Unless you're living in a fur-lined fallout shelter...
You've doubtless seen images or heard tales of the destruction, damage, havoc, and disgusting sludge that Superstorm Sandy brought upon the NJ/NY area. Unfortunately,
WFMU fell victim to storm damage in a myriad of ways, and
we need to recover FAST in order to remain solvent.
We are fortunate to have avoided flooding, and everyone is safe (though many DJs suffered personal damage and dislocation), but the financial realities of
cancelling our annual Record Fair on top of the
substantial electrical damage the storm brought upon our equipment has forced us to beg for your help immediately.
Please make a pledge to help WFMU's storm recovery efforts!
Read on for the gory details concerning WFMU's storm-related crisis.
WFMU's Record Fair is an annual and necessary benefit event that nets approximately $70,000 profit for the station thanks to sales, table fees, and entrance fees. The event involves a
substantial initial layout of funds by WFMU ($80,000): space rental costs (which are incredibly high, the venue is a huge space in prime Manhattan), printing and postage fees for mailing postcards, ad fees for print and online publicity, plus paypal, credit card, and check processing fees for table payments. WFMU rents tables to individual record dealers, the vast majority of whom pre-pay, and this nearly offsets the cost of the space rental.
When the storm hit, power was completely knocked out at the Metropolitan Pavilion (and most of Manhattan below 39th St). Subways were down, streetlights were non-functional, and access points into NYC were flooded. Needless to say,
circumstances beyond our control forced us to cancel the Record Fair.
Cancellation of the Record Fair meant we suddenly needed to refund table fees to record dealers, those same funds were what helped us pay for the space rental (which may or may not be refunded to us, we may have no choice but to apply the money towards next year's fair). On top of that, cancellation meant that WFMU missed out on income from record, CD, and swag sales plus entrance fees. The math is not complicated.
WFMU takes a huge loss from cancelling the Record Fair, on the order of $150,000.
As many of you know,
the storm knocked out power at WFMU's Jersey City studios and at BOTH of our FM transmitter sites. The station was silent from the night of Oct. 29th until the morning of Oct. 30th, when
WFMU began webcasting in exile from various DJs' homes. Late on Oct. 31st, power was restored in Jersey City, and the next morning WFMU resumed webcasting from our Jersey City studios.
When power was restored in Jersey City, we soon discovered that
the outage combined with subsequent electrical surges had caused significant damage to our equipment. To date, here's what we've lost: Ichiban stream computer, WFMU's backup streaming computer (also handles our web-only shows), our interconnectivity equipment at WMFU, as well as plenty of audio processing equipment. WFMU's main ISP is out, our phone system is shot, our fire alarm system is damaged, and we are without a remote access system.
We won't know the extent of the damage until our services are completely restored. We have cobbled together some temporary solutions to these issues, but replacements are inevitable.
WFMU's 91.1 FM transmitter came back on the air on Mon Nov 5th, one week after it was knocked out, but we are still off the air at 90.1 FM. Power was actually restored at 90.1 FM, but electrical damage and/or flooding has rendered broadcasting impossible. We know that some interconnection equipment was damaged, but we are still trying to assess what needs to be replaced.
All of this adds up to one sad truth: Sandy kicked WFMU's ass and the next few months will be incredibly difficult for us. Your support now is essential to our survival. Please pledge now.
Take Me to The WFMU Pledge Page Now!