After a 25-year run, New Hampshire Public Radio’s morning talk show The Exchange will go off the air when host Laura Knoy departs Thursday, the most visible in a number of changes the station is making as it faces a tighter post-pandemic financial picture.
“The best way to think about this is: This is a way to align our resources with our long-term strategy,” said Jim Schachter, president and CEO of the Concord-based station, in an interview Friday. “We are aiming to be an organization that we can sustain from operations. Some of the growth in the past was fueled by big one-time fundraising campaigns.”
Knoy, one of the best-known journalists in New Hampshire, announced her retirement earlier last month, saying she had wanted to step aside after the 2020 presidential election but felt she had to stay on through the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic. Knoy has been hosting the program – she balances interviews, panelist banter and listener calls for an hour – four to five morning a week, since the program began in 1995.
Until Friday’s announcement from Schachter came out, many assumed that a new host would be found and the program would continue. Knoy declined to comment Friday.
The Exchange runs from 9 to 10 a.m. on weekdays except Fridays. Starting Monday, June 14, NHPR will shift Morning Edition, a news show that includes some national and local segments, forward by one hour to cover that slot.
Other decisions will be made later, including whether to maintain the Weekly News Roundup show that occupies The Exchange time slot on Fridays, according to a staff memo from Schachter.
The memo indicated that the station will not not lay anybody off but will use the team that produces The Exchange for other programming. Around 60 to 70 people work at the station.
It also noted the complexity of incorporating the station’s podcasts into operations. Shows like “Bear Brook,” “Civics 101” and “Outside/In” have won national attention and praise but, like many podcasts, had difficulty drawing donations like over-the-air radio shows can do. This has left NHPR facing a dilemma common to news organizations: absorbing the cost of developing new media to attract future audiences even as old media remains its best generator of income and current audience.
“NHPR’s financial health relies more than anything in the long term on audience growth,” Schachter said. “That means having the resources available to invest in new ways of reaching audiences on new platforms. On demand, anytime, anywhere you want to consume news and information – that’s the pattern of how people use news and information today.”
The memo to staff put it this way: “In more regular and systematic ways, we’ll be bringing the work of our podcast teams to Morning Edition and All Things Considered, recognizing that those programs – with their big audiences and rich mix of local and NPR content – are our best radio vehicles for extending the reach and impact of our journalism.”
New Hampshire Public Radio has been one of the stars of the state’s media landscape in recent years, adding staff and innovative programming even as the number of reporters has been shrinking at regional newspapers, other radio stations and TV. But the pandemic has hit public broadcasting hard: A Corporation for Public Broadcasting analysis released Friday said that revenues of the country’s public TV and radio stations fell $147 million in fiscal year 2020, with a large drop in corporate underwriting and foundation support overwhelming a 5% increase in listener donations.
Beth Walsh, CPB’s vice president of system strategies, said during a presentation at Public Media Business Association’s annual conference that many stations feared donors were “reacting to a moment” and may give less in the future, according to a report in The Current, a trade journal that covers public media.
NHPR’s changes seem aimed at budgeting around listener giving, which tends to be relatively steady, rather than grants and underwriting from a relatively small number of corporations and non-profits.
The station’s most recent financial statement shows $4.24 million in “public support,” as compared to corporate underwriting or foundation donations, which was more than half the $7.74 million in total donations. “Podcast revenue” was just $131,101, although that doesn’t include donations to the station by listeners inspired after hearing podcasts such as “Civics 101,” “Outside/In” or “Bear Brook.”
The station’s fiscal statement listed $8.8 million in total expenses. Its year-end net assets fell by about 9% from $7.9 million to $7.2 over the year.
“We are striving to be something that pays for itself year-to-year – that’s the resource constraint that we’re operating in,” Schachter said.
He said no changes were coming to NHPR’s broadcast and support facilities atop an office building at 2 Pillsbury St.
Schachter was hired as CEO in September 2019 after seven years as vice president for news at the nation’s largest public radio station, WYNC in New York, and two decades at The New York Times before that. He replaced Betsy Gardella, who led NHPR for more than a dozen years before her sudden retirement in 2018.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
