[IMO no organization that depends on donations from the public should be paying their "executives" $300,000+ per year. It's just wrong.]
July 17, 2006 WNYCs Planned Move Will Finish Its Breakup With the City By GLENN COLLINS NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/nyregion/17radio.html?pagewanted=print Its time, at last, to bid farewell to the carpets paisleyed with primordial coffee stains. To say sayonara to the unpredictable floods that have engulfed corner offices. And to liberate long-suffering talk-show guests from the limbo of a security line choked with wedding parties schlepping to the Marriage License Bureau. After broadcasting since 1924 from the marble-and-mosaic corridors of the Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street in Manhattan, WNYC is going from drab to fab. WNYC, which has the largest audience of any public radio station in the United States, will finally sever its umbilical cord to the bureaucracy that gave it life and sheltered it so persistently. Escaping its 51,400 square feet of tired but rent-free space scattered on eight floors of the Municipal Building, the station will make a $45 million move northwest to two and a half floors of a 12-story former printing building at 160 Varick Street. The new offices, between Vandam and Charlton Streets, will have 12-foot ceilings and 71,900 square feet of space. The number of recording studios and booths will double, to 31. And there will be a dramatic new 140-seat, street-level studio for live broadcasts, concerts and public forums. There is a little sadness in leaving after the decades of history here, but its time to move out of the house, said Laura R. Walker, the stations president and chief executive since 1995. Critics outside the station question whether the pricey move will pose an intolerable fund-raising burden, jeopardizing the stations independence, forcing it to rely more on corporate underwriters and skewing its audience toward a well-heeled elite. Ralph Engelman, chairman of the journalism department at the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University and a former board chairman of WBAI, a public radio station that competes with WNYC, said of the move, I wonder to what extent that would require more underwriting, and listeners with more upscale demographics to sell the station to underwriters? But to Ms. Walker, WNYC had no choice. We needed more space, and we wanted to have our own identity, she said, asserting that the move will increase its reach and its appeal to diverse audiences. Renovation is scheduled to start this fall for a move planned for next spring or summer. The staff of 165 will definitely not be picketing to remain in the Municipal Building, a 99-year-old landmark that, as Leonard Lopate, the stations indefatigable interviewer, said, seems to be falling apart. Of the move, Brian Lehrer, the midmorning talk-show host, said, Personally, I have no mixed feelings about it, ruefully recalling years of trekking down a flight of stairs from his 25th-floor studio just to use the fax machine. On Varick Street, 18 journalists will no longer be jammed into a shoebox of a newsroom; indeed, capacious new offices will permit a staff of 40. Guests will wait in an actual green room, not out in the hall at the water cooler. And with less cumbersome security requirements than at the Municipal Building, should he agree to revisit, Carson Kressley of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy would probably not be late for a radio interview as he was a while back because of panic that his large, spiked belt contained explosives. In a place where the phones work and the toilets flush, Ms. Walker said cheerfully, we can focus better on making radio. The city long treated the station as a stepchild and at times sought its exile. Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia threatened to sell WNYC to supplement the citys Depression budget, and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani actually did during his privatization campaign in the 1990s. Mayor Edward I. Koch, in what critics saw as the most egregious misuse of programming power, demanded in the 1970s that the station broadcast the John Hour, a listing of the names of men convicted of patronizing prostitutes. (It was broadcast once, then was canceled after a lusty outcry.) City officials saw the station as a place to get free publicity, said Mr. Lopate, who joined WNYC in 1985. The station won its independence nine years ago when the WNYC Foundation, financed by listeners and major donors, paid $20 million for its broadcasting licenses. After the sale there was none of that, Mr. Lehrer said of rampant political intrusions. Alan G. Weiler, a real estate lawyer who is chairman of the WNYC boards facilities committee, said the station had examined nearly 60 spaces in three boroughs. We decided we had to move in Lower Manhattan as a show of support, he said, noting that the station was unable to occupy its own offices for three weeks after Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Weiler declined to reveal the cost of the 20-year lease, with its 10-year renewal option. Given its proximity to the Holland Tunnel, the 3,400-square-foot street-level performance hall will have to be buffered in soundproof glass to hush the honking of passing drivers. Executives said the station is considering setting up a WNYC news zipper outside the building. I think of the drivers as a captive audience, Mr. Weiler said. According to Arbitron, the radio ratings service, the station comprising WNYC 93.9 FM and WNYC AM 820 has the largest Manhattan audience in radio, though it ranks 13th citywide in competition with salsa, hip-hop and light FM. It has 99,378 members, up from 78,866 in 2001, and reaches more than a million unique listeners each week. WNYC pays a $3 million membership fee per year to National Public Radio, which finds national underwriters for the programs it produces, like All Things Considered, and keeps the proceeds from the corporate announcements that run on local stations. But WNYC produces 100 hours a week of its own programming, including the shows of Mr. Lehrer and Mr. Lopate, as well as Studio 360, On the Media, Radio Lab and Soundcheck. WNYC has already embraced podcasting, has 600,000 listeners on the Internet and also puts its shows on satellite radio for a little money, not huge, said Ms. Walker, who declined to specify the amount. In addition to the $45 million for construction, rent and operating costs on Varick Street, WNYC will be raising money for a one-time fund of $12.5 million to cover the cost of creating 40 more hours of new programming and three new shows. The total cost of $57.5 million for both the move and programming is nearly three times the $20 million the station had to raise over seven years to buy its licenses. So far it has pledges of $25 million from foundations, government agencies and private donors. The price has not gone uncriticized. As it takes this next step in its history, is it going to be serving all New Yorkers or serving a largely elite audience? asked Professor Engelman. Like many public stations, WNYC presents an average of two minutes each hour of what public broadcasters call enhanced corporate underwriting advertisements that are announced, but not presented as produced commercials which contributes $8.5 million to its $29.7 million annual operating budget. I dont see a difference between enhanced underwriting and real commercials, said Amy Goodman, a co-host of the Democracy Now! show syndicated on 450 stations, including WBAI. She added: Commercialization threatens public radio. You dont want to see public stations turning to corporations instead of reaching out into diversity and into the city. Beyond that, commercials create the possibility of conflicts of interest, Professor Engelman said, since underwriters have leverage about what goes on the air. But to Mr. Lehrer, the WNYC firewall against corporate interference is incredibly high. He added, No funder has ever had a conversation with me, and I have never heard about any pressure being exerted. Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angel and WABC morning-drive co-host, said that to thrive WNYC should try to attract a diverse mass audience to expand its donor base. Mr. Sliwa had a WNYC talk show for seven months in 1994 after I was forced upon them by Rudy Giuliani, he said. He added: If you have a blue collar or no collar, and you listen to WNYC, youre going to turn the dial because you know they arent talking to you; they speak the language of the suites, not the language of the streets. Mr. Sliwa holds that WNYC is limited by its politics as well. They wanted liberal, progressive radio, he said, recalling his tenure, and I was like the Antichrist of public radio, a conservative voice. Nicki Newman Tanner, WNYCs board chairwoman for the past two years, said the station and its programming strive to be diverse in gender, ethnically and racially, given our responsibility to reflect New York as completely as we can. Her 37-person WNYC board has 14 women, 4 African-Americans, 2 Hispanics, an Asian and a South Asian. Mr. Sliwa criticized, too, the salaries of the stations top executives, including that of Ms. Walker, 48, WNYCs president. Her compensation and benefits of $313,701, according to 2004 public filings, are the equivalent of 7,842 regular $40 station memberships. That is way too much, Mr. Sliwa said. I would take some of her $300,000 and give it to the behind-the-scenes people, the producers and stringers, who do their jobs as a labor of love and are living from paycheck to paycheck. But Ms. Tanner said that to flourish, the station needed to hire the best and the brightest in a competitive environment, referring to broadcasting-executive compensation. Salary, though, hasnt been a priority for many at the station. Oscar Brand, the 86-year-old host of the Saturday night Folksong Festival which made its debut on Dec. 10, 1945 said he had never had a contract during 60 continuous years, and had never been paid. He is proud, he added, that in the McCarthy era his show featured songs by blacklisted singers like Pete Seeger. When Mr. Brand was blacklisted himself in the 1950s, the station never looked at my programs in advance, he recalled, and WNYC management never even spoke to me about being blacklisted. Its that kind of place. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
