St. Louis Radio: Media Group Wants Romanik AM Stations

Four AM radio stations tied to St. Louis area shock-host Bob Romanik  — including one that carried a Romanik show which was regularly criticized for being racist — will lose their licenses March 30, due to action last month by the Federal Communications Commission.

But if a national nonprofit group gets its way, those four stations would not cease to exist: They would be run by the perennially political Steven C. and Michael V. Roberts of St. Louis, according to Radio & Television Business Report.

David Honig, co-founder of the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, pitched his plan Monday in a letter to the FCC, the industry publication reported.

Under Honig's proposal, his council would assume ownership of the stations and then let the Roberts operate them through a LMA agreement, reports St. Louis Today.

Bob Romanik

Honig said losing four stations in an urban market, the 24th largest in the U.S., would be "unprecedented and devastating."

He said his council wants to save the stations because of their "value in a market with a large African American population."

Steven Roberts told this bureau Wednesday that the FCC's decision on the proposal is crucial. "If they don't agree, then those stations are dead. They'll go dark. They're just not issuing new licenses."

The Roberts have been active Democratic politicos for years. Both have served as St. Louis aldermen and ran unsuccessfully for mayor.

The fate of the four Romanik-related stations is in question because of the FCC's order on Feb. 19 to terminate the stations' license renewal efforts.

Those efforts came under fire after St. Clair County Chairman Mark Kern complained to the FCC that Romanik had been deceiving federal regulators by hiding his ownership of the stations.

Romanik is effectively prohibited from holding a station license because of a previous felony conviction for bank fraud. A former Washington Park police chief, Romanik also obstructed justice during a federal organized crime probe in the 1990s.

Billing himself as the “Grim Reaper of Radio” on one of the stations, KQQZ 1190 AM in Fairview Heights, Romanik was consistently lambasted for making racist, homophobic and misogynistic slurs.