Public Broadcasting continues its growth; hopes to have Flint station up by month’s end

(NOTE: This article originally appeared in the November 23, 2009 edition of Central Michigan Life.)

Central Michigan University Public Broadcasting hopes to have WFUM-TV of Flint up and running by the end of the month.


Ed Grant, general manager of CMU Public Broadcasting, has had enough on his plate with WCMU-TV complying with the federally mandated conversion from an analog to a digital signal.

And that was before the CMU Board of Trustees agreed to purchase WFUM-TV of Flint for $1 million from the University of Michigan.

“There’s been some good, bad and ugly,” Grant said of the conversion. “It’s been an extremely expensive conversion for everybody, commercial stations as well as non-commercial stations. It cost us about $14 million.”

The acquisition of WFUM, which will extend from Bay City to metro Detroit, will nearly quadruple CMU Public Broadcasting’s audience, Grant said.