The rumors began in early June. WBEZ, Chicago’s public radio behemoth, was negotiating a takeover of WLUW, the small but popular station owned by Loyola University. Many WLUW supporters feared the worst; it was widely assumed that WBEZ would implement broad changes at the smaller station, perhaps replacing program director Shawn Campbell and station manager Craig Kois. WLUW enthusiastically supported local indie rock, provided alternative news sources, and reached out to specific ethnic communities–how much of its eclectic programming would survive?
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So Friends of WLUW, an advocacy group formed this spring, initiated a letter-writing campaign to demand answers from WBEZ general manager Torey Malatia. It worked. In July, Malatia attended several meetings held by the group, responding to questions and addressing criticism of his early decisions at WBEZ. “I made an on-the-fly judgment that the thing to do was to just tell them what was happening,” says Malatia. “Not saying what we were talking about just added to the concern that we weren’t talking for a reason, that it must be something bad.” He says the university “didn’t say it was OK with them, but they didn’t complain about it.”
Malatia assured Campbell that he would hire her under the new management agreement; when she was let go by Loyola in August WBEZ took her on as a consultant. And on December 3, when WBEZ signed a deal with Loyola to take over the management, finances, and programming of WLUW, Campbell and Kois became full-time employees of WBEZ, resuming their positions at the Loyola station.
So what does WBEZ get out of this arrangement? “It’s a creative relationship, potentially, that will keep us thinking about radio in different ways and keep us exposed to new talent and so on,” says Malatia. “I think that we’re in the position that over the long run that is going to be a very real, tangible benefit for WBEZ, keeping it sounding different than a lot of other mainstream public radio stations that increasingly sound more staid, more predictable, and more like they can do it with their eyes closed.”
