Good coverage on this bizarre matter! please keep it up. We all sort-of understand that the UW athletic department, and "CoMotion" (formerly Office of Technology Transfer), are "state institutions" yet indistinguishable from corporate endeavors; but (for some of us), it's become a slow realization that KUOW has slipped down that slimy slope as far. If ever an "org chart" was discovered where-in we could point at the first publicly answerable/elected office with the ability to set policy at KUOW, that would be interesting ("pfff. there isn't any! you dumb@#$!")

Tacoma News Tribune reporter Sean Robinson about summed it up on Twitter:

"When cornered officials say they followed the letter of the law, you know they never had any interest in the spirit."

I could still believe it's a giant conspiracy. Generic public group buys the station at PLU's price, finds its harder to run than they thought (buying is one thing, maintaining operations is another) and then UW can rush in and scoop it up for $2 million in a few years.

HW3. I'd reverse your equation. Far harder to raise $7m in 5.5 months (while still raising $ for operations) than for a crew of experienced public radio folks to fund and run a (now even more popular) station. I imagine that when this is successful, they'll benefit from a tailwind of goodwill from both individual donors and institutional sponsors for a year or so, giving them some runway. Matt Martinez is a super smart guy and has run the drive well. Stephen Tan, the "Friends" board chair is an extremely able attorney and seems to have managed the legal/structural side beautifully so far.

KUOW's board, if it's operating as it should, may have some governance questions for the station. Curious that KUOW made a six figure investment in a streaming jazz service to 'learn what the public wants' when they were theoretically just months from taking ownership of a jazz service that already has decades of data on that topic. Best use of station funds?