NY Radio: Pamal Donates AM To Keep It On-Air

A struggling  radio station has a new lease on life after its owner gave it to the smallest NPR station in the United States rather than shut it down.

WGHQ 920 AM, Kingston, N.Y., will start broadcasting as part of non-profit WHDD-FM, Sharon, Conn., known as "Robin Hood Radio," Tuesday or New Year's Day, officials of both stations said.

The ownership change, viewed among fans as snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, is a result of a last-minute deal in which WGHQ owner Pamal Broadcasting Ltd. agreed to donate the station's license and transmitter to WHDD owner Tri-State Public Communications Inc., Tri-State co-founder Marshall Miles told United Press International.

The papers were signed Monday, he said.

Tri-State will initially operate the station under a local marketing agreement with Pamal, pending Federal Communications Commission approval.

It announced Dec. 20 it would shutter financially struggling WGHQ at the end of the year.   But Pamal owner and President James J. Morrell changed his mind last week after Miles, who worked for WGHQ in the 1970s, approached him with the idea of donating the station to Tri-State to keep it from going dark.

The station, operating from the second floor of a pre-Revolutionary War stone building, developed a strong community identity over the years but struggled financially in the 1990s with the proliferation of FM stations, and owner Walter C. Maxwell and his family sold it in 1999.

Pamal bought the station in 2007.