Why did the radio station program "Issues, Etc" cease to be broadcast?
Why were the program's presenter and producer fired on the spot?
Why did the program's website get taken down?
Why did the radio station and its website get pulled for a number of hours?
All questions nobody is answering to enquiring minds' satisfaction.
If you are unfamiliar with either the program, or the station, some background information might be handy. The station is historically one of the earliest church-owned stations in the world, and was the originator of the weekly broadcast "The Lutheran Hour" which was syndicated to many countries, including Australia where this page is hosted.
The program "Issues, etc" was in dialogue and interview format, and because it was factual and applied gospel teaching to everyday living, accepting no watering-down of its evangelical origins, it brought many converts to Christianity through itself. Converts, one might add, who stayed the course and ran the race. No wishy-washy Father-Christmas-style Jesus for the presenter, whose converts disappeared as soon as the road got tough.
On the night that the station was taken off-air - the Tuesday befor Easter, the tuesday of "Holy Week" as many Christians know it, (for which I have no evidence as I can't hear an AM transmission from 14,000 miles away) the website www.kfuoam.org was also taken down, and also that of the issues, etc program known as www.issuesetc.org.
I did a whois enquiry on both sites. I also did a ping on both sites. The results are here, along with my comments at the time, based on what I saw at the time...
website (kfuoam.org) saved page here
whois saved page here
ping ping kfuoam.org
Request timed out.
Conclusion...
Pinging kfuoam.org [216.88.181.226] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 216.88.181.226:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
The server is not online and DNS has been removed.
The webpage "Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)" is on redirection
Possibly the domain name is cancelled
whois saved page here
ping ping issuesetc.org
Reply from 199.239.224.112: bytes=32 time=301ms TTL=52
Conclusion...
This suggests to me that the domain name and the broadcasting license for
KFUOAM have both been cancelled because there would be no reason to keep
one without the other.
The issuesetc.org website being registered to the chorch organisation, they have
likely merely closed it down pending assigning new people to run it.
That is my considered opinion based on the above investigation.Pinging issuesetc.org [199.239.224.112] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 199.239.224.112: bytes=32 time=301ms TTL=52
Reply from 199.239.224.112: bytes=32 time=301ms TTL=52
RReply from 199.239.224.112: bytes=32 time=301ms TTL=52.
Ping statistics for 199.239.224.112:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 300ms, Maximum = 301ms, Average = 300ms
The server is on line,
Or at any rate a server that has the DNS pointed to it is online
The webpage "Issues, Etc. is no longer available." may be a temporary front page
That domain name does not appear to be cancelled yet on that basis.
The KFUOAM.com website, as you can see from the saved page, looks exactly like a domain page for an unfinancial site, or one which has been cancelled with or by a domain registrar. Take my word for it, I've seen many, including one of my own which there was a bungle over, and which I could not get back without "buying the name back" for at least $100. Look here for buying it back, and here for a site for sale. That is mine, for which I refused to pay a starting bid of $60, and months later they are still trying to sell it :)
As the Synod owned it, I suggest that they may have had second thoughts within six hours or so to not proceed down the path of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater", reinstating the website and turned the power back on the transmitter.
There would be no reason in the website looking like a "for sale" webpage unless the owner of the kfuoam.com - who is also the owner of the kfuoam.org (notice the difference) - had already decided to sell the station and its website. To sell it, it would need to have a commercial broadcast license issued by the FCC, rather than a religious one, so the .org site would have no relevance, would it?
If they intended to keep the station, they would have the DNS applied for the .com website to the same server directory as used for the .org site.
Ummm - Unless they didn't know what they were doing.
Incidentally, this is standard practice in web hosting, particularly with what are called vhosts - virtual hosts. I have two such sites set up myself and speak as a webmaster and hostmaster.
What may not be public knowledge, although the information is in the public domain and can be easily found, is that the NAACP attempted to shut the station down and acquite the license issued by the FCC in the late 1990s, using thoroughly unethical methods. That information is also in the public domain, and one document from that era is filed as a copy on this site as proof.
The cost to the synod was probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars back then, and just maybe this could have had a bearing on the finances of the synod being heavily scrutinised. I refer the reader to the sister site about the Issues program. Link at the bottom of the page.
And this supports the point I make in the paragraph above about having the broadcast licenses and website domains up for sale.
Not so lucky, though, with the issuesetc.org website, though. Either the site was physically moved, or more likely, the DNS was moved to a different server or directory on the same server, or something similar... This can be done in several ways.
My personal opinion is that a very high person in the administration - higher than the Communications Director - had actually made a decision to revoke the broadcast licence and the website. It would be interesting if anyone with personal access to people in the FCC could discover if this line had started to be pursued, although the FCC is not involved with the website... the registrar the domain was bought through would need to be contacted about that.
My conclusion at the time proved incorrect, as shown by further checks 18 hours later., when the KFUO website was back up. However I did random url checks on kfuo.org and kfuo.com with no response during an approximate six hours after which I went to bed, corresponding to daybreak at St. Louis because I'm in Australia.
When the KFUO-AM website came back online the next day, it was very obvious that from the time it took to load regular pages that there was no way streaming or even downloading of sound tracks would be possible. In my opinion the site was moved to a different host - on a very much slower "pipe", and probably to save the station - and the synod - money.
However, they have not admitted this publicly, which is really an affront to their listeners' intelligence - to whom they have lied in saying that the downloads are still available. Several people far nearer to the station than I have confirmed to me (personally) that downloads are no longer possible, and they have to rely on other websites for podcasts.
This website has saved a number of pages from the internet about this debacle, and point you to them further down the page; the webmaster has always done this, because pages have a habit of vanishing, particularly when pressure is put on others to take down pages which they had published, because of the frequent fearing and dislike of truth by the bureaucracy which rules us.
There have been enquiries from many about this fiasco, debacle, or whatever you may choose to call it. The trails all seem to point towards a collusion between the station top managment and the Missouri Synod's top honcho. No proof, but it certainly smells that way.
There have been open letters published too, and it appears that the standard reply from the Synod (when they have bothered to reply, sadly) has been typical of the theology of "keep them in the dark, like when you grow mushrooms" and a typical example can be found here from my own site archive...
Thank you for your e-mail. We are sorry for your disappointment over the change in KFUO-AM programming. However, we hope you will enjoy our future programs.
Sincerely in Christ,
David L. Strand
Executive Director
Board for Communication Services
The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod
314-996-1200
You can find saved pages in this directory.
You may wonder who this webmaster is. I am a Christian, although not of the Lutheran persuasion; however I have real life and on-line friends who are Lutherans. An ex-Mormon, living in Australia, who became a Christian in 1986 resulting from a real conversion experience, not a warm fuzzy "she'll be right mate" one :)
Oh, and we have a page about the program "Issues, Etc" too, at http://issuesetc.doesntexist.org and there we explore the reaction to the cancelling of the show, and the unacceptable responses from those who lead the Missouri Synod in a right reverend way.
©2008 eagles-at-chatministries.org
