Posted on 05/18/2012 7:25:38 AM PDT by raccoonradio
National Public Radio CEO Gary Knell joined the organization last December, knowing there were stone cold realities ahead, after his predecessor and several key fundraisers retreated amid various controversies. Now comes news that NPR is running a $2.6 million deficit for this fiscal year. The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi talks about a meeting Knell held with staffers Wednesday: While he is not gunning to cut staff or programs (“That’s the last thing I want to do”), he admits that with an election and the Olympics, this is a challenging year for expenses.
More worrisome is that corporate underwriting is softer than in 2011, when there was some $50 million in support. And not too many blocks from NPR HQ on Massachusetts Avenue, Republication House member Doug Lamborn (Colorado) and Republican Senator Jim DeMint (South Carolina) are rallying the familiar GOP threat to de-fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
NPR gets a tiny amount of funding directly from CPB, but its member stations depend on CPB money as part of their revenue stream, which they use to buy programming from NPR and other sources. One of Lamborn’s targets is executive salaries. Previous NPR CEO Vivian Schiller took home $479,011 last year.
I was almost going to post this via Breitbart article yesterday but here it is again (I almost figured why bother, they'll get bailed out anyway.)
NPR is known for great conservative programming like...
Um...
Who pays for them (govt subsidies), even if you aren't a "member" of your local NPR station?
Got a mirror?
The Washington com-Post article. (”ADVERTISING revenue”???
I thought they were non-commercial! There is talk of
dropping Tell Me More, catering to blacks and other
minorities.
>>Another problem area: The strong audience growth that NPR’s news and entertainment programs experienced over the past decade appears to have flattened, a potentially worrisome development because more stations are carrying NPR’s programs.
The increasingly bearish climate poses a challenge for Knell, a highly regarded public-media manager who became NPR’s chief executive in December. Knell replaced Vivian Schiller, who resigned in March last year after an embarrassing episode in which two NPR fundraisers were recorded making disparaging comments about conservatives in a meeting with two men posing as donors from a bogus Islamic group.
What they mean by advertising revenue, via the Post piece:
“a sharp downturn in corporate “underwriting,” or advertising revenue”
I think the FCC should allow them to run ads. Let them compete in the free market. And DEFUND them. I don’t want my tax money going toward it. As the old blues song goes,
“Take your hand outta my pocket, ain’t nothin’ there that belongs to you.”
...that's Knell, as in death knell...
looking at the balance sheets, this is big corporation with close to 600 million in assets.
Now’s the time for George Cloony and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and M. Moore to step up and bail them out. They could give up one day’s wages and have it covered. But I won’t hold my breath.
But I thought corporations were eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil
The FCC should let them run ads. “Car Talk will be right back after this message from
Ben and Jerry’s.” No more taxpayer funding, please. They’d survive, just let em run ads
(REAL ads not these donorship announcements)
Gotta love James O’Keefe :)
His NPR story was just as good as ACORN (IMHO)
You forgot to label it as a Dinosaur Media Deathwatch thread!
NPR has something in common with the New York Times. In a largely center-right nation, they insist on larding their product with left-wing propaganda, while studiously filtering out or deliberately ridiculing opposing viewpoints and inconvenient truths. The totalitarian left can not tolerate an honest debate, and so they reflexively turn to suppression of free thought and free speech as their shield.
It’s no wonder that it’s a hard sell, when you deliberately not only snub, but further go out of your way to insult the sensibilities of a majority of your potential customer base.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.