(Corrects fiscal year in headline)
June 23, 2026
— Jeff Ward, Lehigh Valley News Briefs
Lehigh Valley Public Media ran a $3.09 million deficit in the fiscal year ended June 2025, or close to $60,000 per week.
That is a lot but at this boondoggle, it’s a big improvement. In fiscal 2023, the radio/television/news outlet spent $8.66 million more than it took in (that’s a deficit of $1,000 per hour) and then ran a shortfall of about $7.2 million in 2024.
So the deficit over three years was about $19 million. Consider what could have been done with that $19 million for the public good, or perhaps we can find a good use for the roughly $80 million endowment LVPM is sitting on.
Even with that big pile of money from a federal auction of the rights to public airwaves, LVPM/Channel 39 went around to local governments hat in hand, getting $8,000 for example from the City of Easton in 2024.
It’s a staggering waste and on top of it all, LVPM burned $40 million from its endowment over five years.
What was going on? What was management doing, besides paying themselves $200,000-plus salaries? Where was the board of directors?
This is not about failing. Every person and every organization fails at times. This is about failing and not acting.
Here’s a link to their tax return, courtesy of Pro Publica. Revenue minus expenses, a loss of $3.09 million.
The loss is down because the Big 4 employees making close to $1 million total are now gone, although they were on the books for at least part of fiscal 2025. See those salaries below from fiscal 2024.
The staff has been cut from about 80 to 28 as of today. Recently, LVPM took on Lehigh University’s WLVR FM radio station on a permanent basis, after running it since 2019 for some unknown reason. Lehigh didn’t want it anymore.
Nobody from the organization has ever tried to explain to the public what happened. The board did concede late last year that mistakes were made.
Mistakes are one thing, but how can a non-profit group run an $8.7 million deficit and not take immediate action?
One solution was, believe it or not, to try to get more public money. That is insane. If one penny of tax money flows to this place, it’s time to storm City Hall with pitchforks.
We will probably never know what happened. Meanwhile, the board of directors has cut back from holding six public meetings annually to just two.
Imagine that… just two public meetings in a year. What’s their motivation?
I’ll get into more numbers later.
Until then, Boondoggle On!
*****
Salaries from fiscal 2024:
— 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.
Lehigh Valley News Briefs 