People who don’t like PBS 39, aka Lehigh Valley Public Media, should be demanding accountability.
People who support it should be even more firm in demanding accountability.
As I’ve posted about a dozen times, the organization that (sort of) runs Channel 39, public radio and a public news outlet had fiscal 2023 revenue of $6.49 million while spending $15.15 million. That resulted in a deficit of $8.66 million.
That leads to questions to pose to the South Bethlehem boondoggle:
1-Who is running the show?
Three of the top four officers are out, and the fourth now holds an “emeritus” position that involves trying to get more state and federal money (Just say no!)
Unless PBS 39 has adopted a French-style commune approach, somebody has to make day-to-day decisions. Who?
That leads to …
2-Why is anybody involved in the 2023 “Year of Spending Recklessly” still allowed in the building?
3-What is the goal of Lehigh Valley Public Media?
It has a “strategic” plan on its website (see below) but as usual with the word “strategic,” the plan is not a plan. It is an incomprehensible pile of … of … jargon that is more of a wish list than a plan, and it’s not a document any serious person could take seriously.
It uses terms such as maximize, critical mass, “engage appropriate partners” (like the ball in Pride and Prejudice?), “positively impact,” and this gem: “We will build an organization that is financially stable and sustainable.”
There’s no time like the present to get started on that last thing. As for the plan, it’s the kind of thing that everybody (except public-spirited blowhards) knows is just for show. Yet staff time and money is spent on this garbage.
4-When management said, in short, public television and public radio are in a decline, so we want to move into public news, did any board member say, “That’s very noble, but spending money on something that is struggling across the U.S. is not a great idea?”
Note, I call it spending. I don’t call it investing. Investing means there is at least some hope of return. Is this board qualified to make that kind of decision? Did it consider alternatives?
5-How is a part-time six-month “transformation officer” going to turn this mess around?
6-How in H-E-double-toothpicks (that means HELL for those of you under 60) does this organization have $40.9 million in intangible assets?
This is accounting geek stuff but it can be important. Intangible assets are things that are hard to measure, such as goodwill and trademarks.
Now the names Coca-Cola and Microsoft have value, and even Little Debbie is probably worth a couple million, but PBS 39 and its other names, what value do they generate? Would anybody pay for those? Do they have other intangible assets? Have they tested those assets for “impairment” to determine if they’re not really worth $40.9 million?
So what is next?
1-Nothing. Lehigh Valley Public Media can muddle along until it quietly disappears.
2-PBS 39 could shut down. That would lead to an interesting scramble for the $80 million of public dollars it is sitting on.
3-Consolidation. The obvious candidate is WHYY out of Philadelphia.
4-Things turn around wonderfully, PBS 39 and its affiliates become relevant and the strategic plan works and we save Big Bird and the outfit gets lots of money, and everybody is happy and peppy and bursting with love, and I am deemed to be the biggest most surly curmudgeon in history.
I can live with that last part. I don’t think the rest is going to come true, though.
My suggestion is an operations audit, similar to what then-Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli ordered for a museum in Bethlehem several years ago.
Let the sun shine. Find out what happened.
“Sunny day, washing the clouds away …. “
In the meantime, please ask the Inspector General for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; city officials in Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton; elected officers in Lehigh and Northampton counties, and most of all your state representatives and senators, and federal officeholders, for accountability.
And above all, tell them not to throw more public money into the blast furnace in South Bethlehem.
To contact the Inspector General: oigemail@cpb.org.
I’ve started to get responses from public officials, and I have more to contact. More on that, and contact information, later.
To the hardy few who made it to the end, I thank you.
Jeff Ward, editor, Lehigh Valley News Briefs
Strategic plan:
https://www.wlvt.org/strategic-plan/
Lehigh Valley Public Media:
Link to tax returns of WLVT 39 under various names, courtesy of ProPublica:
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/231642883
Mission statement:
Lehigh Valley News Briefs 