Money, not continued pubradio service, talks in bids for Salt Lake's KCPW

There's a bidding war going on for KCPW-FM/AM in Salt Lake City. Current licensee Community Wireless has told former g.m. Ed Sweeney that he needs to match a $3.7 million offer from religious broadcasters if the station is to remain a locally controlled NPR news outlet, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The Community Wireless board had given Sweeney until March 15 to mount a viable bid for the station. Last week, Wastach Public Media, a newly formed Utah non-profit established by Sweeney, offered to pay $2.4 million for KCPW-FM. "I feel betrayed," Sweeney tells Tribune blogger Glen Warchol. "I feel pissed off." In breaking the story on his blog yesterday, Warchol describes Community Wireless's actions as "perplexing show of arrogance" in which KCPW management appears to have turned its back "on the community that has supported them for two decades."