Grownups Are Corrupt

 

Pheeeww weeeee! Of all the smelly players in the theft of WRAS by GPB deal, Georgia State University’s VP of Student Affairs, Douglass Covey, could be the stinkiest. And it’s a tough tough competition.

Seems Covey made sure GSU student fees were used to pay for a brand new WRAS transmitter in April of 2013. And then tossed that brand new student-paid-for (unknowingly and undisclosed to them, of course) transmitter into the sweet GPB deal for use when GPB took over WRAS.

Which, according to rules and guidelines of Georgia’s state universities’ behaviors, may not have been a sanctioned/legal use of university student fees. The sweet deal itself also not known to the public or students of GSU/WRAS at the time, of course. Come to think about it, the deal was known mostly to just Douglass Covey, his inner circle of intimate cronies, and key committee folk only. (Remember kids, these are all state organizations we’re talking about here. Thus all beholden to Georgia’s Open Records laws.) 

From Jennifer Waits in a Radio Survivor blog post:

Although it hasn’t been mentioned much in reporting about the situation at WRAS, in April 2013 the Georgia State University Student Activity Fee Committee approved a proposal to replace the WRAS transmitter. Estimated costs at the time were between $676,000 and $750,000. Meeting minutes also reference a construction permit to “install its main antenna on a downtown tower, allowing for a much improved signal in North Georgia, especially on campus, and in the Georgia Dome.” A few months earlier, discussions were well underway between GPB and GSU. An early draft agreement from January 2013 even proposes that GPB would help pay for the cost of a transmitter. The old proposal suggests that GSU and GPB would partner “to acquire bond dollars to cover all one-time costs of transitioning WRAS to digital broadcast…” Throughout the conversations between GSU and GPB, GPB was kept up to date about the timeline for WRAS’ new transmitter.

According to Georgia State email correspondence, the new transmitter was delivered in late April 2014. Interestingly, around this time (late April), Georgia State’s Vice President for Student Affairs Douglass Covey resigned from the board of Public Broadcasting Atlanta (which runs competing public radio station WABE). The GSU/GPB agreement was announced publicly in May 2014. Although the new transmitter has yet to be installed, it’s been pointed out that since student fees were used to pay for something that will be largely used by GPB, it could be construed as a misuse of student funds or even fraud.

Talk about a low life maneuver! And that’s not even counting Covey’s utter duplicitous skunkiness of sitting on the other public media folks’ (PBA/WABE) board throughout the icky and secretive maneuvering between GPB and GSU for expanding GPB’s public airwaves reach beyond the 24/7 grasp of the kids of GSU.

Man, what a skunk. I wouldn’t trust Douglass Covey to walk my dog to the curb.

 

Blessing GPB’s Act of Media Thievery

I had to drive around during the day for a few hours yesterday, throughout metro Atlanta. I listened to the “new” GPB-ized programming on WRAS 88.5 (no longer “Album” 88.5 of course) through most of my drive time.

It’s exactly what I, and plenty of other Lois Reitzes-haters, have been hoping for on our Atlanta airwaves, which we’ve never had and often wished for as quality news programming in our cars/wherever from the 9am-3pm hours.

I never in a million years thought I’d get my wish, some 25-years later, on the backs of the kid-powered Album 88.5 programming that shaped my life throughout young adulthood

I felt absolutely dirty the whole time I was listening, knowing what an ill-gotten act of outright thieving and programming-gain it was on the part of GPB’s Teya Ryan and her nasty media henchman, Bill Nigut.

At least Nigut’s personal act of thieving windbaggery wasn’t yet ready for air. That’s an ugly lying in wait – to incite more than a mere blog post by one person.

Or is it? I wonder about my Atlanta/Georgia media peers being far too excepting of the status quo, the way they always have been. I expect they’re meeting already at The Atlanta Press Club to gush and drool over Teya Ryan and Bill Nigut’s programming coup. And hand them a manufactured award for what they’ve done to the kids of GSU, of course.

Now I feel dirty and disgusted. There is no amusement in this particular mostly Atlanta media matter. At all.

#SaveWRAS

How To Be An Old Media Bully. A Primer.

UPDATE: Seems GPB has abandoned their attempt at a “two way street” and removed all comments and commenting from Bill Nigut’s blog post referenced in this post and associated hyperlinks. Too bad. Loved the “Whatever Saruman” one! 

Bill Nigut is “thrilled” to be back on the airwaves of radio, via WRAS. That makes one person in Georgia. The rest of us? Not so much. (See the comments, coming fast and furious, at his blog post trumpeting his latest broadcasting theft thrill.)

Mr. Nigut’s on-air and in-real-life persona has always been loud, large, and obnoxious. He’s that person who insists on being heard through the din of a crowded networking event or cocktail party. Sucks the wind right out of any space, and takes it all for himself.

It helps that he’s a tall guy, but Nigut can bray and preen with the best of ’em. I once made the mistake of walking past Bill Nigut and Neal Boortz chatting together at some random Atlanta Press Club event. I was hurled three city blocks away by the gasbaggery posturing alone.

Nigut makes claim to being a champion for pretty much everything and everyone he can think of: the helpless, the homeless, the voiceless, the poor, but especially Richie Rich Chamber-types, in his windy GPB blog post declaring his latest radio show intentions with WRAS, awww shucks, ma’am style:

I am thrilled to be back in radio and hope you’ll join me to meet extraordinary people, hear important ideas and explore the rich arts and cultural work being done in Atlanta and Georgia. It should be fun; it should be illuminating, and if I do it right, it should make us all just a little more aware of what a remarkable place we live in.

Beware a wolf in sheep’s clothes. Nigut is merely an old media bully worming his way into a place, space and time where he is not wanted because he believes his own hype, and is still in love with the sound of his own voice, and has sorely missed hearing it bellowing hither and yon from whatever Atlanta microphone he can grab first before anyone else has a chance to get there. Everyone knows this, because they’re watching it happen. In real time, more or less, given the enduring popularity of the #SaveWRAS hashtag.

GPB stole programming out of the mouths, minds and hearts of numerous Georgia State University students, and took it for a very select, very few one old media talking heads. No one’s believing a wisp of spin put on the matter by anyone at GSU or GPB leadership. They’re operating in an echo chamber, as that deafening sound you don’t hear anywhere in Atlanta is anyone other than Bill Nigut and Teya Ryan themselves coming to their own sorry little defense of what they’ve done to raid WRAS.

The best thing Bill Nigut can possibly do for his rapidly fraying Georgia media legacy, and trust me, he surely thinks he’s still got a shot at one, is to give the programming of WRAS back to the kids of GSU. Now.

Student Press Law Center Questions Legitimacy of GSU/GPB Agreement To Run WRAS

 

The Student Press Law Center’s executive director, Frank LoMonte, has sent a blistering, scathing really, 5-page letter to Georgia State University president Mark Becker declaring GSU’s agreement (hammered out in great secrecy and urgency by GSU and GPB so GPB could grab GSU’s student-run station, WRAS, and hand it over to the grownups of GPB) essentially wrong on every possible level, and merely the paper result of ragingly arrogant and “tone-deaf,” possibly illegal, behaviors on the part of Becker. And some equally bad lawyerin’ on the part of the GSU attorney, Kerry Heyward.

From the letter:

Your (Becker’s) remarks as quoted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on May 7 are, quite frankly, contemptuous and tone-deaf. Your assertion that “anything with this level of complexity and this level of benefit really is not the kind of thing you can play out in a public forum” is exactly, 100 percent wrong. Things that are “beneficial” will be understood and welcomed by the people they are intended to benefit, unless you hold those people — your students — in such low regard that you believe they are incapable of being reasoned with.

LoMonte then goes on to urge GSU and GPB to not try to get rid of any of their documents associated with their agreement, as he’s gonna sue to the crap out of them. Possibly.

Take time to read the document in its entirety. The SPLC is making all the right legal moves to shut down not only poorly constructed legal agreements, but also, hopefully, the petite bourgeoisie criminals plaguing state organizations such as GPB and GSU.