" to keep the show going.

Nobody asked me --- and John James has forgotten more about local radio than I'll ever know --- but isn't it a radio station's job to find sponsors? Was a 93-year-old man expected to go out and sell his own commercials?

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It's a sad state of affairs when a McKeesport-licensed radio station (which otherwise fills its hours with paid programming from doctors and preachers) is unwilling to give up one hour a week for the only Pittsburgh-area disc jockey to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum --- a Mon Valley native who got his start at another AM radio station just down the river in Homestead.

(You could also say it's a sad state of affairs that Porky can't get an hour a week on a radio station in Pittsburgh. But I can only tilt at one windmill at a time.)

If this sounds unduly harsh, I apologize. I admit it might also sound like sour grapes. Two years ago, WEDO approached Tube City Community Media Inc. about airing our coverage of International Village.

I offered to produce the broadcast and brand it as a WEDO co-production. I told WEDO they could take as much or as little of the programming as they wanted. Or, I would supply a few short sound-bites if they didn't want to carry the whole thing.

WEDO counter-offered: They would sell me the time for $200 an hour.

I was later told that WEDO had made the same offer to the International Village committee. They declined, and so did I. I'm not going to pay $200 an hour for the privilege of doing someone else's work.

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There used to be such a thing as "broadcasting in the public interest." Thanks to the Federal Communications Commission under former Presidents Clinton and Bush II, that quaint notion no longer exists.

Although the airwaves are technically a public resource, owned by the American people, there is no obligation for any radio station to serve its local community, other than with a bare minimum of public-service announcements. I'm fairly certain that WEDO no longer even offers the token five-minute daily newscast that was produced for the station by the Daily News.

I don't mean to single out WEDO --- the other "McKeesport" station, WMNY (1360), schedules its one hour of McKeesport programming at 6 a.m. Saturday mornings.

Let's also not let the rest of the radio stations serving the Mon Valley off the hook. Many of them also have schedules filled with program-length infomercials, which is perfectly legal, but does nothing to inform, enlighten or entertain the American taxpayers who ostensibly give radio stations a license to borrow --- not own! --- the public's AM, FM and TV frequencies.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I've been paid to produce a few program-length radio commercials myself. But, um, I might not be invited to do that any more.)

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Admittedly, picking on local AM radio stations is probably penny-ante when Clear Channel --- which owns 850 radio stations, including six in Pittsburgh and three of the top five in this region --- is laying off hundreds of employees.

But one of the arguments against big corporate radio operators, such as Clear Channel, is that locally owned independent stations are better at serving their communities than out-of-town conglomerates. In many cases, at many radio stations, and in many cities, that's true.

Alas, it's hard to make that argument when the elder statesman of Pittsburgh radio can't get a measly 60 minutes on WEDO in McKeesport. And I don't think it's out of line to say that Mon Valley residents should expect better from a business in our community.

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