A yesterday's WQED Multimedia board meeting, president George Miles said the problems afflicting all media companies are also having an impact at WQED. The company's board set a "hunker down" budget for its 2009 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, but they're taking steps to reign in expenses further.
WQED is taking the steps because if the station were to extrapolate from November numbers, something Miles acknowledges may not bear out through the year, the station could wind up more than $600,000 in the red.
"This organization will not go over the cliff," Miles vowed.
To that end, WQED general manager Deb Acklin said the station will suspend funding employee pensions for the 2009 fiscal year and is considering asking employees to increase their health care contributions.
In addition, all station spending is being scrutinized with a hiring freeze, salary freeze, travel freeze and no entry in awards contests, including the Mid-Atlantic Regional Emmy Awards, where WQED traditionally enters heavily and usually wins more than any other Pittsburgh station.
WQED has not hired a new executive to replace Karen Farmer White in the education department, which is now overseen by director of education Annette Waldron. Acklin said the company is assessing the needs of educators seeking a media partner.
In programming, the 40th anniversary of "Black Horizons" will be celebrated in an episode airing Jan. 8. An "On Q" series on the local Indian community will air in early 2009. The long-gestating "Peter Matthiessen: No Boundaries," a one-hour documentary about the writer and environmental activist, will premiere at 10 p.m. April 24.
WQED will launch another digital subchannel, WQED: The Create Channel, on Jan. 5 as Channel 13.2. The lifestyle channel will feature cooking, craft, travel and home and garden programming. I'll write more about that in the coming weeks.
Two community members addressed the board. Activist Glenn Walsh of Mt. Lebanon suggested WQED rent out one of WQEX's digital subchannels to WTAE, whose signal doesn't carry into many areas, including Walsh's home. It's not a bad idea except that WTAE is unlikely to pay for carriage since only 7.7 percent of homes in the area get their signals over the air and because WTAE's engineer is working on a plan to add a repeater tower next year that would get the digital signal into locations where it's not currently available.
Carlana Rhoten of East Liberty professed her love of the station and "On Q," in particular, but requested a meeting with "On Q" producers to get more coverage for single-payer healthcare reform. She's a member of several area groups, including PA United for Single Payer Health Care and Western PA Coalition for Single-Payer Healthcare.
Board chairman Dick Stover said after a Post-Gazette column on Miles' work on corporate boards was published, some board members had questions about his involvement but the board took no action.
"We looked at it from a performance perspective and said it does not affect the performance so we chose not to take any direct action at this point in time," Stover said. "I think the proof in the pudding is in the eating. I know the amount of time and effort put in to get us to this point given the economy. No one on the board has questioned whether the work is getting done."
Miles said he spent more time away from WQED when he worked on non-profit community boards than he does on corporate boards.
"The board signed off on every one of these," Mile said. "My deal coming from New York, forget how much of a pay cut it was, what the board said was, 'What you can do is get on boards.' Once we got WQED squared away, then as I get on each board, I always gotta sign off with them. The [WQED] board knows about every single one. They've encouraged me to do it."
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Ever wonder what became of former KDKA morning anchor Susan Barnett? She's now the "no-drama" 6 and 11 p.m. anchor at KYW-TV in Philadelphia and she was profiled by a newspaper there this week.
Posted
Dec 19 2008, 03:09 AM
by
Rob Owen