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Operating a not-for-profit organization is one thing. Losing $10 million a year on $30 million in revenues is quite another. This explains in part why Boston's Christian Science Church, publisher of the Christian Science Monitor -- a perennial money-loser -- has begun buying broadcast properties.
"It's not surprising to see them spread their investments," says John Morton, a newspaper analyst for Lynch, Ryan & Jones in Washington, D.C. "They've got a high quality product in the Monitor, but one that's very difficult to make profitable. They're expanding their operations through other investments."
Within a few months, a church subsidiary will begin broadcasting from two of its world radio service shortwave stations -- one in Scotts Corner, Maine, and the other in Saipan, the Mariana Islands -- and it expects to open another station in Alabama in 1989. Total construction cost for the stations is between $15 million and $20 million, Monitor officials said. In December, the Federal Communications Commission gave the final OK for the Monitor subsidiary's $7.5 million purchase of Boston UHF television station WQTV, Channel 68 from California-based Arlington Corp.
Advertising time for those outlets, along with space in the newspaper and domestic broadcast programming the Monitor produces, will be sold individually and in packages. Handling sales will be a for-profit subsidiary of the newspaper formed in July 1986 -- Christian Science Monitor Syndicate Inc. Although the syndicate will gain considerable prestige and some revenue from the newspaper, the syndicate is clearly hitching its wagon to the television station. This is the same station that didn't show up in last fall's A. C. Nielsen ratings because it couldn't attract enough viewers to be rated.
Syndicate president David E. Morse,...