Dear Listener,
The challenges WFMU has faced haven't exactly crept up on pretty little
cat feet. They've come pounding at our front door, breaking the windows and
shaking the record shelves. Whether it was the organized attacks of our
fellow public broadcasters in 1989, the financial collapse of the college
that once owned us, or our own subsequent near-bankruptcy, the events that
shook WFMU ultimately made us stronger because our listeners came
through when we needed them.
Hopefully, that's how it will be this time around as well. While our
current challenges are more subtle than in previous years, they're no less
threatening to the freedoms we like to commit on the air. As our 2005
fundraiser kicks off, we hope that we can once again count on you to support
our strange and essential calling, and bring us out the other side, stronger
than before.
When WFMU went freeform in 1968, freedom of expression was an ideal that
stations proudly strived for, with the FCC laying the legal groundwork for
hundreds of FM stations liberating their DJs and the airwaves. Today, things
are a tad different. The FCC we face today compels TV stations to obscure
the anatomy of children's cartoon characters, out of fear of federal
prosecution.
For a radio station dedicated to musical diversity and spontaneity, the
FCC's unprecedented crackdown on broadcast speech is, to put it mildly, a
challenge. But as we tiptoe around the FCC's ill-defined language minefield,
we remain as committed as ever to radio as human expression. WFMU's style of
hype-free, unvarnished, diverse radio seems all the more unusual as radio
formats narrow their focus, and as the winds of intolerance and censorship
waft through our culture.
But with you at our side, we will weather this cultural storm and emerge
from it, our integrity intact. We've got great things planned for the next
year, from replacing our main antenna to improve the 91.1 FM signal, to
upgrades at our 90.1 site, and still more services and options for our
ever-growing online audience.
The best way to both celebrate and strengthen WFMU is to take part in
our annual potlatch, barnraising and festival of swag that we like to call
the Marathon. This year, the sacred rites take place from March 7th to 20th.
I hope you'll be able to take part in it, by pledging online here, or giving us a call from March 7
- 20th at 800-989-9368. If you're new to our fundraisers, check out the
links above for the cavalcade of complexity that is the WFMU Marathon. We've
assembled mountains of prizes, organized our DJs
into bloodthirsty fundraising tag-teams, fired
up the Marathon web-cam, and put together
special programs and new lines of swag. There's lots of levels and ways to
pledge, and great swag from the station
as well as from each DJ.
And if you can help us out by making a paid pledge of
$75 or more by March 18th, we'll throw in our full color "Freedom Is
Freeform" propaganda poster. Early pledges really help us out.
The government men might be able to pixillate cartoon butts. They might
be able to restrict interstate movement of animated sponges. But they can't
extinguish the pulse of freedom that's coursed through our transmitters for
going on 50 years.
Hope we'll hear from you during the upcoming Marathon.
-- Ken Freedman (Send e-mail)
P.S. "Escuche" means listen.
