ELY- “End of the Road Radio” has apparently reached the literal end of the road, toppling into a financial abyss with no emergency rescue to be had.
WELY FM 94.5 and AM 1450, the local Ely broadcasting icon with the clever catchphrase that has been operated by the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa since 2005, will close for good on June 1 after 17 years of mounting financial losses
“During that time, staff worked extremely hard to make the station profitable, but despite those efforts, the venture lost over $1.7 million. That includes the purchase price when Bois Forte took ownership of the station in 2005,” said Bois Forte Director of Public Relations Brian K. Anderson in a press release issued Wednesday.
Word began spreading on Sunday after a WELY radio personality announced the impending closure in a social media post about the upcoming end of his show.
Christopher David Hanson, who has hosted “Color of my Radio Minnesota Music Hour” on WELY for more than six years, said he was “completely crushed” that the program was coming to an end as “the station is set to close down June 1.”
“I’m sad for the folks of Ely and surrounding communities,” Hanson wrote. “I’m sad for all the bands and online listeners.”
Bois Forte Tribal Council District 1 Rep. Shane Drift also responded Sunday to an inquiry posted to his official Facebook group page by confirming the shutdown was in the works. Since being elected to the council in 2018, Drift has been a vocal advocate for examining and bettering tribal business practices, including evaluating the financial losses of WELY. Drift noted on his page in February that he raised his concerns about the station at a meeting of the Bois Forte Development Corporation, indicating that if the tribe couldn’t sell the station, they should look at closing it.
“I’ve been pushing for the tribe to do better business. This is a hard decision, but it’s a step in the right direction,” Drift said when contacted Tuesday by the Timberjay. Drift noted that he was speaking for himself and not specifically on behalf of the Band or the tribal council.
The Timberjay also reached out to Bois Forte Tribal Chair Cathy Chavers and other Band officials on Tuesday, but did not receive any official response until minutes before press time on Wednesday.
Opening first as an AM-band station in 1954 and adding an FM simulcast in 1992, the station has had a long list of owners over the years, and it’s not the first time that WELY has had trouble generating revenue.
The station closed for a month in 1984 due to lack of funds, but the community responded with a $9,000 fundraising effort to help get the station back on the air.
It took legendary CBS News “On the Road” reporter Charles Kuralt to save the station again when it went belly-up in 1995. Kuralt, who fell in love with Ely as he did numerous stories there over the years, bought the station at a court-supervised auction and poured thousands of dollars of his own into upgrades. However, Kuralt’s dreams were sadly cut short when he died in 1997.
Bois Forte bought the station in 2005 when Boundary Waters Broadcasters, Inc. put it up for sale.
However, the Band’s purchase coincided with a 15-year-long decline in radio advertising revenues of more than 40 percent nationwide, according to the National Association of Broadcasters.
“We have been working behind the scenes to find a buyer that could continue operating the station, but our latest plans recently fell through,” said Chavers in the press release. “While we would have preferred to keep the station open in the hopes another buyer would emerge, we needed to move ahead with this decision.”
WELY staff, which includes one full-time employee and eight part-time employees, was informed of the decision to close down late last week.
“We have been working behind the scenes to find a buyer that could continue operating the station, but our latest plans recently fell through,” said Chavers.
“While we would have preferred to keep the station open in the hopes another buyer would emerge, we needed to move ahead with this decision.”
Reactions
“My initial reaction was heartbreak and sadness,” said WELY’s General Manager Brett Ross
“This station has so much history and means so much to the town. The fact is, the people of Ely owned this station and there will be a big void once we leave the airwaves.”
As manager of local public access station Ely Area Television and a former WELY employee for two years, Todd Crego said losing the station will leave a hole in the town’s social and entertainment landscape.
“It’s incredibly sad – it feels like the end of an era in a way,” Crego said. “(WELY’s) Saturday morning polka is such an Ely thing.”
Crego said changing technology was a likely influence in the station’s demise.
“It’s so much easier to get pretty much whatever you want whenever you want, first with the likes of Napster (an early digital music file-sharing network), then into iTunes and now services like Spotify, where everything is just available with a click of a button,” he said. “But I still feel like there is a heavy niche for a local radio audience. There are just the things that are so quintessentially Ely, like doing the Santa letters from the kids every Christmas and the polka show, all of those things that are so just community driven. Those are the things that I think about when I think about WELY.”