The chairman of the advisory board, Bud White, told Variety that NMC’s board of regents is now considering this proposal.
“We have held meetings with the president of NMC,” he said. “We have told them that our position is that we want [a National Public Radio] stream to continue to flow to Saipan.”
KRNM is the public radio station licensed to NMC and is located on its As Terlaje campus.
Early this year, the college announced that due to its financial constraints, it could no longer subsidize the radio station’s operations.
“[The NMC president] explained to us that the college can no longer afford to operate KRNM,” White said. “We understand that [but the] license that the college has cannot be sold. They can only be re-assigned to another group.”
The recipient of NMC’s license, which was issued by the Federal Communications Commission, should also be a non-profit educational group, White said.
There is an entity on Guam interested on acquiring KRNM’s license, he added.
“It is non-profit and educational and is willing to receive the license and re-broadcast the NPR signal and reprogramming which come out over KPRG on Guam,” he admitted.
White said “this idea will prevent the possible closure” of KRNM.
“We are hopeful that it will be approved by the NMC board of regents at their next meeting and concurred by the KPRG board,” he said.
KRNM was originally established with federal funds and was supposed to be eventually self-sustaining, but this goal was never reached.
Without adequate funding, the college earlier said that it would have to shut down KRNM.
Supporters of the radio station tried to raise funds for its operations, but apparently the money they raised wasn’t enough.
Last month, its station manager for nine years, Carl Pogue, left the island and moved back to the states.
