KVIE’s quest to conquer CapRadio is an embarrassing, costly mistake | Opinion
It’s something you won’t hear on their pledge drives: Sacramento’s two largest public media organizations, KVIE public television and Capital Public Radio, are in the midst of a prolonged and costly legal fight.
Now, emails obtained by The Sacramento Bee show just how bitter and calculated that battle has been waged.
KVIE, seeking a local public media monopoly, wanted to take over CapRadio. And CapRadio — a division of Sacramento State university, which holds CapRadio’s broadcast license — said “no.”
But instead of respecting the wishes of the university and the radio station, KVIE and a little-known nonprofit that’s separate from CapRadio did precisely the opposite, the emails show. Various associates brainstormed ways to leverage and harm both the university and CapRadio, at one point contemplating allegations of “yellow journalism” in a harebrained attempt to seek federal revocation of its license.
The reason the nonprofit, called the Capital Public Radio Endowment, held sway is because it, not Sac State, held title to a piece of property in Elverta on which CapRadio’s broadcast tower sits. In March 2024, the endowment’s leaders gave title to that land to KVIE — for free — in a surprise ambush of both CapRadio and Sac State.
Over the past 16 months, a bitter legal battle has raged between KVIE and CapRadio over who is the real owner of the tower, escalating the television station’s legal costs.
In 2023, before the hostilities began to unfold, KVIE spent $36,898 on legal fees, according to that fiscal year’s publicly available tax form. In 2025, that cost exploded to $851,343. That is a 23-fold increase in spending on lawyers. By now, you can rest assured the combined tab for the case tops $1 million. CapRadio, meanwhile, says it spent $450,000 fighting KVIE during its 2024-25 fiscal year.
Is this what the foundations and viewers that loyally support public media — whether KVIE’s or CapRadio’s — want money to be spent on?
CapRadio declined an interview request from The Bee. So did the principals of the Capital Public Radio Endowment and KVIE President David Lowe.
The Bee requested email communications involving the Endowment and KVIE from CapRadio after court proceedings suggested that CapRadio had these documents, none of which have been admitted into evidence.
While officials with the stations aren’t talking, these emails speak for themselves.
A long-time booster gets the cold shoulder
The Bee’s Ishani Desai has detailed how CapRadio in 2023 was no gold standard in public media finance. Poor oversight of ex-CapRadio General Manager Jun Reina helped put the radio station in financial disarray; last month Sacramento County prosecutors accused Reina of siphoning $1.33 million from the station to “finance luxury international travel, high-end home renovations, tuition for his children and other personal expenses.” CapRadio also incurred millions of dollars in debt tied to a failed office relocation to downtown Sacramento.
These problems began to emerge in September 2023 with the California State University system’s initial audit. And the Capital Public Radio Endowment found itself a victim of this mess.
Auditors bristled at how this nonprofit was not an “auxiliary” wing of the university like CapRadio. The CSU basically wanted this endowment to disappear, the audit urging “integration” of its estimated $2 million in assets into a university-affiliated foundation.
Yet given the endowment’s independence from the university, the wishes of the auditors were beyond university President Luke Wood’s power to achieve. And something completely different began to happen.
A courtship of sorts began developing among KVIE and the endowment, led by local attorneys Dan Brunner and Ramsay “Buzz” Wiesenfeld. They approached the university and CapRadio, which at first wasn’t sure it would financially survive. And they had a proposition transmitted via email in February 2024 to Wood and then-CapRadio General Manager Tom Karlo.
CapRadio, based on the proposal, would become absorbed by KVIE, with the public television station assuming “full operational control” and operations centralized at its offices. Sacramento State would either sell the station’s license to KVIE or do basically the same through a binding long-term operations contract.
But the university and CapRadio both said no. “I don’t think it’s a good fit for us,” Karlo, in a December 2024 interview with The Bee, recalled telling Lowe at the time.
This should have settled the matter. But Lowe, Brunner and Wiesenfeld would not take “no” as the final answer. And things began to get nasty.
From suitor to aggressor
In one email, Wiesenfeld floated whether to challenge the university’s federal operating license by accusing it of “yellow journalism,” an antiquated term people throw around when they think news coverage is unfair.
“I think it would be a very difficult challenge,” responded Rick Eytcheson, a former CapRadio general manager.
“I tend to agree with Rick,” Lowe responded.
Somewhere down the line, the idea of gifting the tower to KVIE then came into the mix. Wiesenfeld mentioned it in an email in March 2024, along with other ways to hurt the radio station.
“We are also considering the consequences of terminating CPR tenancy on the tower,” he emailed. It’s unclear how CapRadio could broadcast locally without it.
A whole new plot twist unfolded when a radio tower consultant hired by the endowment identified about $400,000 in maintenance needs, things like a new generator, some fresh paint and guy wire repair. This, suddenly, was framed as an existential crisis.
The deferred maintenance needs “are not optional to defer, yet CSUS, since taking over, has treated them as such,” the Endowment wrote to Wood and CapRadio in March 2024. “In spite of these facts, CSUS refuses to talk with us. This is a legal dilemma that will not last for much longer.”
Two weeks later, Lowe would lower the boom in a telephone call to Karlo.
KVIE said it now owned, thanks to the endowment, the land under CapRadio’s tower.
“I didn’t even know what to say,” Karlo said in that December 2024 interview, remembering the conversation. “Am I in some sort of hostile takeover?”
Shortly after the sale, on Easter Sunday, Lowe called long-time Sacramento Congresswoman Doris Matsui “so she is not blindsided,” he emailed. Lowe took the endowment’s side with its fight against Wood and Sacramento State, calling the situation “untenable.” And he played up all those alleged tower maintenance problems that CapRadio has repeatedly contested.
“I think that’s a good talking point if you want to use it — KVIE has a long history of exceptional property and tower management,” Lowe would later email endowment leaders.
When public media behaves more like Wall Street
KVIE in October 2024 initiated the litigation in Sacramento County Superior Court and has attacked virtually every claim that CapRadio has made ever since. The television station asked a judge to declare KVIE the rightful owner of the tower based on the endowment’s gift. Three days later, CapRadio filed a cross-complaint asking the same judge to declare the radio station the rightful owner of the property and to grant CapRadio an irrevocable license to use the tower.
As one example of the time and intensity of this battle, the CSU system has had to amass an estimated 12,000 documents to help satisfy a records request by the television station.
If ongoing settlement talks fail, both sides expect a trial of 15 days. For two public media stations fighting one another, this is unheard of. It very well could be the biggest public media court case anywhere in the nation.
“My hunch is that it will take more legal action to bring (CapRadio and Sacramento State) to the table,” Wiesenfeld emailed back in March 2024. Everything, so it seems, is going to plan. But to what end?
The behavior of KVIE leadership befits the most ruthless side of Wall Street. The hostilities are completely contrary to what should be a community ethic for public media. The just outcome here, for KVIE to give up this expensive legal crusade for this radio tower, is beyond obvious.
This story was originally published February 11, 2026 at 5:00 AM.