[Boatanchors] Short Wave Broadcast Folks:

[Jim Wilhite]

Dave part of what you hear may not be a show produced by the owner of the 
station.  Some have quite a bit of air time sold to other organizations who 
produce the shows and furnish them to the station on CD or some media for 
replay.   Also you probably don't understand the dedication of the people 
who volunteer their time to run the station, saving the other expensive 
overhead item, direct and indirect labor costs.

Many of the stations have engineering personnel who keep everything going 
for peanuts compared to commercial interests.  Their DJs are all volunteer 
and they also receive more corporate donations than you might suspect.  Of 
course, the faithful contribute to them which covers a lot of small items 
they need.  They are, in many cases, exempt  from State, Federal and Local 
taxes, which can amount to over 20% of a commercial stations costs.

If staffed by volunteers, eliminate 940 taxes, federal and state 
unemployment taxes, and franchise taxes.  Insurance costs my be born by the 
organization rather than the station and since the staff is voluntary, 
reduced or eliminated costs there for health care.

Just the few items I mention can account for about 50% of a commercial 
operation's overhead.  So the largest expense can easily be power followed 
by equipment repair.

Jim
W5JO


-----Original Message----- 
That's all good, but I still don't understand how
they pay for it all.  Those "deep pockets" would need to
be deeper than the Titanic to run 4-500 KW worth of
SWBC stations and staff 24/7/365, and they don't have
a lot of "old lady" audience to send-in their
"widow's mite," like the tele-vangelist and cable preachers.
There's something else besides that at work here.

Dave S.