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“There just wasn’t a good relationship
between [Feulner] and KUER, and so the rest of
KCPW was kind of associated with that,” operations
manager Ellis said. “They actually had
a meeting with [KUER]—we’re working with
each other, we communicate more, we figure
out when we’re going to be doing pledge drives
and whether we’re going to be doing them at the
same time or different times.”

Sweeney is leery of discussing the station’s
relationship with Feulner, just as Feulner won’t
talk about Sweeney. “That’s like talking about an
old girlfriend,” Sweeney said. “It’ll just open up
old wounds.”
But Ellis said Feulner was not well-liked around
KCPW, and he often sent board member Joe Wrona
to deliver news to the station because Feulner was
“never a good people person.”
“Whenever he came around it was like, ‘Oh,
God, the boss man’s here,’” Ellis said. “He kind of
came with a dark cloud every time.” Feulner said
since he was bouncing so much between KCPW
and KPCW trying to save the Salt Lake City station
during the last two years, perhaps some people on
the operations side of KCPW felt neglected.
Quoting figures from Arbitron Inc.’s radio ratings
service, Sweeney said KCPW’s listenership
has increased since the station changed hands—
from 27,800 weekly in the summer Wasatch Public
Media first bought it to 61,300 weekly in January
2009. But after a reporter, Faroe Robinson,
recently was let go, KCPW’s staff was stretched
too thin to continue producing its only live local
show, Politics Up Close, which went on hiatus
June 5 and won’t return until October. When it
becomes financially feasible, KCPW hopes to
bring back the public-service hour it used to air
and move its satellite dish from Park City to Salt
Lake City, Sweeney said.
Feulner said it would be unfair for him to
judge how KCPW and KPCW are doing since he
let go of the reins. But, the stations will succeed,
he said, as long as they adhere to the mission
statement that guided KPCW from Day 1: provide
a quality source of local news that holds public
officials accountable. Feulner said he isn’t sure if
the stations are doing that.

In a move that might signal a new direction for the station, the board replaced Quayle, whose background is in nonprofit work, with former CBS division president Jonathan Klein, whose 31-year career has been spent in broadcasting.
Unlike Feulner, Klein is not an on-air personality—
news director Leslie Thatcher fills that role
and is a “worthy successor” to Feulner, KPCW
reporter Rick Brough said. Yet, to many in Park
City, Feulner is synonymous with KPCW—“the
voice of community radio” there, as Park City
Mayor Dana Williams put it.
“He’s one of the best interviewers in the nation, period,” Park City public affairs director Myles Rademan said. “If you watch television or you listen to NPR—there’s no one better than him in terms of knowing the issues and getting hardhitting interviews with people.”
Feulner was notoriously tough on interviewees,
according to Rademan, Williams, and former
KPCW host and program director Don Gomes.
Public officials knew they wouldn’t be able to
hoodwink Feulner, who often had a better grasp of
the issues than they did—for a couple of years Utah
Sen. Orrin Hatch wouldn’t call KPCW back for
an interview. During the annual Sundance Film
Festival, preening actors and directors sometimes
got taken down a peg, Gomes said.
“When somebody came in and left after an
interview, the main thing is they felt like, ‘Well, I
didn’t just have to mail it in; I was there and really
had to hold myself accountable,’” Gomes said.
Being on the air and reporting news was always the point, Feulner said, and that’s what he wanted to get back to focusing on when he proposed the change in his contract to the board last year. His drive to create local- and national-news programming was the reason Feulner left commercial radio and started the station after the FCC changed regulations, requiring less news on commercial radio, he said.