FROM Virginia M. Dambach, Executive Director, The University Station Alliance: There are many ways of providing public media services – and sometimes those services allow ample time for planning but other times they require bold action. In the first of a series, this article explores how WGLT Bloomington-Normal, Illinois came to manage WCBU in Peoria, which is about 40 miles away on Interstate 74....
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Congrats to KQED and NPR in securing a major gift from Eric and Wendy Schmidt to support investigative journalism in both California and the Midwest. Public Media Company worked with KQED, NPR and other leading California public radio stations to create and document a plan to expand investigative journalism in the state. This led to a momentous show of philanthropic support for the leadership...
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The Covid-19 crisis is unprecedented in its impact on society across the world and has forced organizations to take immediate steps to protect the health of their employees as well as the health of their organizations. It’s incredibly challenging to take immediate mitigating action while also planning for future challenges but it’s an unfortunate reality that all public media organizations need to face. This...
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The impact of Covid-19 is a very different financial shock than public media has seen before but it’s not the first fiscal challenge that the industry has faced. The Great Recession (December 2007 to June 2009) also posed a huge test for public radio and television stations throughout the country and so we thought it would be a good idea to take a look...
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With the spread of COVID-19, many public media outlets are quickly becoming “distributed” organizations – with employees working remotely from home or other places outside of the office. This is nothing new to us: Public Media Company has been working in this manner throughout our 19 year history. Since we work with local media around the country, we don’t locate everyone in a single...
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California Public Radio Stations and NPR recently hired Joanne Griffith to lead a statewide initiative to expand the coverage of California news and issues. Public Media Company assisted with the formation of this California-based journalism collaboration, helping partner stations conceive and formulate a sustainability plan for this initiative, which aims to create a more extensive ecosystem of local and regional news reporting within public...
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WNET recently completed an acquisition of WPPB, the NPR news station located on the East End of Long Island. This Hamptons-based station will be paired with the Long Island public television station, WLIW-TV, which is owned by WNET as well. Public Media Company advised WNET as the station prepared plans for this innovative expansion. “With the acquisition of WPPB-FM, WNET is bringing together the...
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NOTE: The FCC has postponed Auction 106 until further notice. The FCC recently announced an auction of 130 FM broadcast construction permits across the country and is currently seeking comment on the procedures. Auction 106 is scheduled to commence on April 28, 2020 and you can see the complete list of the construction permits here. (Note: Most of these signals are in small to...
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Public Media Company congratulates General Manager Stephen Williams of WMUK at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on completing a very important transition! Stephen Williams identified an opportunity to acquire a non-commercial FM signal, enabling WMUK to move from a mixed news/classical format to two services – one all news, and the other serving classical listeners in the region. Public Media Company worked to...
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Our October blog post explored how public radio revenue is now higher than public television revenue thanks to significant radio growth over the past decade. The post also highlighted great disparities between radio stations of different sizes – big growth for large stations and revenue declines for small stations. The variation by station size is also very evident in public television. Small TV stations...
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