{"id":90430,"date":"2026-01-18T22:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T22:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/90430\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T22:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T22:35:12","slug":"lehigh-valley-public-media-lays-off-nearly-half-its-staff-amid-financial-losses-the-brown-and-white-lehigh-valley-public-media-lays-off-nearly-half-its-staff-amid-financial-losses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/90430\/","title":{"rendered":"Lehigh Valley Public Media lays off nearly half its staff amid financial losses – The Brown and White Lehigh Valley Public Media lays off nearly half its staff amid financial losses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lehigh Valley Public Media announced today that it has cut nearly 50% of its employees as the organization continues to struggle with ongoing financial challenges, according to Lehigh Valley News. <\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The staffing cuts follow months of uncertainty, as the organization had already been discussing the future of WLVR<\/a> amid financial challenges.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The article stated the layoffs affected 16 employees across departments, including a significant number from the Lehigh Valley News<\/a> newsroom. After the layoffs, the nonprofit \u2014 which operates PBS39, WLVR and Lehigh Valley News \u2014 will continue with roughly 20 to 25 employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the article, CEO Hasanna Birdsong attributed the cuts to years of financial losses, totaling more than $1.8 million halfway through its current fiscal year despite earlier cost-saving measures, including ending broadcasts of its World and Create channels, which saved $400,000.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The layoffs included positions in education and other units, leading to the end of its Book Nook literacy program<\/a>, which provided free books to underprivileged children in the community, according to the article.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It remains unclear how the staffing cuts will affect future operations, including the long-term future of WLVR.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lehigh Valley Public Media announced today that it has cut nearly 50% of its employees as the organization…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[333,153,155,154,1681,139,295],"class_list":{"0":"post-90430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-1-minute-read","9":"tag-bethlehem","10":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","11":"tag-bethlehem-news","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}