WNYC in New York announced Wednesday that it will provide its nationally distributed programs at no cost to stations affected by federal funding cuts to public media.<\/p>\n
The Station-to-Station Programming Project will offer public media organizations access to WNYC\u2019s program portfolio for free if they received 10% or more of their budget from CPB. Stations below that threshold could also be eligible \u201con an as-needed basis,\u201d according to a press release. Noncommercial stations that don\u2019t receive CPB funds are also eligible to air the programs for free.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully this will give station leaders a bit of financial breathing room to be able to think about sustainability, whatever that means at a local level for them, to think about whether they can reinvest this in local reporting or just other areas of their vital local service,\u201d LaFontaine Oliver, New York Public Radio\u2019s president and CEO and executive chair, told Current in an interview.<\/p>\n
The program begins Oct. 1 and will run for one year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plan was to make it simple and easy for the most impacted stations in the system\u201d to receive fee relief, Oliver said.<\/p>\n
WNYC distributes the New York Public Radio productions Radiolab, On the Media, Terrestrials, The New Yorker Radio Hour and Carnegie Hall Live. Three programs that WNYC distributes but does not produce \u2014 Freakonomics Radio, Science Friday and Today, Explained \u2014 will be included in the program.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really happy that we have distribution partners like the folks at Freakonomics Radio and Science Friday and Today, Explained that really saw the importance of stepping up in this moment of just really existential change in the system to support the stations and support us,\u201d Oliver said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are undeterred,\u201d said Ira Flatow, founder and host of Science Friday, in the release. \u201cAt a time when scientific discoveries are impacting our lives at the most rapid rate in history, everyone loses if science and news are put behind a paywall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oliver estimates that about two-thirds of public radio stations are eligible for the free programming, and total cost savings would likely be \u201ca few million,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WNYC is hoping to secure additional funding to expand the program beyond the first year, according to Oliver.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of us really knows what the full impact of this loss of federal funding is going to be on stations,\u201d Oliver said. \u201cAnd so we want this to be scalable, and we want to be able to continue to raise money to help be able to offer this program.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project is part of WNYC\u2019s \u201cStand Together\u201d campaign, which seeks to \u201cbuild a financial firewall to protect against the full impact of funding cuts\u2014to NYPR and the broader public media system,\u201d according to the release.<\/p>\n
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Oliver\u2019s title. He is president and CEO and executive chair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WNYC in New York announced Wednesday that it will provide its nationally distributed programs at no cost to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-166755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}