— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs
**I’ll be posting Fritz’s comments from Dec. 2 later this week. As for the text messages (noted below), better that those not see the light of day! I will post the Fritz audio also if technology allows.**
WLVR Radio has been around for a long time. It might not be, although no final decision has been made as of today.
The public radio station at 91.3 FM is run by Lehigh Valley Public Media, aka Channel 39, etc. etc. but Lehigh University owns the station.
When Lehigh Valley Public Media’s Board of Directors met Dec. 2, Alfred “A. J. Fritz” Fritzinger Jr. was there to ask that the station be operated as an asset for the community. I was at that meeting too. Fritzinger spent decades at WLVR. He spoke bluntly and with passion, but respectfully and reasonably.
I had set up a recording of part of the meeting and only realized later that I have audio of Fritz’s plea for WLVR. I will expand on that in a future post.
Fritz and I exchanged text messages before that meeting, also some interesting stuff. He knew radio. He and I had a shared background. We both worked in the financial world and in media.
Fritz died 29 days after the Dec. 2 meeting. He was a legend in local radio. Everybody knew him.
The LVPM board met again today (Jan. 27). Members of the public questioned whether WLVR has a future.
“We will be having a discussion on radio,” board Chairman Mike Keim said. He said a decision will be made “in the very near future.”
“We have made no decision as this time to cease operations of radio,” board member Susan Yee said.
As Fritz pointed out in what turned out to be his last plea for the station, at one time more than 100 students and community people were learning and working there, on a budget he said was under $52,000 per year.
“It is an asset of Lehigh University,” Fritz said of WLVR on Dec. 2. “The asset does not belong to you (LVPM). I have questions about how you’re managing it and how you plan to manage it going forward.”
He added, “This organization (LVPM) has not lived up to its obligations,” and then, “The station is decimated. I can’t even buy equipment to update it,” he said, adding that WLVR has no money.
Lehigh Valley Public Media is looking for ways to save money. Its revenue is falling short, and in fiscal 2023, the South Bethlehem-based public media/television/radio outfit managed to lose $8.66 million. LVPM employs about 30 fewer people than it used to, down from around 80 to 49. Recently, some radio staff has left.
College radio, which WLVR was at one time, has always been quirky but interesting. Sometimes I used to hear great new stuff on college radio — I first heard about the band The Police when I was at Lafayette College, listening to WJRH — and then sometimes it can be an obscurity contest, people finding the weirdest stuff around and playing it.
Always interesting, though.
There was a time when WLVR radio was an institution in the area, and so was Channel 39 (the TV station that became Lehigh Valley Public Media).
TV ratings are down and the future of WLVR is being discussed. Times change, but has a good effort been made to keep radio relevant? Fritz knew radio better than anybody, and he said otherwise.
At the December meeting, a board member noted that LVPM took over WLVR in 2019, right before the COVID-19 pandemic.
True, but for how long can we blame the pandemic for things?
The future of WLVR is at stake. Could Lehigh run it again?
We will see if another Lehigh Valley institution bites the dust.
Lehigh Valley News Briefs 
I’m one of the founding sponsors of WLVR. It’s one of two remaining newsrooms in the Lehigh Valley – Channel 69 and the operation built by the departed Brad Rinehart is the other – and the work they do is unmatched. My question has more to do with how we in the Valley consume public media content, so here goes:
What purpose does PBS39 serve? It has a couple of local shows weekly and broadcasts essentially the same content as WHYY to the south. Pennsylvania’s hyperlocalism in all things, starting and ending with government, seems to preclude a statewide PBS system like Maryland’s or New Jersey’s…because Pennsylvania is SO DIFFERENT from those states (/s). But perhaps they’re on to something?
So if WHYY threw an hour or two of local broadcasting at us the way they do with Delaware and moved programming and TV staffing funds over to WLVR, we might have a right-size solution for our region. PBS39 people for the most part are faceless outside of the seemingly-endless pledge drives. WLVR reporting staff are everywhere across the broadcast area.
Keep what’s good, rearrange and negotiate our way through the rest.
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As a WLVR alum (‘86), I still believe it’s greatest value is as a student run operation. I believe there is a streaming version of WLVR operating in Grace Hall by students playing their content, hook the transmitter back up to them. NPR is available through many other sources, the voice of Lehigh students is only available through WLVR.
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