Generosity is sweet music for CSU radio

A veteran Columbus broadcaster has been identified as the previously anonymous donor to Columbus State Radio. It’s Jimbo Martin, managing partner of PMB Broadcasting and, as of February, an inductee into the Georgia Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

Martin has funded the university’s new venture — WCUG 88.5 Cougar Radio — for the nine months it’s been on the air, and his price to CSU for a 10-year lease on the station’s broadcasting license is $1 a year. That’s for what CSU vice president for university relations John Lester says was estimated at more than a half-million-dollar deal.

“It’s not about money,” Martin said of his latest contribution to the local media market — an especially modest assessment given the fact that he’s parted with so much of it for others’ benefit — and instead shared the credit with the PMB staff and the “passion” of the CSU students and faculty involved.

Tom Hackett, the university’s provost and vice president for academic affairs, said the station (a Ledger-Enquirer neighbor, as it happens, at the intersection of Ninth Street and Broadway) is the latest addition to a growing downtown Columbus arts and entertainment center. And indeed it is.

Martin praised CSU for being “willing to take on this mammoth responsibility.”

It’s an undertaking that without his generosity probably would not have been possible.

This story was originally published April 23, 2016 at 12:12 PM with the headline "Generosity is sweet music for CSU radio."