Arlington Independent Media\u2019s website and flagship radio station are down, but the bedraggled nonprofit\u2019s leadership has few answers about what happened.<\/p>\n
Multiple tipsters informed ARLnow that WERA, AIM\u2019s low-power FM radio station, stopped broadcasting its lo-fi beats<\/a> earlier this month. Additionally, AIM\u2019s website<\/a> now directs to a page reading \u201cbandwidth limit exceeded.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his\/her bandwidth limit,\u201d the webpage says. \u201cPlease try again later.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to an emailed query directed at AIM\u2019s board of directors, ARLnow received a message from someone unaffiliated with current leadership. They identified themselves as the person in charge of the websites for AIM and WERA.<\/p>\n \u201cI emailed the board and staff when the URLs were about to expire, but never heard from them,\u201d the emailer said. \u201cThe WERA URL<\/a> expired a few months ago and it looks like someone else hopped on it. I didn\u2019t want the ArlingtonMedia.org URL to be lost, so I went ahead and picked it up when they let it expire.\u201d<\/p>\n AIM\u2019s president, secretary and producers\u2019 representative all resigned in March and April, but two board members remain: Don Masters and Ted Schneider.<\/p>\n Masters informed ARLnow that he needed to get more information on the website, and was unaware WERA had gone dark.<\/p>\n \u201cThe County controls all access to the property and operation, so you need to contact them for answers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n However, county spokesperson Erika Moore told ARLnow that the county \u201cdoes not have any role in AIM\u2019s operations.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWERA is licensed to and wholly operated by AIM, and the County has no knowledge of WERA\u2019s broadcasting status,\u201d Moore wrote. \u201cCurrently, the County\u2019s only involvement with AIM is the continued storage of some of AIM\u2019s property in County-owned facilities, which AIM can access by request.\u201d<\/p>\n In a final email<\/a> to AIM producers in April, former Producers\u2019 Representative Jeff Hoffman said that leaders were working to find another entity to assume control of the radio station at 96.7 FM.<\/p>\n \u201cDue to AIM\u2019s financial challenges \u2014 no cash reserves, significant debt, and limited county and community support \u2014 [former AIM President Amanda MacKaye], Ted, Don, and others have been working to identify an organization willing to take over WERA\u2019s FCC license,\u201d Hoffman wrote. \u201cI don\u2019t have details on the status, timeline, or likelihood of a transfer, but discussions are ongoing, and nothing is imminent.\u201d<\/p>\n He noted that, if at some point AIM could no longer keep WERA on the air, it could file a six-month request to go silent with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).<\/p>\n AIM hasn\u2019t had any paid staff since March 2024, when the nonprofit\u00a0laid off its entire staff<\/a>\u00a0following months of financial uncertainty and\u00a0internal divisions<\/a>. Around that time, it also pulled the plug on WERA, which had been broadcasting an endless loop of lo-fi beats since December 2023.<\/p>\n Over the following months, AIM\u2019s remaining leaders and members batted around ideas for fundraising and restarting programming. The nonprofit reinvigorated its calls for county help in early February, as it faced an impending deadline to resume WERA broadcasting in order to keep its license with the FCC.<\/p>\n The nonprofit urged the county to release the results of an independent audit into the organization\u2019s finances. The county complied, publishing a report that suggested AIM failed to provide adequate documentation for over $1 million in expenditures, including payments to dozens of third-party contractors.<\/p>\n The shoddy documentation extended to $414,763 in costs incurred on credit and debit cards, as well as via checks, wire transfers and mobile payment apps. It included $18,254 to employees outside of the payroll, and $9,030 to former AIM CEO Whytni Kernodle outside of the payroll.<\/p>\n In his email to AIM producers, Hoffman said that he was leaving because \u201cno new content production is anticipated in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a privilege to serve as your Producers\u2019 Representative, and I truly hope to see and hear you on the air again in the future,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arlington Independent Media\u2019s website and flagship radio station are down, but the bedraggled nonprofit\u2019s leadership has few answers…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":108481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[69188,171,975,9457,50,422,67,132,68,42897],"class_list":{"0":"post-108480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-arlington-independent-media","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-mystery","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-radio","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-website"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114949832647779597","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}