KAZU won’t merge with KUSP. Beyond this, there is no plan.

CSUMB officials say they hope to move KAZU onto campus as early as summer. No one knows how much relocating the university-owned public radio station will cost, although one donor says she’s heard estimates upwards of “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Once KAZU moves onto campus, its programming might change, although currently, there’s no plan for that, either. “Clearly the NPR all-talk format and the entertainment alignment has been successful,” says Jack Jewett, California State University-Monterey Bay vice president for university advancement. “What I would see is some opportunity to tell some of the great stories that are going on at our university. Student involvement certainly could be a part of it.”

KAZU’s leadership will change, too. CSUMB recently announced a newly created position, executive director of strategic communications, that would be filled by Scott Faust, former executive editor of The Salinas Californian, who left his gig at the daily paper and started his new post March 3. “As we bring the station onto campus,” Jewett says, “certainly it will be recognized as one of the several communication tools we have available to us. [Faust] will have a prominent role in helping the station develop.”

But first: moving KAZU on campus, from its current Pacific Grove-based station. Jewett says a business plan for the relocation will be presented to the CSUMB Foundation Board of Directors at some future date. The foundation owns the station and its license, and while individual donors and underwriting sales are up, KAZU has lost money since the foundation bought the license in 2000. CSUMB’s unrecovered costs total more than $1 million.

Still, Jewett says “the trend line is very, very positive.” He expects operating losses for this fiscal year to be about $75,000, compared with $135,000 in 2006. He says moving the station onto campus eventually will reduce its costs. “We believe the reduction of operating costs over a period of time, probably three or four years, would pay for the cost of the move.”

Asked how long the CSUMB Foundation will continue to financially bail out KAZU, Jewett says, “I’m not going to look into that crystal ball.”

In 2006, CSUMB President Diane Harrison directed staff to find a way to eliminate KAZU’s operating subsidy and improve the station’s public service. KAZU began talking with its Santa Cruz neighbor, KUSP, about the future of public radio on the Central Coast, and by February 2007, the two stations began considering a merger.

KAZU and KUSP compete for listeners – and their money. Both broadcast in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. A September 2007 study concluded that combining operations was the way to go. Joining forces would cut overhead costs, eliminate paying for duplicate NPR shows and allow the stations to put more resources into local news programming.

“With other public radio stations around the country, often times they operate multiple stations under one umbrella operation, which creates economies of scale that no one station could support,” says Marc Hand, managing director of Public Radio Capital, who was hired as a consultant on the potential KAZU-KUSP merger. “In terms of community benefit, it allows stations to provide more diversity of programming.”

But then the university did an about face. At its Feb. 28 meeting in closed session, the foundation board unanimously voted to ditch all attempts to combine the two radio stations. Jewett says the board met in private because the proposed merger involves “personnel matters.” Harrison, who also sits on the Northern California Public Broadcasting board, recused herself from the vote. “The board felt that their decision best served the present and future needs of the station,” Jewett says.

Not everyone agrees.

“The real goal was to stop the hemorrhaging for CSU and to try to make things work for public radio on the Central Coast,” says local Assemblyman John Laird. “And somehow the end result didn’t address either one of these goals.”

Susie Franklin, a retired nonprofit executive and major fundraiser for KAZU and CSUMB, sat on the working group that proposed combining the two radio stations. “I’ve worked in nonprofits for 30 years,” she says. “I’ve seen a lot of them try to merge and I’ve never seen one where it made more sense.

“Instead of making progress, the university’s decision has really taken us backwards. If there had been questions or discussion, and then the decision was made, I could live with that. I’d be disappointed but I’d be OK. The university gave the appearance of doing everything they could do to discourage public input.”

Meanwhile, KUSP has launched a 100-day campaign to find out what listeners want, which ultimately will result in a new programming “road map” for the radio station and its website.