Told you about this station a couple weeks ago, and the McCarthy-ite mess being stirred up locally by the MSM to censure and censor its programming. Anyway, not only is the station a broadcaster non grata, anyone with the audacity to listen to it and like it may be subject to persona non grata status on these interwebs with a quickness. This cancel culture is desperately in need of some rough disciplining.
kcur | The man responsible for broadcasting Russian state programming in the Kansas City area says he always dreamed of owning a radio station.
Today he owns two, plus a small fleet of radio transmitters across the Kansas City metro.
But
money remains tight, he laid off his staff years ago and the stations
sell airtime to local residents and religious organizations at cut-rate
prices. He hasn’t given himself a paycheck in months.
So Pete
Schartel’s ears perked up a while back when he heard that Radio Sputnik
pays $30,000 a month to broadcast its programming in Washington, D.C.
“I’m
going, ‘Oh my Lord, that’s twice what my whole budget is,’” he told
KCUR in a two-hour interview at his flagship station, KCXL, last week.
“They must have some money. Let’s investigate this.”
Schartel
found Arnold Ferolito, the broker who negotiated the 2017 deal to
broadcast Russian programming 24 hours a day in Washington, and made his
pitch: “We’re right in the middle of the country. This would be a good
test market.”
Ferolito agreed. Late last year, Schartel began
broadcasting Radio Sputnik for a couple of hours each morning on KCXL,
an AM radio station based in Liberty, Missouri.
The
English-language broadcast is produced by the U.S.-based branch of
Rossiya Segodnya (“Russia Today”), an organization created in 2013 by
Russian President Vladimir Putin to promote Russian interests abroad.
Schartel’s
listeners — accustomed to eclectic programming that ranges from music
to Bible study to far-right conspiracy theorist and talk show host Alex
Jones — seemed to react positively.
“And I’m going, ‘Hmm, I
think we’ve got something that some people like here,’” he said. “And if
they’ll pay me for it, that’s even better.”
In January, Schartel
and his wife, Jonne, agreed to broadcast Radio Sputnik for six hours a
day for three years on three frequencies: 1140 AM, 102.9 FM and 104.7
FM.
