Sale of Black TV Station: Who’ll Get the Money? : Television: Hispanic group wants to buy KEEF-TV, but Black TV Workshop claims founder Booker Wade Jr. would wrongfully profit from the sale.

Allegations that the founder of an inactive Los Angeles TV station may gain more than $1 million from its proposed sale apparently are delaying a return to the air by KEEF-TV Channel 68, despite a controversial letter-writing campaign by an evangelical Hispanic group that wants to take over the troubled, black-owned outlet.

A Federal Communications Commission official probing complaints brought against Booker Wade Jr. by board members of Black Television Workshop, which owns KEEF, said that as the deal is now structured, “the profits or revenues from the sale would go to the alleged wrongdoers, and that fact is going to be very difficult to get around.”

Hundreds of letters urging the regulatory agency to approve the proposed $2.3-million purchase of Channel 68 by Burbank-based Hispanic Christian Communications Network have been sent in recent weeks to both the FCC and Mary V. Woodfork, the dissident Black Television Workshop board member whose charges of mismanagement against Wade led the commission to unplug KEEF in August, 1987. It had only been on the air a few months. Wade has denied any wrongdoing.

The flow of letters only stopped after federal authorities formally ordered Hispanic Christian Communications Network to cease its on-air appeals to viewers of its daily religious program on KVEA Channel 52.

Just how much Black Television Workshop would realize from KEEF’s sale to the Hispanic group is not known, since Wade has been reluctant to release financial documents. But attorneys for both Wade and the FCC estimate that the total liability of Black Television Workshop is between $1 million and $1.2 million.

Lou Martinez, founder of Radio Telecom & Technology, said that his Cerritos-based firm is owed about $400,000 for transmitting equipment purchased and installed on behalf of the station in 1987. Several foreign-language programmers said that they are owed a total of more than $400,000, stemming from contracts negotiated by Wade assuring access to air time.

Wade has told the FCC in the past that he made personal loans to BTW, which was incorporated with his own funds in 1981, but those amounts have never been made public. BTW won the FCC’s bidding competition for the license to the vacant Channel 68 in 1983, and the station became one of only two black-owned public TV stations in the country.

Another complication in the case is that four of the seven original Black Television Workshop board members who previously have endorsed the sale to Hispanic Christian Communications Network have told the FCC that they were effectively coerced into doing so. They haven’t recanted their endorsement but, in interviews with The Times, a majority of BTW’s original board members said that they are adamantly opposed to Wade receiving any profits from the KEEF sale.

“Booker is probably going to be entitled to some money,” said Gary Cordell, an insurance administrator in Palo Alto who is one of the original board members. “But the concern of everybody is that he could walk away with all of (the profits), and our intention is not to allow that.”

FCC officials assigned to the case expressed concern about the propriety of distributing any profits to Wade and the manner in which support for the sale was won by Hispanic Christian Communications Network from board members, but declined to speculate on how these factors might influence the outcome of the case.

Wade has been accused in filings with the FCC by Woodfork and some other board members of engaging in fraudulent business practices--such as selling commercial time on what was to be a noncommercial station--and of illegally taking control of the Black Television Workshop through forgery and misrepresentation.

Wade has refused for months to comment about the case, but previously had denied to reporters any wrongdoing beyond a few unintended technical violations of FCC procedures. Steven Yelverton, a former FCC staff attorney representing Wade, dismissed concerns that his client might walk away with more than half the $2.3 million that HCCN has agreed to pay for KEEF.

“The money isn’t going to anybody’s personal pocket, it’s going to a corporation,” Yelverton said. “If anybody misappropriated that money, he’d be in the slammer before he could blink his eyes.”

“Under California law, any funds going into a nonprofit corporation are subject to public scrutiny and annual reports,” he pointed out. “Those concerned can petition the courts to be made a board member . . . and any present or former member could demand an accounting. I think it’s a straw man argument.”

Woodfork, however, insists that if the proposed sale goes through, “the money would basically be left to the discretion of (Wade), his sister (who is on the BTW board) and his close-knit friends . . . . who are essentially puppets, which is what he tried to make us into.”

Besides Wade and his sister, Rosa, the Black Television Workshop board now includes associates of Wade residing in Illinois and North Carolina. Whether the current board was seated legally is one of the questions under investigation by the FCC.

Former BTW Chairman Clint Wilson II, who favors the sale but has lodged complaints against Wade with the FCC, spoke for several original board members who believe Wade’s intention has always been to build a personal fortune through KEEF.

“(Wade) has basically used the community in a very devious kind of way,” Wilson, now associate dean of Howard University’s school of communications in Washington, charged in a telephone interview. “He has played on the desire of the Los Angeles community to have a station in order to line his own pockets and walk away from this (situation).”

But Wilson said that he would not be opposed to a sale to HCCN if BTW’s proceeds could be given to HCCN for the specific purpose of producing programming for blacks.

Meanwhile, four of the seven original BTW board members have told the FCC that they signed documents approving the proposed sale only after being told that they would be hit with $1.2-million lawsuits by Hispanic Christian Communications Network and Radio Telecom & Technology, KEEF’s largest creditor.

“I wouldn’t say we were coerced,” Wilson said, “but I’m not in a financial position to fight such a suit.”

“It was either sign (the resolution favoring transfer to HCCN) or hire personal lawyers and be wiped out financially,” added another director. Like most of those contacted for this story, the individual spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“(HCCN and RT&T;) weren’t going to drop the lawsuit against me unless I signed,” echoed a third signatory to the resolution.

The explanatory letter was sent last December to Mass Media Bureau Chief Roy Stewart, the FCC official targeted by HCCN during appeals to its KVEA-TV audience. Viewers also sent more than 200 letters to Woodfork, the only original BTW board member publicly protesting the proposed transfer.

“People have done weird things in the name of religion,” said Woodfork, whose personal post office box was displayed often during HCCN programs. “These harassing tactics are a very scary thing to me.”

Woodfork remains adamantly opposed to any KEEF sale without a full public hearing of her charges against Wade. It was her accusations of mismanagement, co-signed by fellow board members Cordell and Wilson, that prompted the FCC’s three-year investigation.

“I’m not going to give up on this,” insisted Woodfork, still pushing for decisive action by the courts and the FCC.

California Assemblywoman Gwen Moore and former Rep. Yvonne Brathwaite Burke have recommended that the Los Angeles district attorney and the California attorney general look into the allegations against Wade, but spokespersons for the latter say no such investigations are pending.

Asked why they have not initiated civil or criminal court proceedings against Wade, several of those making accusations against Wade say they are intimidated by his legal expertise or lack sufficient financial resources.

“This is a story that is actually embarrassing to the African-American community,” said one ex-board member, who feels racial pride may have inhibited others from speaking up. “Maybe by exposing the truth we can move past these kinds of ridiculous charades, and that’s what the Black Television Workshop was.”

In the meantime, FCC officials are unable to say when the case might be resolved. Conceding that they have the legal power to approve the proposed sale to Hispanic Christian Communications Network immediately, they caution nonetheless that a settlement might take years.

“We don’t know where we stand with the FCC now,” complained Eduardo Ildefonso Jr., the Hispanic group’s financial administrator, admitting that the letter-writing campaign may have contributed to the FCC’s icy attitude. “We have all sorts of filings pending and we can’t get an answer on any of them. They’re giving us the cold shoulder.”

“We’re getting to the point where if we get stonewalled to death on this case (by the FCC), we might as well forget it,” echoed Vince Curtis, HCCN’s Washington-based attorney. “I’m getting very discouraged.”

FCC officials assigned to the case reject Curtis’ “stonewalling” charges. They and Woodfork argue that it is Wade and his attorneys who have delayed resolution of the long-running case through a series of complex legal maneuvers calculated to indefinitely postpone a scheduled hearing into allegations against the BTW founder.