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Thursday, January 06, 2000
By Sally Kalson, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The president of Cornerstone TeleVision isn't popping any champagne corks over the Federal Communications Commission's ruling in favor of its three-year effort to assume WQEX's noncommercial license and sell its own commercial license to Paxson Communications for $35 million.
Oleen Eagle, president of Cornerstone's Christian broadcasting company, said the FCC order approving the deal was so confusing and contradictory that she was reserving judgment on whether the station would be able to comply and still fulfill its religious mission.
The order promised new "clarifications" on which religious programming qualifies as educational and which does not. That issue has been at the crux of opposition from critics who maintain that Cornerstone's programs touting creationism as science and homosexuality as a curable illness should not qualify as educational.
Eagle said the FCC ruling didn't clarify much of anything.
"They don't make it easy to understand what they're saying," she said. "We are currently analyzing the order to try and understand what it means."
Asked if she had any doubt that the license transfer would proceed, she said, "Until we figure out what the FCC is saying, there's no way we can make a judgment on that
"We have a mission and we can't jeopardize it," Eagle said. "Our mission statement says Cornerstone is called by God to serve and excel as a media ministry to bring glory to his name. Our objective now is to preserve our purpose and be able to meet the qualifications. That's what we're working on."