Gains & Losses at Public Media Stations: The COVID edition

It has been three years since the emergence of COVID-19 and its impact on global life. To understand how the pandemic affected public media’s financial health, we analyzed station Annual Financial Report (AFR) data from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to help uncover recent trends in public radio and television finances. Our analysis has found that overall public media revenue in 2021 (the...

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Public Broadcasters – Do You Hold an EBS License? It May Be Worth More Than You Think

Changes in FCC rules regarding the Educational Broadband Services (EBS) spectrum may affect the approximately 30 public broadcasters that own EBS licenses. If your station is one of these, learn how it may impact you and what you can do about it. EBS has its roots in the 1960s when FCC dedicated a portion of spectrum for educational purposes. Public TV stations and other...

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FCC to Hold Auction for Radio Construction Permits in 2021 

The FCC recently announced an auction of 136 FM and AM broadcast construction permits across the country and is currently seeking comment on the competitive bidding procedures. This auction may seem familiar; the auction was slated to take place last year, but was delayed due to the pandemic.  Auction 109 is scheduled to commence on July 27, 2021 and you can see the complete list of the construction permits...

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New Agreement Gives KALW Nonprofit More Control of Station

Public Media Company is pleased to have helped KALW with business modeling and guidance as it enters this new chapter. FROM CURRENT… The San Francisco Unified School District has agreed to relinquish some operational control of public radio station KALW to a nonprofit formed last year by the station’s management. The school district’s board approved a public service operating agreement Dec. 8 with the...

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Public Media Playbook

Public Media Company was called upon to assist in the development of the “Public Media Playbook,” a white paper and online toolkit to explore mergers between local and regional online newsrooms and public media. The playbook was conceived after the acquisition of NJ Spotlight by WNET, which Public Media Company helped plan and facilitate. Public Media Company was asked to create tools to assist...

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Public Media Revenue Trends

Public radio stations are continuing their long trend of revenue growth and public television stations are also growing again after a period of contraction brought on by the Great Recession. However, success is not equally distributed. On average, larger public radio and television stations are growing at much higher rates than their small station counterparts. These are the key takeaways from the latest Annual...

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Coming Together For Vermont

Public Media Company congratulates Vermont PBS and Vermont Public Radio on the decision to join forces and strengthen service for the people of Vermont. It has been a pleasure working with such dedicated and insightful leaders over the past several months. FROM CURRENT: The boards of Vermont PBS and Vermont Public Radio unanimously voted Wednesday to merge their organizations into one public media station....

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Public Radio Leading the Way

PMC’s last blog post focused on public media revenue trends during the Great Recession (December 2007 to June 2009) to help reveal insights that may be relevant to the current COVID-19 crisis. In this post, we explore the relative successes of public stations since the last recession to discover what further lessons can be learned. Our analysis has found that public radio has flourished...

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Public Media Company Announces Public Media Bond Program

Boulder, CO. (June 30, 2020) — Public Media Company is pleased to announce the Public Media Bond Program for public media organizations to leverage their assets for capital projects. The new national bond program provides public broadcasting entities access to taxable and tax-exempt bonds to finance their capital improvement projects through the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority (CECFA). Public Media Company pioneered the...

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