PRC a cloaked facilitator of KTRU sale
When I came to Rice, I thought of KTRU as one of the most exciting aspects of student life. I admired the station's unique sound: distinctly local, born from a collaboration between community members and students and the collective love of music. Recently, that community was undercut by a unilateral decision, hidden from the public even when public interests were involved; the University of Houston is, after all, a tax-payer supported institution.KTRU's space on the FM dial has been valued at $9.5 million, but what's the real price? The loss of an independent voice, one of Houston's only radio outlets for local artists and Rice's status as one of the few remaining tier-one schools with a student-run radio station. The behind-the-scenes brokering of the sale by an organization called Public Radio Capital, a branch of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, shows the loss of KTRU to be the latest casualty in a countrywide shift toward radio controlled by business interests.