Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now a report to listeners from WNYC President and CEO, LaFontaine Oliver. Some of you may have heard on our newscasts about WNYC reducing the number of podcasts it produces and laying off 6% of its workforce to achieve what the station calls long-term financial sustainability and protecting our public service mission. This comes in the context of the economic forces affecting so many news organizations. For example, The Washington Post this week, maybe you saw this story the other day, announced it's eliminating 240 positions, 10% of its workforce. NPR this year laid off 10% of its workforce and eliminated four podcasts, and now there is this here.

We have just said goodbye to 20 of our colleagues. As a spoiler alert, not affected by layoffs is our local news department, considered the heart of New York Public Radio's not-for-profit mission, as the economy for for-profit local news continues to decline, and with it, so many journalism jobs and so much local reporting in the for-profit sector. Other cuts here are painful nonetheless, personally and programming-wise. We'll also talk a little about where our coverage of the new Middle East War comes from. Hi, LaFontaine. Welcome back to the show.

LaFontaine Oliver: All right, Brian. Always great to spend some time with you.

Brian Lehrer: Would you like to take a minute or two and explain some more of the media economics of today generally and the situation here?

LaFontaine Oliver: Sure. As you teed up there, if you've been following the headlines over the last year or so, the entire media industry has been hit really hard by the pullback in ad sales and sponsorship. That's especially been true as it relates to the podcast space. Whether we're talking folks in public media, as you mentioned, NPR or PRX or in commercial media, The Post, The Times, Spotify, it's been really tough, even for some of the biggest players. This is certainly not the place that we wanted to be, but industry-wide, there's been a shift.

What's going on with us specifically, I think, is our listeners know that membership is the largest source of our revenue. We say that in our pledge drives. We are also being impacted by this downturn in sponsorship. We saw a $7 million drop in sponsorship sales between our fiscal year '22 and FY '23. For us as a non-profit, that is significant. There's no guarantee or assurances that we're going to rebound to those same levels. We've had to, unfortunately, take steps that you mentioned in saying goodbye to some of our wonderful colleagues.

Brian Lehrer: Podcasts with titles some listeners know will be ended?

LaFontaine Oliver: Yes. The decision really was how can we maintain and shore up our key services while continuing to make smart investments in the future. Podcasts like More Perfect and La Brega, some of our what we call short-run or seasonal podcasts, so these are ones that come and go throughout the year are being affected. We are focusing on the shows that can serve both our radio and our podcast audiences. There will be some exceptions, but yes, our short-run and seasonal podcast-only titles are the ones that will be affected. I should also say Death, Sex, and Money is in a bit of a different category.

We've been working directly with Anna Sale to try and find a strategic partner or a new home for Death, Sex, and Money. For those of you who follow Death, Sex, and Money on social media, Anna put up just a lovely message to the listeners and supporters of Death, Sex, and Money talking about this situation. I would just say we're really grateful to Anna for just being able to work with her to hopefully find either a strategic partner or a new home for Death, Sex, and Money.

Brian Lehrer: I want to name three other names that our listeners might know to acknowledge their contributions over the years, Amy Pearl and Alana Casanova-Burgess, who both used to be producers of this show before going on to do their own things, who I worked so closely with and have so much respect for. Also, Julia Longoria, who I didn't personally know very much, but she hosted More Perfect and before that, The Experiment. Then there were the other valued colleagues who were more behind the scenes whose names our listeners might not know, but they all helped make New York Public Radio too.

NPR itself had about 100 layoffs this year, around 10% of its staff, and ended production of four podcasts there, sounds familiar. You were president of the Board of Trustees of NPR, among other things you did before you came to be president here. What ties the financial challenges there and here together, and what makes the WNYC situation its own thing?

LaFontaine Oliver: I think what ties the situations together is certainly what we've seen happen with the macroeconomic headwinds and the situation there that has affected the sponsorship and ad market. That certainly we share in common. I think where our situation diverges is we are inherently local. When our local cultural organizations and institutions or our venues or our local businesses, when they feel the pinch, whether it is from inflationary fears or the rate hikes or bank failures, oftentimes one of the first things that organizations cut when you have those issues is advertising and sponsorship.

We've not talked about how the local ecosystem has been affected, but certainly, our listeners are familiar with lots of our local organizations that are experiencing these headwinds as well. That is, I think, the thing that separates us from the situation with NPR, but a lot of similarities.

Brian Lehrer: How did you decide to not cut our local news team?

LaFontaine Oliver: Yes, Brian. This is, as a leader, just a very, very difficult situation. I've been saying over and over again, just being asked to make just almost impossible choices. Local news is our stock in trade. Going into an election year and also thinking about the legacy and the history specifically of WNYC, going back 99 years, being focused on serving the local news needs of New Yorkers, that was just really important to us to figure out how to maintain in an environment where there is a serious local news crisis and many are pulling back.

It felt that the right thing to do here was to continue to find ways to strengthen that while also strengthening things like our multiplatform shows, our national shows like On the Media and The New Yorker Radio Hour, and Kai Wright's program, Notes from America and Radiolab. But then also being able to double down on community engagement and partnerships so that we are able to continue to reflect and serve the needs of the local New York community. Those were just priorities that felt really, really important at this critical time.

Brian Lehrer: I'll add that this has been our pride and joy, our crown jewel, as far as I'm concerned, our local news department. I always talk about this during pledge drives. As many listeners know, I say the best reason to support WNYC is not the show. Even if you're listening to the show at this moment and like it, it's the fact that as the commercial media business model has become less viable, our newsroom has been growing as increasingly core to our public media mission as New York and New Jersey Public Radio.

When I started working here, our newsroom was four people. Now it's several dozen. We acquired the local news website, Gothamist, when its former corporate owner was putting it out of business. WNYC made Gothamist a non-profit and now maintains it as a vital local news website to go with our broadcast side, so there's my little rant on that. I want to ask you, I have to do the station ID here, otherwise I'm going to be in trouble with you. This is WNYC FM, HD, and AM, New York, WNJT FM 88.1, Trenton, WNJP 88.5, Sussex, WNJY 89.3, Netcong, and WNJO 90.3, Toms River. We are in New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming at wnyc.org at eleven o'clock. A few more minutes with WNYC president and CEO, LaFontaine Oliver.

I'll admit, I don't understand this piece of national economics that has been afflicting so much of the media. It's a long-term trend. It's affecting democracy in this country and in this city. Just a little more context about the 6% cuts that you announced. It's been five years now since the Daily News cut its editorial staff in half, and in 2021, the Pew Research Center calculated that more than a quarter of all US newsroom jobs disappeared in the last 15 years. It's good at least that our newsroom is remaining fully intact.

I'll admit, I don't understand this piece of national economics. Unemployment is at record lows. Consumer spending is strong. Why wouldn't advertisers or in our case, sponsoring underwriters be clamoring to get their messages out and their names in front of people?

LaFontaine Oliver: It is a complicated mix, Brian. The economy really took a turn when the interest rates started to go up and a lot of the bigger businesses and advertisers who were gung-ho, especially about podcasting from the earliest days, they stopped spending. 2023 was also the worst year for publishers and ad sales in many years, and New York Public Radio is just a small part of that trend.

When you think about just how all of these things in our economy are interconnected, whether it's rate hikes, the bank failures, global conflict, inflationary pressures, all of these things lead businesses and organizations to pull back in sponsorship. We saw that that happen and have a really huge effect. The other thing that we haven't really talked about was we also had the strike in Hollywood, which affected us because studios aren't promoting films right now.

Brian Lehrer: So much of our underwriting comes from other cultural institutions, right?

LaFontaine Oliver: Exactly. When they are feeling it, of course, that then trickles down to us as well [crosstalk]. A lot of advertisers, they're still in a wait-and-see mode.

Brian Lehrer: Like after the pandemic?

LaFontaine Oliver: Yes. We saw a spike because I think there was pent-up demand and there was this hope that things were going to get back to "normal" and then you add again the rate environment and some of the other issues, and we find ourselves back in a situation where the economy feels a bit skittish and folks are feeling a bit uncertain.

Brian Lehrer: How are senior management pay or staffing affected here?

LaFontaine Oliver: Back in June even before we started talking about the possibilities of layoffs, I made the decision to cut executive bonuses for the year. We also eliminated or we did not fill some executive roles to keep our overall executive salary pool lower. New York Public Radio was a place that had a lot of long-tenured people in top roles. As there's been turnover, we've hired people at lower salaries than their predecessors, myself included, and so overall, spending on our senior staff is down and we made that early decision that we were also going to cut executive bonuses in this environment as well.

Brian Lehrer: At the top management level, the second highest management position was eliminated. You're saying other openings haven't been filled, and the pay for the remaining senior leadership team was cut by eliminating bonuses, which make up a meaningful portion of their income. Some places though just announced a percentage salary cut, which is easier to communicate and understand. Why not do that?

LaFontaine Oliver: Brian, we looked at that. We looked a lot of options and it did not have the material effect that we needed. As I've said in our meetings, I also wanted to do everything that I could to make sure, top to bottom, that we continued to be a destination place to work, and that we were competitive in the marketplace. We did not take that particular step. What I've been saying to the staff all along is we need to do everything that we can to control what we can control, which is our expenses.

We took other measure measures related to travel and related to overtime. We unfortunately found ourselves in a position like a lot of other organizations where it just simply was not enough, and we needed to take additional measures in order to put ourselves on a pathway for long-term sustainability.

Brian Lehrer: What would make revenues grow again to start more new things, which I know is your longer-term goal when we get through this period?

LaFontaine Oliver: That's a good question, Brian. I think one of the things that would help is as we start to see some of the cloud coverage in the economy. I think the other thing for us is we have to continue to do the things that set us apart and that give us a competitive advantage as a mission-driven non-profit organization where we depend so much on our community for support. It really is about continuing to show that value to the community, whether it is with what we do with WNYC in our local news coverage in this time of just great uncertainty and going to an election year, whether it is with our sister station, WQXR, and our presentation of classical music, our national shows.

We have to continue to find ways to show value to our communities, to our members, to our major donors, and to sponsors so that they recognize that this is an important community institution. As community institutions go, we are healthy when we have the support of our local community. There's some things that I think we want to try and work on. Yes, we are having to make some cuts, but we also need to find some ways to make smart investments in the future as this organization has done in the past.

Brian Lehrer: Before you go, let me ask you a question about war coverage. We get that mostly from NPR, the national non-profit news network we're a member of, and from the BBC. How do we acquire that coverage? How do we pay for that?

LaFontaine Oliver: It's a part of this relationship that we have with our community of listeners and member supporters in that we pay fees to NPR, we pay fees to receive coverage from the BBC, and that in large part happens because of the support of our local community. We offer something, Brian, that I think you would agree is unique in that we can stand up a local news operation.

We can produce national shows that are out in our public media system that other stations across the country run, and then we can receive national and international coverage so that when news breaks, whether it's around the corner or around the globe, listeners can come to our station and get reliable fact-based information to make sense of what's going on in their community and what's going on in the world. That's made possible in large part by our listener members.

Brian Lehrer: Well, thanks for coming on for this report to listeners. It's important to say out loud what's up. I know you're still pretty new here, and I look forward to working with you to continue to fulfill our service journalism mission and community building, and public forum mission for the greater New York area. Thank you for coming on.

LaFontaine Oliver: Thank you, Brian, and thank you for all that you do as a part of this wonderful mix. We really appreciate and we rely and depend on what you and your team do each and every day, so thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

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