— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs
PBS 39 has burned through millions of dollars, almost $1,000 per hour in fiscal 2023.
A recent press release says those times are over. We will see.
The south Bethlehem boondoggle has a new goal: “to ensure that budgets are met.”
That seems obvious, but at PBS 39 (once Channel 39) it is a revolutionary concept.
PBS 39 spent $8.66 million more in fiscal 2023 than it took in (expenses $15.15 million, revenue $6.49 million). That’s a staggering deficit, but the outfit has an $80 million endowment, courtesy of the federal government (taxpayers). That money came from the sale of public bandwidth (broadcasting rights) to telecommunications companies.
A big pile of public cash covers up a lot of sins. That money could be invested wisely to cover expenses, but the endowment total has actually declined over the past few years, even with the stock market taking off.
Some of the losses resulted from a failed television news show, and now from an expansion into digital media. The board of directors was not exactly on top of things when $1,000 per hour was flowing out, but it does seem to have woken up recently.
The outfit — calling itself Lehigh Valley Public Media (LVPM) after a couple name changes — has named Stephen Budihas, formerly of the Morning Call, as vice president of operations. He will keep responsibilities for facilities, personnel and technology.
Budihas joined PBS 39 in January. It’s hard to tell from the PBS 39 staff list, but he is probably the top executive there. The four top people who oversaw fiscal the 2023 Year of Spending Recklessly are gone, except for the $308,000 Man, Tim Fallon. He was chief executive and is now listed as CEO Emeritus.
A couple board meetings ago, Fallon discussed a plan to get state money for the organization, more public money to waste. At the September meeting, he did not speak. Let’s hope the plan to get more of your money to burn is off, but PBS 39 loves public money and recently put in for an $8,000 grant from Northampton County.
This while they have $80 million in investments and are in a “transformation” whatever that means.
Budihas, meanwhile, in addition to budgets, will “implement plans for organizational alignment.” That’s jargon, but the latest press release is a little less full of itself than most of the previous ones.
Budihas is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh with an MBA from the University of Notre Dame, according to the press release.
He has some tough choices to make, it appears. At the last public PBS 39 meeting, it was noted that there aren’t a lot of cuts left to make that would not affect the staff.
The board has earlier advertised for a “transformation officer” and said there would be a national search for a replacement for Fallon. There is no word on whether those plans are dead. Maybe Budihas will run the show.
The board’s last meeting was public, but today (Oct. 30) it will hold a five-hour “board retreat” that is private. A five-hour meeting. Perhaps we should be grateful it’s not open to the public.
LVPM operates a digital news outlet, Channel 39 and a public radio station.
— Disclosure: I am a retired journalist, working formerly at the former Bethlehem Globe-Times, the former Service Electric Cable TV news, the Express-Times, Bloomberg News for most of my career (23 years) and after retiring, I worked at a commercial television station in the region.
Lehigh Valley News Briefs 