For immediate release

January 31, 2025. St. Louis, MO. On Friday afternoon KDHX announced the cessation of live broadcasting and the termination of all volunteers and Associate Members whose only role was producing content (conveniently leaving only the Board of Directors as associates and scant others).

The League of Volunteer Enthusiasts (LOVE) of KDHX condemns the current management’s decision to effectively end KDHX.

KDHX has been a cultural and musical icon to this community for almost 40 years. Its demise at the hands of Executive Director Kelly Wells and the current management was both preventable and predictable. And despite Board President Gary Pierson’s assertion, they were most certainly not caused by any lawsuits brought by the community but in disregard of them.

The actions of Wells and the current Board of Directors are an affront to the volunteers on whose backs the station was built and the community that has supported the station in so many ways for the last 38 years.

Right now, KDHX, under the direction of Kelly Wells and Gary Pierson, is airing previously recorded content produced by the volunteers they have just fired — and without the consent of those volunteers. To call this callous is an understatement.

For those of you who are shocked or surprised by these announcements, we encourage you to join the fight to save KDHX from the abuses and incompetence that have brought our community station to this point.

LOVE of KDHX is already researching any and all legal and/or other responses to the unnecessary and harmful actions of the Board and the Executive Director.

On the heels of a recently filed lawsuit asking the courts to remove the individual members of the Board of Directors, we ask St. Louis to support those disenfranchised Associate Members and to help us block the sale or lease of KDHX’s license and transmitter to any organization that does not support the goals and values upon which the station was founded.

We encourage those Associate Members and volunteers to formally challenge their terminations and to document those challenges.

We also encourage these volunteer DJs to demand KDHX not use their voices or curated playlists since they are no longer recognized as members of the station.

We encourage members of the St. Louis music and listening communities to voice their disapproval and sense of betrayal by lawful and constructive means. Immediately ask the station to halt recurring donations and return any donations given with the trust that it would go towards supporting the programming of the volunteer DJs at the station. Look for peaceful means of protest. And talk about it within your own circles.

While this will go down in our local history as a very dark Friday and a day of infamy, the fight is not over, and a casual acceptance would be the worst possible reaction.

Don’t give up yet St. Louis! Together we will fight for community radio!