Urban Unrest

24 January 2007 | Business | Ernesto Aguilar

Attorney Roger Dreyer has written to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin regarding the death of Jennifer Strange following a water-drinking contest sponsored by and broadcast over KDND Sacramento.

In his letter, Dreyer informs Martin that “I am writing to your offices on behalf of my clients, the Jennifer Strange family. On January 12, 2007 Ms. Strange participated in a contest that had been heavily promoted by local Sacramento radio station, KDND, which is owned by the media conglomerate, Entercom. This contest had been publicized by the radio station wherein they were going to have contestants drink large volumes of water and see which contestant could last the longest before urinating. The wife and mother of my clients, Jennifer Strange, was a participant.

“Despite having a distended abdomen and complaining of significant symptoms of a headache and lightheadedness, the radio station allowed her to leave the premises without any type of assistance or concern. Ms. Strange went home, slipped into a coma and died. She was 28 years old, extremely healthy, held a job of responsibility at a local medical office and had three young children. The preliminary cause of death from the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office is hyponatremia, which is essentially death by ‘water intoxication.’

“Our investigation has revealed that the management of the radio station did no investigation or research into the dangers of this contest. Even a cursory inquiry of any medical office by the station’s management would have revealed the life threatening risks of the contest for which this radio station was soliciting contestants. At no time did the radio station or its personnel ever disclose or reveal to any of the contestants the potential health hazards and risks of this particular contest.

“We believe that an investigation by the FCC will discover that management was involved in the promotional decision to run this contest and pressured their staff to cajole, intimidate and compel contestants to continue drinking large volumes of water despite complaints of physical pain. The contestants were only told that the drinking of the water might cause them some headaches and should they throw up they would be out of the contest. The employees of the radio station encouraged the contestants to ignore their physical complaints and continue consuming water despite the enormous health risk.

“While on the air, the employees acknowledged the risks of consuming too much water. They treated it as a joke and stated the station had no responsibility as the contestants had signed ‘releases’. They actually made a joke about people dying while participating in the contest. Further, and quite shockingly, we have evidence that nurses contacted the radio station and specifically notified the on air personalities that they were putting these individuals at risk of death by water intoxication. Once again, despite this notice being provided to the on air personalities, they kept the information from the contestants and continued to pressure them to ingest more water.

“We believe the conduct of the management of this station in promoting and pressuring the on air personalities to drive this show in the fashion that it did, put the contestants, unknowingly, at great risk of bodily injury and death in an effort to increase their listening audience. Their conduct was oppressive, irresponsible and ultimately led to the death of Jennifer Strange.

“We believe the conduct of the radio management and on air staff mandates that your agency terminate the radio station’s license and discipline its ownership for their wanton disregard of the safety of the participants in this contest. We believe action of this nature is required by the FCC to send a very clear and unambiguous message to radio station ownership across this country that this type of irresponsible conduct that degrades, humiliates and endangers citizens will not be tolerated.

“A ‘death penalty’ of this nature to a radio station would send a clear message to radio station owners that this type of behavior is unacceptable.”

Source: RadioInk

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