Congratulations, Friends of 88.5 FM! $7 million raised to buy KPLU from Pacific Lutheran

This is tru­ly won­der­ful news:

The com­mu­ni­ty group hop­ing to pre­serve 88.5 FM as an inde­pen­dent radio sta­tion has hit its $7 mil­lion fundrais­ing goal a month ahead of sched­ule. KPLU Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Joey Cohn announced live on the air Thurs­day after­noon that near­ly 18,000 donors have raised enough mon­ey to make a bid for the station.

“It’s unprece­dent­ed, I mean, we’ve been say­ing we have made pub­lic radio his­to­ry, and we real­ly have,” said KPLU Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Joey Cohn. “To raise $7 mil­lion dol­lars in four and a half months — that’s nev­er been done.”

We at NPI are proud to have played our part in mak­ing this hap­pen. For the last few months, we’ve pro­mot­ed the cam­paign to save KPLU as an inde­pen­dent NPR affil­i­ate on our front page, encour­ag­ing vis­i­tors and sup­port­ers to donate.

It’s won­der­ful to hear that the $7 mil­lion need­ed to pur­chase the sta­tion from Pacif­ic Luther­an Uni­ver­si­ty has been raised ahead of sched­ule. Now, Friends of 88.5 FM can begin nego­ti­at­ing with uni­ver­si­ty offi­cials, who had orig­i­nal­ly planned to sell KPLU to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton to be fold­ed into KUOW.

If Friends of 88.5 FM can agree on terms with PLU and receive approval from the Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion to become the new license hold­er, the UW has said it will with­draw its offer and allow the com­mu­ni­ty group to buy the sta­tion. The sta­tion would almost cer­tain­ly receive new call let­ters fol­low­ing the sale, though it would stay where it is on the radio dial.

As the Friends of 88.5 FAQ explains:

This detail will be part of the pur­chase agree­ment with PLU. The agree­ment between PLU and UW calls for a change in call let­ters, and there is an assump­tion that would be the case in an agree­ment with Friends. We plan to allow lis­ten­ers to make sug­ges­tions for what those should be. If we choose your sug­ges­tion, you’ll be the first to read the call let­ters live on the air!

The suc­cess of the fundrais­ing dri­ve is wel­come news for the hard­work­ing jour­nal­ists who work in 88.5’s vaunt­ed news­room. Their jobs have been in jeop­ardy ever since PLU unveiled its deal to sell KPLU to the UW. KUOW, UW’s NPR affil­i­ate, had been plan­ning to turn 88.5 into a jazz-only sta­tion, doing away with its cur­rent format.

It’s also wel­come news for every pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tion (this one includ­ed) grave­ly con­cerned about the dam­age that most­ly-unchecked media con­sol­i­da­tion has been caus­ing to our region and our country.