Channel 39 Pulled $40 Million From Endowment Fund Over Five Years: Where Did It Go?

Feb. 2, 2026

— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs

Lehigh Valley Public Media — also known as PBS 39 — pulled tens of millions from its endowment while running big deficits.

From the minutes of LVPM’s Board of Directors meeting in December: “… over the previous five years more than $40 million was drawn from the investment account and only strong market performance has maintained the balance.” That is attributed to director Luis Campos, Easton’s city administrator. Minutes do not always contain direct quotations.

More than $40 million. Where did it all go?

LVPM received $82 million from a 2017 public auction of airwaves. It went on spending sprees with that public money, but as noted above, a strong stock market has kept the account at around $80 million. The stock market has risen fairly steadily since The Great Recession ended in 2009.

So when LVPM ran a remarkable $8.66 million deficit in fiscal 2023 — that’s about $1,000 per hour — and $7.2 million in fiscal 2024, the stock market saved it. Or maybe helped cover bad decisions? It certainly helped pay the top four people — all gone now — a total of about $1 million annually during the years of reckless spending.

Now, I’m not one to say, “I told you so,” but …. I TOLD YOU SO. That is probably why I am not asked to serve on boards. I don’t have any tolerance for happy talk.

If I could read a couple financial reports and attend a few meetings and see where it was heading, management and the board should have seen it too. All I had to do was look at one tax return and the disaster was obvious.

With careful management, the $82 million windfall could have provided about $2.5 million annually to spend, another $2.5 million to reinvest, and the balance could have grown to $100 million. It’s too late for that.

Whether management was mostly to blame, or the board wasn’t monitoring things, or both, we will never know. Board members serve part time and are not paid. The full-time executives were making $200,000 to $300,000 annually at a small non-profit organization, and the results were abominable. Don’t take my word for it, the board concurs, just in different words.

See LVPM’s public tax return.

Some of that money went to salaries and other payments. Here is the compensation of the top four officials in 2024, from IRS Form 990, the tax return for non-profit groups:

— Tim Fallon, president and chief executive, $299,682.

— Yoni Greenbaum, chief content officer, $264,785.

— Andrea Cummis, chief technology officer, $224,094.

— Arthur Troccoli, chief financial officer, $212,459.

They’re all gone now, as noted.

The meeting minutes contain some other interesting items.

— “Mr. Keim acknowledged that the Board approved the radio and news initiatives,
however, performance in both areas fell well short of expectations.” Mr. Keim is Michael Keim, former head of the board.

The radio initiative is WLVR FM 91.3, the Lehigh University radio station that for some unknown reason LVPM took over. The news initiatives could be a lot of things, but mainly Reporter Corps, a television news show that was introduced as the biggest thing in Pennsylvania in years, then quietly disappeared.

LVPM maintains a digital news outlet, but it is much smaller after firings Jan. 16. The future of WLVR is a mystery. Channel 39 chugs along, showing stuff that is available elsewhere.

— “Ms. Yee further noted that we need to move quicker going forward to course correct when initiatives are not performing as anticipated.” That is Susan Yee, also a former board leader.

Yes, when an organization spends $15.15 million while taking in $6.49 million, for an $8.66 million deficit, cutting the shortfall to $7.2 million the next year is not good enough. That’s what LVPM did in fiscal 2023 and 2024. That’s almost $16 million in deficits in two years.

It’s still losing money, and last year, LVPM lost its federal subsidy. Keep in mind, it was burning public money while on the public dole.

LVPM has been cutting staff regularly since its go-go days, and had 41 on Jan. 15. It had a mass firing the next day. I was told at the January board meeting that the staff was down to 24. Today’s staff list shows 28 people.

Right now, Lehigh Valley Public Media is an $80 million bank account searching for relevance. Public television ratings aren’t great. Per the minutes above, radio is falling short, and the digital news team just got cut down to size, costing a lot of good people their jobs.

That $80 million is public money. It’s incumbent upon this organization to justify what it’s doing with that money or find a better use for it.