Lehigh Valley Public Media to Hold Board Meeting Monday, First Since Big Job Cuts; An $80 Million Bank Account Seeks a Purpose

Jan. 23, 2026

— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs

Lehigh Valley Public Media’s Board of Directors will meet Monday, its first gathering since big job cuts last week at the public television/radio/media outlet.

Now might be a good time to figure out what this $80 million bank account in search of a mission really is.

Could that money be used elsewhere, perhaps to preserve open space? $80 million could buy a few thousand acres. That beats frittering away more money on Father Brown reruns and Engelbert Humperdinck specials.

The money is public, what’s left of LVPM’s $82 million cut of a federal airwaves auction in 2017. Had that money been invested wisely with a goal of 6% return, half of the return could have been spent and the other half reinvested. That would have provided $2.5 million in annual revenue, and by now the initial endowment could be about $100 million.

For an endowment, 6% is a reasonable long-term goal. Instead, the only policy was to spend, spend, spend. Finally the board faced reality. Along the way millions were spent on big salaries for bad results, a lot of good people lost jobs and once again, the Lehigh Valley media shrinks.

The job cuts were announced Jan. 16, after years of profligate spending and the loss of public financing. LVPM, also known as Channel 39, has been running million-dollar deficits for years even after income from that pile of public dough.

From now on, the board will limit spending from the endowment to 4% annually, according to LVPM’s own story. That’s $3.2 million, not a bad start. I asked the board last year about an endowment policy. It appears the organization had operated without one, or if it had one, nobody was paying attention to it.

In fiscal 2023 alone, it ran a deficit of $8.66 million, and that was with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The organization spent $15.15 million while taking in $6.49 million, for a $1,000 per hour loss. LVPM followed that up with a $7.2 million deficit in fiscal 2024.

About 20 to 25 staff members remain, down from 80 a few years ago and 41 two weeks ago.

The Board of Directors meeting is public and available via Zoom. It will start Monday at 1 p.m. See this link for details and the Zoom connection.

LVPM operates Channel 39, WLVR FM radio (Lehigh University owns the station, LVPM for some reason operates it) and a news website.

With a big snowstorm maybe on the way, check the PBS39 website later today for potential changes.