Budget Update: Changes at KQEDBudget Update: Changes at KQED

The following letter from KQED President & CEO Michael Isip was shared with members on May, 23, 2024.

Dear Friend:

Last week we successfully concluded a $1.6 million radio pledge drive thanks to the generosity and kindness of over 8,000 donors. You put your trust and faith in our work and it’s essential that we uphold our responsibility as financial stewards of your support in service to the Bay Area.

It’s an incredibly challenging time in the media industry. While overall media consumption is at an all-time high, most media outlets are seeing broadcast audience declines as people shift their consumption to digital streaming platforms. As you may know, a number of public and commercial media companies have recently announced layoffs and deep budget cuts due to the rising costs of doing business in this increasingly tumultuous and fractured media landscape.

KQED is not immune from these challenges. Simply, our expenses have been growing at a faster rate than our revenue. As such, we feel it’s prudent to take action and better align our expenses and revenue both now and into the future.

With that in mind, earlier today I informed our staff about a range of budget cuts across the organization. Our objective was to identify operational efficiencies that protect as best as possible our public service, minimize impact on our audiences and mitigate the overall scale of personnel cuts.

Today we notified 19 of our colleagues that we intend to eliminate their jobs, and another 11 are taking voluntary departure offers. Together, they account for approximately 8 percent of our workforce. For an organization that centers on community, these are painful decisions, but ones that we could no longer avoid. We’re parting with people we care for and value. We’re working to minimize the impact on these colleagues and are providing them financial and transitional support.

Despite the loss of such talented and dedicated staff, we expect these reductions will have minimal impact on our service to the community.

In addition to those cuts, we will also be making operational changes. The two largest relate to broadcast distribution — not the programming itself, but the delivery. We are automating both television and radio master controls. These include transitioning our television master control operations to a centralized master control hub operated by a non-profit, which automates this service for many public media stations, and automating our overnight radio programming. We believe it’s fiscally responsible to better leverage available broadcast technology. Please know that these changes will not compromise the reliability of our broadcast service and will be seamless for our viewers and listeners.

Additionally, we’re making two programming changes. First, we are eliminating television pledge drives beginning on October 1, 2024. The cost of television pledge, in terms of thank you gifts, their fulfillment and staff time is high, while the net revenue is relatively small. This will allow us to focus resources on finding other ways to grow membership and philanthropic support. The second programming change is that we will sunset the production of our podcast series Rightnowish.

KQED exists to serve our community. At times this means making difficult decisions to not only meet the moment, but to also ensure that we’re here to serve future generations. We are unwavering in our commitment to deliver on our mission to inform you with trusted journalism and programming, inspire you with quality storytelling, and involve you with educational services and civic and cultural experiences.

Thank you for your trust, faith and belief in the work that we do.

Sincerely,

Michael Isip