Last day for WQUN, Hamden-New Haven

[Martin Waters]

     WQUN (AM), 1220, goes silent at 6 p.m. today. I was lucky enough to work there for several years before one of the many nibbling budget cuts took away the outside news reporter budget.
     Quinnipiac University, which bought the station in 1997, announced in January it was pulling the plug after 22 years. The Board of Trustees and new president wanted to stop the subsidy that was needed to augment local ad sales -- which I wildly estimate may have been a few hundred thousand dollars a year.
    It's been a great little community radio station -- but, IMO, seems to show why there are hardly any small, local stations like that still standing, as the operating cost always exceeded the advertising base they were able to build. The limited signal didn't help -- 1 kW day, 305 watts night. Two years ago, the university refused to provide the money when WQUN had a good chance to get an FM translator.
    The axe fell only six months after former long-time Quinnipiac President John Leahy retired. The station had been one of his personal initiatives to build up the university, locally, regionally and nationally. It was purchased in conjunction with setting up an academic program in broadcasting. It also broadcast and streamed play-by-play for university sports.  Students were involved with WQUN as interns, but it was strictly a commercial, professional operation.
    For a long time, a faction on the Board of Trustees questioned the spending. With Leahy gone, the end was near. So it wasn't a total surprise. The university has been bombarded with thousands of people signing up to a "save the station" facebook page. The daily New Haven Register has carried many dozens of letters to the editor since January.
   Yesterday, the reporter there who has been covering the station's demise in a long series of articles was refused entry to the station to talk to the staff for a story he put in today's paper. They all would have been respectful and professional in their comments, as they have been on the air. Instead he reported how the university PR office stonewalled him.The school says it has been in contact with a couple potential buyers for the station.
    For radio folk in the WQUN orbit, it's a weird, sad day. And made weirder because WPLJ (FM) goes away at 7 p.m. today.
 
    .