Update: KDHX’s board of directors announced on Jan. 31 that the station would “pause” live broadcasts that evening.
“The station does not have the resources to sustain current operations,” it said in a statement. “As a result, our small staff has made significant financial sacrifices. All volunteer content production roles, including our valued volunteer DJs, have been discontinued.
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“This was a difficult decision for our board as our audience has grown and expanded in recent years, most notably online. Several factors have contributed to this decision, including long standing financial pressures, industry-wide challenges for public media, and a decline in financial support. Unfortunately, recent disparagement campaigns and senseless lawsuits have severely impacted fundraising.”
Original story follows….
Critics of the leadership at community radio station KDHX (88.1 FM) are going back to court—and this time, instead of fighting to join the board of directors, they’re fighting to remove them.
A legal settlement forced KDHX to add Kip Loui and Courtney Dowdall to the board in August, but both were suspended midway through their first meeting for unspecified actions that supposedly opened the board to liability. (Loui resigned; Dowdall remains suspended.) Now a suit filed late Wednesday argues that the other board members engaged in “dishonest or fraudulent conduct and gross abuses of authority and discretion” contrary to the organization’s interests. They also say bylaw changes enacted in 2018 and 2021 were illegal—and they’re seeking to have a judge restore the old bylaws that would give more people a seat at the table.
The suit was filed by Stacy Bernard, the former host of Saturday morning’s Backroads show on KDHX, joined by 14 other anonymous associate members and volunteers. “As an associate member of KDHX and a longtime volunteer, I feel it’s my duty to stand up and do something to save this radio station,” Bernard said in a statement. “We are at an inflection point. I’ve been a volunteer at KDHX since 1993, long before this current management took over and led the station down a disastrous path. … This is my attempt to hold the Board of KDHX accountable for its many failures and terrible decisions that have harmed so many and brought the station to the brink of financial ruin.”
KDHX didn’t get back to SLM with a statement by press time. We’ll update this post if we hear back.
The critics of the station who formed the group League of Volunteer Enthusiasts of KDHX, many of them volunteer DJs fired by station management, also say the station is at a critical juncture. They’re worried that station leadership plans to sell its broadcast license (the station had just $2,317 cash on hand in its most recent public accounting, in December 2023, and many employees went unpaid for months this past year).
In multiple requests for comment from SLM, KDHX has declined to rule the idea out, or even address it directly. Earlier this month, they said in response a question about selling the license, “The KDHX leaders continue to be good stewards of the station and are working every day to fulfill the mission. If there are any updates on the direction of the station we will let you know.”
Former DJ Roy Kasten, a leader in the LOVE of KDHX group, believes, however, the station can’t sell the license without a vote of the associate members—who are mainly DJs who haven’t been fired. Under the bylaws, that annual meeting takes place in February.
“This is why many people in the community are getting very, very concerned about the inability of management to say what their plan is, or to deny the rumors that they plan to end the FM broadcast and become a streaming, internet-based, streaming-only radio station,” he told SLM earlier this month. “This is why the people in the community are very concerned, because February is just weeks away.”
The station, he notes, must give 10 days notice when calling a meeting. By his reading, the station would need to get at least 17 associates at the meeting to have a quorum—and then need at least two-thirds of those people to approve any sale.
Kasten still hopes against all hope it won’t come to that.
“Anyone who has looked at the most recent financial statements will see that the station is on the brink of insolvency,” he said. “The debts are extraordinary. The revenue is diminished. This has all been widely reported. And anyone who wants to review the financial statement, it’s on the website, and it clearly points in the direction of insolvency. So they need to address this now, and they need to address it by hiring a new executive director and putting new stewards in place that can finally resolve this crisis.”
