All Grant Makers Have a Big Stake in Preserving Local Public Radio Stations

For classical-music lovers in East Texas and western Louisiana, KTPB-FM has been the only source of classical-music programming for the last 15 years. From its first broadcasts, KTPB has offered live presentations of the Metropolitan Opera alongside concerts of the Longview Symphony Orchestra and the East Texas Symphony Orchestra.

Unfortunately, fans of Placido Domingo and Renée Fleming will have to find something else to do with their Saturday afternoons next season, now that the station’s owner, Kilgore College, announced that it is going to sell KTPB’s station license to the Educational Media Foundation. After the switch, the station expects to offer a combination of Christian music and commentary.

For public-radio advocates, the sale of KTPB may be seen as an early warning signal that more stations may be lost in the coming months and years.

Such a loss would be monumental to nonprofit organizations. Public stations provide significant local news and educate the public about many of the causes that grant makers and charities care most about.

To be sure, public radio has been on a growth trajectory. Over the last 15 years, public-radio audiences are way up, from around 14 million listeners per week in 1990 to nearly 27 million listeners in 2006. It is no longer the case — if it ever was — that public radio reaches a small, elite audience.

But unless public radio quickly gathers the adequate capital to preserve stations and expand the number of station licenses needed to serve a growing demand for diverse programming, it won’t have a good chance of survival.

While philanthropy has long been an important source of support for public broadcasting, private money is often not available when stations need it most.

A good sign that grant makers are starting to recognize that they need a new approach came in the announcement this month of a major effort. The Ford Foundation and the Calvert Foundation said that they are seeking to attract up to $15-million for Public Radio Capital, an organization that over the past five years has been involved in more than $100-million worth of transactions that helped public radio stations keep their licenses or acquire new ones so they could reach a potential audience of 22 million listeners.

The idea behind the new effort is to make sure that Public Radio Capital has a pool of funds available to rapidly deploy in cases like the Kilgore College sale of KTPB. The goal would be to make it easy for public radio stations to obtain financing and other assistance they need to restructure to avoid a sale.

In addition, the approach is a different one for grant makers — instead of seeking grants, Public Radio Capital is asking grant makers for loans that will be repaid.

The challenges of preserving public radio are daunting, however.

The primary source of trouble is the growing consolidation of the broadcast world. Before the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a single company could own only two stations in one community and no more than 28 stations nationwide.

After the law relaxed those rules, one company, Clear Channel Communications — which held just seven radio stations a decade ago — went on a $30-billion spending spree. Now it owns more than 1,200 radio stations and more than 30 television stations. And Clear Channel is not alone. In the religious-broadcasting arena, the commercial powerhouse, Salem Communications, owns 104 radio stations, 39 of them acquired in just the last five years.

Likewise, the nonprofit Educational Media Foundation owns 178 radio stations, of which 95 were purchased in the past five years.

It is not just the 1996 law that accelerated the trend of consolidation in the marketplace for noncommercial licenses. As the value for station licenses increases, educational institutions, which hold about two-thirds of all public-radio licenses, may come under pressure to sell those assets in response to other fiscal demands.

It is time that grant makers invest more money in efforts to help nonprofit stations fend off bids from other broadcasters. Among the reasons that this is an issue that goes well beyond the foundations and corporations that typically support public radio are:

The importance of local ownership. Public broadcasting serves a variety of vital functions in American society. Because public broadcasting is generally organized under local ownership, it has always offered a relatively large portion of local content.

Now, in the era of massive consolidation of the broadcast and entertainment media, the local flavor of public broadcasting is even more distinctive.

Indeed, localism is public broadcasting’s chief overarching strength. Of course, it is also the source of its greatest weakness, since the fragmentation of ownership makes it difficult to obtain capital for strategic expansion of the public-radio network.

Quality and integrity of journalism. Another great strength of public broadcasting is the quality and integrity of journalism carried out at the local and national levels.

Much of the growth of public-radio’s audience is driven by the popularity of its news and information programs, especially the flagship programs All Things Considered and Morning Edition, produced by National Public Radio.

How important is quality of journalism? The future of our democracy depends on it.

A recent study by the University of Maryland at College Park’s Program on International Policy Attitudes found that people who obtained most of their news from commercial networks frequently held false beliefs about key factual issues relating to the war in Iraq, such as the notion that Iraq is linked to Al Qaeda and that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.

In the most extreme case, 80 percent of the people who get most of their news from the Fox News Channel held at least one false impression concerning the issues identified by the Maryland study. By contrast, nearly 80 percent of the people who get their news from NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service did not hold any false beliefs about the issues covered in the study.

Perhaps, if the reach of public broadcasting could be expanded, more Americans would have access to news and information programming that is thorough, thoughtful, and accurate.

Cultural programming. A report commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has demonstrated that the most common way people are exposed to classical music is through classical radio — more common than listening to personal recording collections and far more common than attending a live performance.

Expanding the number of public-radio licenses is the only way to provide a full range of cultural programming to the audiences that are demanding it.

For grant makers concerned about accuracy in journalism, local programming, and promoting culture, the effort to preserve and expand access to public radio should command attention.

While foundations may feel powerless to do anything about it in the face of well-financed broadcasting interests, it is possible to successfully bid for licenses if foundations think creatively about how to make sure public broadcasting has access to the capital it needs to operate independently.

After all, it’s not enough to have a broad range of choices for public-radio listeners on the Upper West Side of Manhattan; the same range of programs must be available for those who want to hear them on the Upper East Side of Texas.

Vince Stehle is a program officer for nonprofit-sector support at the Surdna Foundation, in New York.