Jeffrey Yorke – Radio and Records
Holding up the nightmarish Jan. 12 death of KDND-FM/Sacramento-listener Jennifer Strange as an example of ratings over public service, attorneys for Royce International Broadcasting allege in a petition to the FCC that Entercom is “a highly-leveraged criminal enterprise that cannot be relied on to serve the public interest.” The 8-page petition filed with the FCC on Wednesday morning (Jan. 24) argues that Entercom should be prevented by the FCC in getting the licenses of 16 CBS radio stations in Tennessee, Ohio, Kentucky, Texas and New York.
Last summer, Royce filed another petition to deny the transfer of licenses to Entercom by CBS and bases its “First Supplement” filing “on new evidence not available at the time the Petition to Deny was filed,” it says in the most recent filing. The filing claims that “Entercom is responsible for the tragic death of Jennifer Strange.” It continues, “It was a stupid radio stunt designed to raise the ratings and revenues of Entercom’s KDND-FM in Sacramento, California until it went horribly wrong.” But it adds that "Entercom and its personnel callously disregarded the warnings.”
“There is no evidence in the record to show that Entercom cares about anything other than generating revenues, by whatever means,” attorney Arthur V. Belendiuk of the D.C. law firm of Smithwick & Belendiuk, P.C., writes in the petition. “It certainly did not care about the public it was licensed to serve when it solicited and accepted illegal bribes from record companies [referring to the State of New York Attorney General’s investigation of Entercom for payola practices]. Nor did it care about the public interest or the Commission’s rules when it repeatedly broadcast indecent material at a time when children were likely to be in the audience.... As this last tragedy demonstrates, it is willing to do anything for money, including recklessly endangering the lives of the public it has been licensed to serve,” asserts the petition. “Entercom has one of the worst records of any broadcaster in history. It is the poster child for corruption and bribery.”
Reached by R&R for comment, Entercom’s attorney David D. Burns of Latham & Watkins, LLP, said he had not seen the petition and declined to comment.
Earlier Wednesday morning, Roger Dreyer, a Sacramento attorney for the Strange family, told MSNBC that Entercom has paid the family “only lip service” in response to their questions about who at Entercom conceived and approved the “Hold your Wee for a Wii” radio station promotion that caused Strange to drink about 224 ounces of water without urinating and subsequently led to her death from water poisoning. Dreyer said that he would give Entercom until the end of Wednesday to respond to the questions and that he intended to file a wrongful death suit in civil court on Thursday if he did not get answers. |