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In brief: a new plan for Starr Hill, CRB moves forward, Saga boots again, and more

A new plan for Starr Hill

Since last spring, the New Hill Development Corporation has been working on a Small Area Plan to guide development in the Starr Hill area, which runs from Preston Avenue to the CSX Railroad along West Main Street.

On November 4, the African American-led nonprofit, which was awarded $500,000 to study the issue, presented its research to City Council, concluding that the area continues to suffer from racial disparities in income, education, entrepreneurship, and housing. It believes the best ways to strengthen Starr Hill’s “economic and social fabric” are to increase support for small businesses and entrepreneurship, especially in high-growth industries, and to better prepare black residents for “next-generation jobs,” such as bio-tech and construction. It also wants to develop more affordable living and work spaces, promoting equity and connectivity in the community.

New Hill proposed developing the City Yard, currently used as a maintenance facility, into a mixed-use area with 85 to 255 majority affordable housing units and flexible business/commercial spaces focused on workforce development. The group did not mention how it would address potential contamination on the site from the old gas plant.

New Hill also proposes adding 10 to 46 majority affordable housing units to the Starr Hill residential area and making its streets more pedestrian friendly, as well as transforming the Jefferson School into a “public square” with an amphitheater, art installations, murals, parking spaces, pocket parks, and an enhanced Starr Hill Park. Creating better connections between the Jefferson School and downtown was proposed as well.

New Hill encouraged City Council to endorse its plan and  “low hanging fruit” projects, such as the proposed improvements to Starr Hill Park. The group’s next steps are to secure partnership commitments, establish an advisory committee of local residents, and continue ongoing conversations with key supporters, like UVA and the Jefferson School Foundation.

 

Quote of the week

“It makes no sense to put the city tree where no one will see it.” — Charlottesville resident Tony Walsh, protesting council’s moving of the downtown Christmas tree from near the Paramount to in front of City Hall

In brief

Cooperating behind closed doors

At its November 4 meeting, City Council voted 4-1 to disband the Planning & Coordination Council, an advisory group that’s been around since 1986 and was designed to help UVA, the city, and the county cooperate on development issues. It will be replaced by a group comprised of “technical professionals” with an expanded scope to include environmental issues (like stormwater, solid waste, and sustainability) and infrastructure. But the meetings will no longer be open to the public.   

CRB moves forward

The Charlottesville City Council also voted Monday to approve the bylaws and an ordinance for the Police Civilian Review Board, despite some CRB members’ dissatisfaction with council’s revisions to the initial proposal. The board, which was established following the 2017 Unite the Right Rally, is intended to build trust between Charlottesville police and the community. New members will be named to the CRB by mid-December.

The People’s Coalition held a rally outside City Hall October 21.

Saga boots again

Longtime Charlottesville Radio Group operations manager and WINA morning host Rick Daniels was fired last month, allegedly for playing a clip with an f-bomb. Daniels, who had been with the station for the past 30-odd years, used to host “Morning News” with Jane Foy, who was also unceremoniously dumped a year ago. Les Sinclair, who hosts an afternoon talk show on WINA and is its program director, and does those jobs at Z95, has been named operations manager for the stations. Charlottesville Radio Group is owned by Saga Communications, which has recently petitioned the FCC to not renew licenses for five local nonprofit stations.

More from Mike

City Council member and former mayor Mike Signer launched his latest venture October 28: a 60-page report and podcast series titled “Communities Overcoming Extremism: The After Charlottesville Project.” The report, which Signer unveiled in Washington, D.C., brings together ideas from different leaders across the country and discusses policies to prevent the escalation of violent hate groups. Backed by big-name donors like the Charles Koch Institute and the Anti-Defamation League, the project hopes to provide communities with the know-how to combat intolerance and political violence.

Progress staffers win union election

In a 12-1 vote, the staff at The Daily Progress voted to unionize on October 30. The election, monitored by the National Labor Relations Board, came two weeks after the Progress staff announced their intention to form a union, and after BH Media, which owns the paper, did not voluntarily recognize the union. Reporters, copy editors, photographers and a few other newsroom employees comprise the Blue Ridge NewsGuild, which plans to fight for fair wages, increased severance, and more community input. The Progress is the third BH Media-owned publication to unionize.

A job well done

UVA first-year and Charlottesville High School alum Zyahna Bryant was listed in Teen Vogue’s “21 Under 21: The Young People Changing the World.” Bryant, who sits on the Virginia African American Board, led the charge in the campaign to remove the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville at only 15 years old, and was the founder of her high school’s Black Student Union. Bryant published a book of essays and poems earlier this year, entitled “Reclaim.”

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License to bully?: Local nonprofit stations say Saga is out to bankrupt them

WXRK's Mike Friend calls Saga's petition "legal junk." Photo: Eze Amos

Last month, corporate radio giant Saga Communications petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to deny license renewal to five small, nonprofit Charlottesville stations. It’s a move one station owner calls “a blatant attempt at economic bullying through litigation” that if successful, would shut down the area’s only progressive talk radio and programming geared toward African American audiences.

Saga Communications, headquartered in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, is the parent company of local radio stations WINA, 3WV, and The Corner. Saga earned nearly $125 million in 2018 and owns 79 FM and 34 AM radio stations in 27 markets, Its subsidiary, Tidewater Communications LLC, filed the petition.

Low-power stations have a median range of three and a half miles and were created to foster community radio during a period of massive radio consolidation, following the deregulation of broadcast companies under the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

The five low-power stations—WPVC 94.7FM progressive talk, WXRK-LP 92.3 Rock Hits, WVAI-LP 101.3 Jamz, and oldies stations WREN-LP 97.9 and WKMZ-LP 96.5 in Ruckersville—are independently owned.

Because four of them share space in Seminole Square, Saga says they have a management agreement, which is an FCC no-no. Saga also contends the stations air commercials rather than underwriting announcements, run simulcast programs, and filed applications that are “rife with false certifications,” according to the petition.

WNRN founder Mike Friend owns WXRK-LP, and he’s the first of the five stations to file a response in opposition to Saga’s petition. “It’s legal junk” and a deliberate “misinterpretation” of FCC rules, says Friend. He raised money on air to hire an attorney.

Friend says Saga has gone after low-power stations before. In 2015 Saga petitioned the FCC to revoke the license of WLCQ-LP, a Christian contemporary station in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, for equipment violations.

And in 2004, Saga alleged that KFLO-LP in Jonesboro, Arkansas, was violating its non-commercial license by airing announcements that “sound suspiciously like commercials,” according to Wikipedia. The FCC “admonished the station,” but denied the rest of Saga’s complaint.

“They think there’s a finite pie of ad dollars that they think they deserve,” says Friend. “If we went off the air tomorrow, 3WV would not gain a single listener.”

The allegation that stung WPVC owner Jeff Lenert the most was Saga’s claim that the stations provide no community good or services. “I cannot stand by while they say we do nothing,” he says, listing his station’s public service efforts, including 21 hours a week of the area’s only Spanish-language broadcasting.

“We’ve had an immigration attorney on air to take questions,” he says. “We really focus on women’s health in the Hispanic community.” And the station just partnered with a nonprofit to provide 1,400 backpacks to kids going back to school.

WPCV’s Jeff Lenert

In the midst of dealing with the Saga petition, he says “pro-Confederate statue folks” have been contacting his station’s underwriters with “implied threats.”

By having to hire a lawyer, Lenert says his expenses have tripled and his revenues decreased because of his underwriters “fear of retribution” from the “neo-Confederates.”

Lenert compares Saga going after his tiny station to “The New York Times coming after C-VILLE.” He says, “Their intent, from my perspective, is to drive us into bankruptcy.”

On the plus side, people have been calling and coming into the station “telling me how unfair this is,” he says. The number of people listening has gone up, as have donations, he adds.

“Shameful,” says City Council candidate Michael Payne about the Saga petition on Facebook. “Corporate attacks on local media outlets are a threat to a robust free press and local democratic debate.”

Christina Dunbar-Hester is a University of Southern California professor who wrote Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Activism in FM Radio Activism. She says the Saga petition “does strike me as basically harassment because they have more resources.”

“The threat of pulling licenses sounds like someone knows that’s going to be very stressful and burdensome for those organizations,” she adds.

While the FCC wants to make sure low-power stations are independently owned, there’s an “economy of scale” for small stations sharing resources, says Dunbar-Hester.

“We are nothing more than roommates,” says Lenert about the other stations.

The most serious Saga allegation, says Dunbar-Hester, is blurring the line between underwriting and commercials.

Lenert says that’s “easily fixed.” And Friend says, “We maintain otherwise.”

Nathan Moore, general manager of WTJU, says the FCC typically levies fines that hurt, but are payable. “They renew pretty much everyone unless it’s totally egregious.”

He notes, “David might not be perfect, but no one roots for Goliath.”

Saga attorney Gary Smithwick declined to comment about the petition. And WINA general manager Mike Chiumento, who oversaw the monitoring of the LP stations’ underwriting announcements, did not respond to a call from C-VILLE.

A footnote in Saga’s petition makes clear that competition is a concern. “Whether the renewal applicants are abusing their non-tax status is beyond the scope of this petition or the jurisdiction of the commission. Yet, the competition of an entity that does not pay federal taxes with business entities like Tidewater is grossly unfair.”

Updated to correct typo in WPVC call letters and WXRK’s frequency, 10/16.

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Foy story: Broadcaster joins new regional polling project

Jane Foy’s new job is to set up a regional survey pool that she hopes will be a national model to measure community opinion. Virginia Hamrick

Last fall, longtime WINA morning co-host and producer Jane Foy was unceremoniously dumped by the station where she’d worked for almost 20 years. WINA’s loss became the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service’s gain when it recruited Foy to help launch a new regional survey service called BeHeardCVA.

The “Morning News” show was known for Plug Away Monday, in which nonprofits could call in to tout their events. “One of [Foy’s] main things was to give voice to nonprofits,” says Tom Guterbock, director of the UVA Center for Survey Research. “Her network includes a lot of groups that can benefit from BeHeardCVA.”

“The folks from Weldon Cooper Center had been on the radio show quite a bit,” says Foy. And when they wanted a community outreach person with deep ties in the area, Foy was an obvious choice.

She will help recruit people who will become the survey pool, which will encompass the Thomas Jefferson Planning District: Charlottesville, and Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, and Nelson counties.

Guterbock sees a big demand for a regional survey pool. “National panels don’t have enough people in the region to do a good sample,” he says. And cold-calling landlines—or cellphones—makes it more difficult and more expensive to get responses. “The rates of answering phones has changed greatly,” he says.

Instead, by recruiting an initial survey panel of 800 participants, which Guterbock and Foy would like to see ultimately grow to around 3,000, “We’re likely to get a broader sample,” Guterbock says.

BeHeardCVA is recruiting by mail, by randomly dialing cellphone numbers, and by reaching out to leaders and organizations, says Guterbock.  And because people who sign up will provide information such as race and gender, that also allows a balance of survey participants, he says.

Foy has been meeting with organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, neighborhood associations, and PVCC.

And the nonprofits Foy has worked with are BeHeardCVA’s target market. “There’s a need for local nonprofits to have a survey sample if they’re considering a policy change,” says Guterbock. There are hundreds of nonprofits, and “people who can’t get the information they need.”

One thing BeHeardCVA will not be: a tool for partisan political polling, say Guterbock.

Since leaving the radio station, Foy hasn’t just been sleeping in past 4am. She’s also written a book: The A to Z Guide for Primary Caregivers of Dementia Patients, and it will launch at New Dominion Bookshop at 7pm March 29.

Foy, who takes care of her husband, started the book 14 months ago, and she readily answers what “L” is. “L is laughing,” she says. “You and your loved one should have a good one every day.”

And she’s really jazzed about her new gig, which she says will help smaller counties like Fluvanna and Louisa have their voices heard.

Says Foy, “I want this to be an example for a regional survey whose goal is community service.”

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Foy fired: Longtime WINA morning host given the boot

Jane Foy’s new job is to set up a regional survey pool that she hopes will be a national model to measure community opinion. Virginia Hamrick

 

Regular listeners to WINA’s “Morning News” may have noticed the absence this week of co-host and producer Jane Foy, but they were not given a reason why.

Foy, who had been on vacation and was coming back to work Tuesday, only learned in a phone call the night before that she was no longer on the show on which she’d worked since 2001, at the station where she’d worked for almost 20 years.

“It was a surprise,” says Foy. “You always know it’s coming because it’s the nature of the business, but you’re always shocked when it’s your time.”

The morning show is being “retooled,” Foy says she was told. The 6am to 10am drive time slot will lose an hour and go down to one host (her former co-host Rick Daniels).

“It’s just a programming change,” says Charlottesville Radio Group’s general manager Mike Chiumento. “The show with Rick and Jane hasn’t changed in 11 years.” The new version will have more features from CBS and be “more like the ‘Today Show,’” he says.

“It was extremely difficult to think about and execute,” says Chiumento. “She’s just a stellar part of the community.”

Before and after: Foy was still on the WINA website Wednesday, but by Thursday Rick Daniels was shown solo.

“I don’t know how I’m going to wake up every morning,” says regular listener Mary Miller. “Jane’s program was centered on local events. I appreciated her ability to keep us in touch” with news around town.

“I never like hearing this stuff,” says Joe Thomas, who hosts the morning show at competitor WCHV and says he once got fired on the way to a public event. Foy’s abrupt ouster, he says, “unfortunately is way too common in corporate radio.”

Charlottesville Radio Group includes ESPN Charlottesville, 106.5 the Corner, 3WV, Z95.1 and Country 92.7, and is owned by Michigan-based Saga Communications, which purchased the locally owned Eure Communications in 2004.

“I feel for her as somebody who’s committed this much time and effort in the community,” Thomas says. “She brought a great professionalism in journalism from the storied stations she’d worked with.”

A Pittsburgh native, Foy, 70, started her career in broadcast at a television station there nearly 50 years ago, doing film editing, public relations, and promotions. One day, a general manager at a local radio station called to ask what she thought of a show. She described it as “yawn radio,” which must have been the right answer. He hired her to take over the program and become the first female AM talk show host in Pittsburgh, at age 24.

Foy’s colleagues at WINA declined to comment, including Rob Schilling, who himself was dropped by the station 10 years ago. He’d filled in as Foy’s cohost on the “Morning Show” after Dick Mountjoy, another staple of local radio, died in 2008, and then Schilling was given his own show.

After Saga pulled the plug, Schilling’s fans launched a campaign to bring the conservative host back, which it did in January 2009.

State Senator Creigh Deeds was surprised to learn Foy is off the air and calls her “a voice that everybody knows and an essential part of everyone’s morning.” He’s been appearing on her show since he was first elected to the Senate in 2001, and says she’s a tough interviewer. “I know I wasn’t going to get softball questions.”

When reached on the phone, Foy sounds upbeat, and says her severance agreement was “very satisfactory.” Another bright side: She won’t be getting up at 4am and going to bed at 8:30pm.

And despite being the full-time caregiver for her husband, who has dementia, she says she will be looking for another job and hopes to do some volunteer work as well.

She’ll still be hosting the Walk to End Alzheimer’s on October 20–only this time it won’t be as Jane Foy of WINA.