Re: WEVD (was WFAN New York)

[Mark Shneyder <mshbc@bu.edu>]

On Sat, 2 Aug 1997, 'A. Joseph Ross' wrote:

> 
> Last week on LTAR, Donna was talking about the fact that religious
> broadcasters seem to be only Christian, and that there don't seem to be
> many Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist broadcasters.  While the Forward is
> hardly a religious organization, WEVD is the only station I know of owned
> by an explicitly Jewish organization (As opposed to owners like Arnie
> Ginsburg who just happen to be Jewish).  Are there any others?
> 

I guess you could make a claim that WBRS-FM in Waltham is licensed to 
a Jewish organization.

As far as WEVD goes, Dan is totally correct. It was never owned by Eugene
Victor Debs who was a major labor leader in Midwest and wasnt even
Jewish. Lithanian-born Abe Cahan, the founder of Jewish Forward, and his
alies, joined Debs' movement after an idealogical split Cahan had with
Socialists back East. Debs who even tried to run for US Presidency was
just happy to get all that support from New York and Philly. He didnt have
a clue what the Forward Association was really all about. 
Later, when Forward acquired the station it named in Debs' honor. (my dad
was a member of New York-based Workmen's Circle for many years). By the
way, SLP is not a Communist organization as many number of people take
them to be.

To raise money for the newspaper which went from daily to weekly combined
English/Yiddish edition in 1984, the Forward Association sold the FM
frequency for $40 million dollars to Spanish broadcasters back in 1987.
The original Forward building on Lower East side was also sold to Chinese
Immigrant Society. 

Today, the Forward(located in the new Workmen's Circle building)
publishes its weekly editions in 3 languages : English(24,000),
Yiddish(9,000) and Russian(4,000). In its glory days, the Forward outsold
New York Times with its daily Chicago, Philly, LA and.
of course, NY editions. 

I believe WEVD-AM still delivers a single Yiddish newscast every
afternoon. I will have to check when I go to the City next week.

- -Mark

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