June 17th, 2009 
joel Dwight Miller has been warning us for months that if something didn’t change in the state budget for the upcoming year, it was going to be a painful summer for public broadcasting in NWPA.
The pain is here.
In advance of the elimination of state funding for public broadcasting coming in two weeks, WQLN Public Media made deep cuts to its personnel and operating budget Tuesday. According to broadcast and published reports, five employees have been let go, including program director Gordon Stroufe, and Director of Engineering Ed Upton.
Other cost-cutting moves include:
- 5% salary cuts for all management, with Miller taking a 10% cut
- Two-week unpaid furloughs fro all employees
- Hiring and wage freeze
- No unnecessary travel, conference attendance, and staff training
- The “Marketplace” financial program on WQLN-FM will be dropped
Miller told JET-TV that they tried to cushion the blow on the viewer:
Our goal is for viewers not to see an impact on the services we provide to them. We were very strategic in choosing positions to try to minimize the impact that the public will see. But eventually it will have an impact in the long run.
WQLN normally receives $800,000 from the Commonwealth, and neither version of the state budget currently being considered in Harrisburg would continue that funding. There is hope that a portion of the funding could be restored in the final budget bill. If that were not to happen, more layoffs could be likely.
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I hate to say it, but I think public TV as we’ve known it will not exist shortly. Without the funding, what other choice do they have other than to sell time like every other TV outlet. It’s the only way I can see that they can survive.
They always say when they are doing pledge that they get 86% of their funding from private sources, can’t they just take the 14% ‘cut’ and go private? I feel bad for the people up there but it is tax money, our tax money that pays them. I don’t believe the government should be competing against any private sector businesses. But now besides radio & TV we are adding cars, insurance, health care and all sorts of other stuff.
WQLN TV is a non commercial station, strictly prohibited by the FCC to air commercials. The station has always depended on philanthropy. Philanthropy of government, companies and individual donors. This won’t change, and that’s probably a good thing. I can’t imagine a commercial entity airing the eclectic programming available – for free on PBS stations.
Tom,
Do you watch WQLN? With all due respect, they AIR commercials and their programming is similar, if not identical in some ways to cable programming.
Why should it be funded? I agree with Heavy D, let them sell advertising. If they succeed, great! If not…oh well.
It’s called free-market enterprise.
WICU and WSEE have had to lay off employees and cut services in order to survive the tough economy. Why should WQLN be any different? Everyone in broadcasting has had to tighten their belts and make difficult, unpopular decisions in order to survice…why should WQLN be any different?
I agree with Citi and Heavy D. Let WQLN try and sell advertising. If they succeed that is wonderful, if not then they can go the way of WSEE-TV. It’s survival of the fittest these days. WSEE couldn’t make a go of it and look what happened. Time to see if WQLN can survive on its own without taxpayer funding.
Careful there Tim. WSEE hasn’t been up to Capitol Hill to ask for their bailout money yet! LOL!
WQLN’s national news and public affairs programming is so biased and unbalanced that it has turned off a large segment of the potential listening community that would otherwise support it, even foregoing in reaction it’s non-news programming. Think Jim Lehrer, Bill Moyer, Charlie Rose, Gwen Ifill, Tavis Smiley, et al, and the entire PBS news staff.
In this day of myriad cable and satellite channels, PBS has become irrelevant. Anything worthwhile PBS does may now be found on other channels in spades.
What by the way is Dwight Miller’s salary? Without knowing that, his “ten percent cut” is meaningless, though it appears to be an attempt to portray him as more selfless than his colleagues.
Joe LaRocca makes some very good points.
Public broadcasting is primarily a “vanity press” for the liberal elite as well as the politicians, except that unlike privately-owned vanity publishers — you & I are forced to unwittingly (unwillingly ?) subsidize their excesses.
WQLN-TV perhaps served a legitimate purpose in its original incarnation by efficiiently delivering instructional & cultural television programming, coverage of the region’s governmental meetings and local sports, etc. where no existing alternative capabilities existed at the time (1960s-1970s).
However, with the advent of widely-available multichannel cable TV and low-cost teleproduction equipment in the 1980s, this role became largely superfluous. Nowadays technical and sociological advances such as the Internet, webcams, DV camcorders, DBS, Tivo, YouTube, PC-based multimedia applications, and the like have rendered it an expensive Edsel in a 21st century world.
Similar sentiments could apply to WQLN-FM if you substitute radio’s realities for those of television.
Combine all of this with the innate tendency of bureaucracies in general (not just WQLN’s management, mind you, but especially public-funded organizations) to constantly self-justify needless expansion/enhancement and the picture becomes clear.
Unfortunately, all of this carries a heavy personal toll for those who have been involuntarily separated from their positions. Let’s hope our colleagues land on their feet with minimal disruption …. and sanity prevails in the bigger scheme of things when it comes to throwing public funds at these sorts of boondoggles in the future.
For anyone who is curious about the salaries of Erie’s non-profit managers, past tax returns are available at http://www.guidestar.org, anyone in an organisation who earns more than 50 thousand a year must be listed on the organisations tax returns.