Public media stations around the nation are planning their next steps after the loss of federal funding, beginning this fall. It means Spokane Public Radio will have $250,000 less than it had expected to receive next year.
“Every budget year from now on until we stabilize is going to be that question of how are we going to fill that quarter million dollar hole and how are we going to continue with our mission," said John Decker, SPR president and general manager.
"But I'm optimistic. We've got plans in the works to expand our services in news and classical and jazz. We really feel confident that there's more that we can do. It just sets us back a little bit."
Public media stations around the country, even in some of the biggest markets, including New York and Los Angeles, have laid off staff. That hasn't happened in Spokane and Decker doesn't expect that will be needed.
John Decker: If everything goes according to plan, we're going to be fine. The thing about Spokane Public Radio is how low to the ground we've been flying anyway. The station is fairly small, fairly lean. There's not much else that we can cut. And the changes we're talking about coming up here in the next few weeks are actually going to cost us less, believe it or not, which is startling to me as we're working on these projects.
There are a lot of big stations around the country who have invested heavily in podcasting, on demand. They make shows for other stations like ours. So if they start laying folks off, what I worry about the most is the shows that we air from other stations, which are really good shows, whether they're a music or a new show, I worry about what's going to happen there. Are we going to have that show available to us? And so sort of think about nationwide what public radio means to each other or what public stations produce. And I worry about the diminution of the quantity of high-quality content that's available to us that we can share because, you know, Spokane Public Radio isn't a big organization. We're not going to do 24-7 ourselves. It's just not feasible. So we have to rely on other stations to do that.
DN: Spokane Public Radio has three program streams, KPBX, KSFC and KPBZ. Are there changes that you think may be coming down the pike that might change that?
JD: I do. I think there are ways that we can better meet the needs of our audiences by fine-tuning our programming offerings. Without going into a whole lot of detail, because we've been working really, really hard on this, we're going to lean into the news. I think creating more local news is something that we can do for the community and for the Inland Northwest that folks keep telling me they want more of. I mean, if there's one thing I hear time and again when I go out and about, it's that folks want us just, frankly, to do more. More stories about what's going on, more profiles of people who are making a difference in our communities. And not just here in Spokane. I'm talking about everywhere in the 20,000 square miles that we cover. There are a lot of really, really interesting things going on that this station could just tap into and to share.
On the music side, we as an organization are very fortunate that we have these three program streams, because it's not often that you can focus on news and music simultaneously. And we've managed to do that over the years. And the changes that we've got in mind coming up are going to allow us to really lean into classical music and really lean into jazz as a way of offering those services to our listeners. Because classical is a big deal for Spokane Public Radio. And we've got some really talented people doing it. And we've invested a lot of time. And people know us as, in some respects, as a classical station. And we're really going to lean into that so that they can get more.
On the jazz side, we're going to spend more time on that. Hopefully, the folks that used to listen to KEWU will become jazz fans of Spokane Public Radio. So I see that. That's why I'm optimistic.
I'm sad because this is sad. But at the same time, we've got big things in front of us. And I'm really optimistic that we're going to be OK. It's going to take a lot of work on our part to make that happen. And it's going to be OK. But it's not going to be easy.
