PBS 39 Since the Windfall; How Has the Public Media Outlet Handled $82 Million? It’s All About the Benjamins

— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs

When somebody gets a windfall, they spend some of it. Who wouldn’t?

When PBS 39 (aka Lehigh Valley Public Media) announced an $82 million pile of new cash in 2017, it decided to spend some, with no doubt the best of intentions.

That sum, equivalent to 820,000 $100 bills, came from a federal auction of airwaves to provide bandwidth for mobile communications. The proceeds went to broadcast television stations.

So in May 2018, PBS 39 announced what it modestly called “one of the most significant journalistic hirings in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania in decades … “

It wasn’t. Remember, “self-praise is no recommendation.” This show didn’t last.

PBS 39 hired a dozen reporters to cover the region. Unfortunately, this organization — like many others, to be fair — just can’t say what it is doing. The addiction to jargon and pompous statements is incurable. Every statement is verbose.

Still, as a veteran of print, television and digital media, I trudged through the news release.

The first thing I noticed was bad math. They were hiring a dozen people to join four on the staff, for a total of 14. Hmm. A small matter, perhaps.

Then, it wasn’t just a news team. It was “PBS39 Reporter Corps.” This reminded me of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s World War II Afrika Korps.

The military motif continued. The reporters would not just report from counties, they would be “embedded” in them. An embedded reporter often travels with a military unit and reports under censorship.

If Allentown declared war on Bethlehem, PBS 39 was ready to rumble.

Then a comment from a now-former employee about “telling the stories that nobody else is telling.”

That’s a bad sign. If nobody else is telling those stories, perhaps they’re not worth telling. At that time, 2018, the Lehigh Valley local media was a lot bigger than it is now.

Later, a Reporter Corps manager said we local yokels should continue reading our usual news outlets for certain things. How thoughtful; you’re telling me what to read?

I watched the product twice, the first time out of curiosity, the second because a relative was going to be on it.

It wasn’t my cup of tea. That doesn’t make it bad, but what Reporter Corps did was take a 90-second story and stretch it out into five minutes or more.

I watched an item about an issue in a small town. At the three-minute mark, I thought, “I wouldn’t watch this even if I lived in that town.”

At the five-minute mark, “I wouldn’t watch this even if it were about me.”

I worked in financial journalism, where speed is essential, so again, my perspective is different. I’m not condemning the product. It just wasn’t for me, and in the iPhone era, not for many people.

Yet it was at the time “the largest non-capital investment that PBS39 has ever made, and will serve as a major milestone in modern journalism throughout the region.”

The first part was true. A lot of money went into this.

The second part was not true. Reporter Corps turned out to be a tiny speed bump in the history of Lehigh Valley journalism.

A very expensive speed bump with little impact.

In September 2019, the station hailed the one-year anniversary of “PBS39 News Tonight.”

There was a boast about not covering weather, crime, traffic or sports. Things people care about. Somehow, telling people what you don’t do doesn’t seem like a good selling point.

There was talk of awards and ratings.

Then at some point, the program quietly disappeared. I can’t find a press release on that, maybe I missed it. The last show may have been in December 2020.

How much did this cost?

Now, in fairness, we all fail. The person who never fails is like the gambler who never loses — self-deluded or lying.

Failure is part of life, and sometimes instructive. In this case, were any lessons learned?

What has happened since then indicates, no. More on that later.