// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

[00:00:00]
Brian Mackey: It's the 21st show. I'm Brian Mackey. It was exactly one year ago today that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting began to wind down. It had previously taken money that had been approved by the Congress and enacted by the president and distributed to public media stations across the country. And, but of course, as you well know, federal funding went away. The Trump administration realized a longtime conservative goal of ending federal support for public media, and Republicans in Congress sort of approved that move, and so the Corporation for Public Broadcasting began winding down. I'm being a little precise about how I talk about it because the money didn't dry up immediately. Federal funding is future funded in some ways, so we can get into the details of that if we want.

In any case, we just heard from the NPR CEO Catherine Maher, but now we want to spend the rest of the program talking more about what's happening specifically here in Illinois. So joining me now is Heather Norman, general manager of Tri-States Public Radio and president of the Illinois Public Broadcasters Council. Heather, welcome back to the 21st show.

[00:01:20]
Heather Norman: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:23]
Brian Mackey: And a special welcome to the listeners to Heather's station, Tri-States Public Radio, who are newly joining our family today. Also with us, Jeff Owens, general manager for WEIU TV and FM in Charleston. Jeff, welcome back to you as well.

[00:01:38]
Jeff Owens: Oh, thanks for having me as well. I look forward to today's show.

[00:01:41]
Brian Mackey: And last but certainly not least, my boss, John Steinbacher, director of development, budget and planning — actually, that's an old title, isn't it? He is the co-executive director of our home station, Illinois Public Media, WILL. John, welcome back to the 21st show.

[00:01:56]
John Steinbacher: Great to be with you. I'm a man of many titles, and I'm delighted to be on the air with you while not asking for funds during a fund drive.

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Brian Mackey: That's right. That's right. We've done plenty of that, haven't we? Listeners, you can be on the air with us as well at 800-222-9455. And we did get some text messages about this. Barbara in Gibson City says, "I am so proud of our local station, WILL. Thanks, Barbara. I know it's been a struggle, but I've been so impressed with and thankful for the quality programming WILL continues to provide. We're still sustaining members and hope always to be. We farm and are struggling, but hopefully we'll be able to step up our support in the future." Thank you for the message and your support, Barbara.

Um, Jeff, I'm gonna start with you. So, explain the role of federal funding in a station like yours prior to the defunding last year.

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Jeff Owens: WEIU television really relied on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for, you know, some — for the last at least 20 years that I've been here, 20-22 years. I've only been general manager for, you know, 5 or 6 — I was an interim manager for a while there — but, you know, we were getting anywhere between $800,000 and a million dollars a year to fund our television station and to do what we were doing. And to lose that, it was going to be impossible to make up when the events happened last year to cut that funding, and so we had to make some drastic decisions at WEIU. One time we had 22 employees, we were down to 11, then we were cut down to 5, and then now 3. And so you could see that without the $800,000 to a million dollars, we were not going to be able to survive doing what we were doing.

So the first decision we made was to not be a PBS station and then not to go over the air as of last May. And so it's been — it's been unique, but we're always trying to be positive here, but it was definitely a tough thing to do and answer a lot of questions to a lot of good people of why we had to make those changes. But we did it to survive in the state that we are now, which is, you know, a hyperlocal TV station, a hyperlocal radio station that really trains broadcasting students here at Eastern Illinois University.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah, focusing on a core mission. Well, WEIU, I guess, is one of those stations that had some of the most significant effects of this. John, what was it like at our producing station, WILL?

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John Steinbacher: Well, you know, it wasn't great news. We had to cut back on a few things. We're definitely working with a slightly smaller staff than we were last year. I know we've asked a lot of our current employees to step up. We did make a few programming changes, but we really tried to make it so that the folks — the folks in Gibson City and all of our listeners and viewers — hopefully didn't notice that much. As Catherine [Maher] said, our hope is that folks out there listening and watching didn't really feel the impact. We're really focused now on moving forward with sustainability, but we saw a great response from the community. I just really can't say enough about the pouring of outreach and support from our community. But as she said, you know, looking forward, I don't know that we can count on that. So what we're really trying to do is focus on looking at a sustainable model and, you know, being transparent both with the community and with our current employees. So, really, it's been a year. It's been an exciting —

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Brian Mackey: Maybe we can put some numbers on it. So I think it was like 20% of —

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John Steinbacher: — 20% of our funding. Yeah, so we lost about [1.5%] — obviously, not to get too far in the weeds, but that adjusts quite a bit every year, especially for us as a rural station. The formula would be variable from year to year, but about that. And we saw that support come back. We raised the entirety back in one year, and that is fantastic. But I don't think anybody in accounting or in fundraising would be honest by saying we expect that to happen year after year. So that does provide us a bridge, sort of, to the future, but what exactly — you know, the staff here really stepped up. I guess that's really the main message I'd have, and now we have to look at where we're gonna be next year to support them and to start to support the sustainability of the mission.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah. And Heather Norman, let me come to you, and we'll talk about Tri-States Public Radio, which — I mean, this was not the first financial hit, right? Because Western had sort of wound down funding a few years prior. Talk about how you have adjusted at your station, knowing that this funding was going away and has gone away.

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Heather Norman: So you're correct, it was not the first financial hit we took. Western ceased appropriated funding that covered 10 salaries in 2019. And I — this has kind of become our line if you wanna know how all this has affected us. At our height — we had a couple of open positions when that happened — we had 14 employees with 5 reporters. Now we have 6.5 employees with 2 reporters. And that is a result of losing appropriated funding. We did get 2 salaries back from the university, so they are supporting us a little bit — not to the extent they were, but I think that we're very grateful for that support because we are a completely rural station. We serve all — are part of 20 counties in Illinois, Iowa, and a little corner of Missouri, and none of those places have a large population center. So our largest population center is just about 30,000, and there are pockets of those, but we're a very rural station, so it's very hard to maintain the tower. You know, as Catherine said, it's expensive and there's no way around it. And we do receive in-kind support from the university. They do pay — I mean, to pay the electric bill on a tower is not insignificant, and they do do that.

But we took a hit of about $200,000 with the CPB loss. I will say that I just sent an email out this morning that says as of yesterday, we had spent our last federal dollar. As you pointed out, they were advance funded a little bit, so we did have a grant left. But, you know, now we're gonna talk about sustainability and how do we move forward. And thankfully, we have a lot of fans in our area and they've stepped up to the plate time and again. But that's gonna be harder to do in a tough economy, and especially we're very rural — you know, farms are hurting now because of gas prices, diesel prices. It's just, you know, those are a lot of headwinds to fight against. We'll do our best. We wanna be here to serve the community, but it's gonna be difficult.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah. And so, Heather, I want to stay with you because you're also, as I mentioned, president of the Illinois Public Broadcasting Council. What else are you hearing from other stations around Illinois? Similar stories, some doing better than others?

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Heather Norman: I think we're — you know, we all had a wonderful response from our communities with the funding loss. People wanted to help, and that's great, but I don't know that — again, as we've all said here — that's something that you can expect year after year. So I think we all experienced that great bump and then now we're kind of experiencing a slowdown. We've talked about how we can better work together. You know, one of the things I've heard for a long time now — I'm from Nebraska, and everyone goes, "Nebraska has a statewide network," and everyone's like, "Why doesn't Illinois have a statewide network?"

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Brian Mackey: Iowa, Wisconsin — I hear that too.

[00:10:04]
Heather Norman: Right. Illinois is a very different place, you know. It's like three different states in one. You know, last week — well, maybe two weeks ago — I was in Chicago and Carbondale in the same week, and they're very different places. They have very different feels. So I think our goal — you know, one of the great things about being in Illinois is we all work together very well. We talk to each other, we're trying to find solutions to problems. But I think one of our goals would be to have the back end be a state system, and what everyone hears on the radio is still relevant to their community. So, you know, a state system where each place still maintains its identity — and I think it's possible to do that in 2026. We just have to build the infrastructure to make that happen. Radio stations have started doing that. We've applied for a bridge fund grant to start investing in the infrastructure to allow us to tie some things together that we all do. We don't know if we've been accepted yet, but I think there are some good possibilities that will help us all thrive and save some money on the back end so that we can focus on things that our community needs.

[00:11:23]
Brian Mackey: Yeah, you talk about Illinois being a very different place. One of the examples I like to use is you can go to Cairo in far southern Illinois — you are both literally but also sort of spiritually closer to Mississippi than Chicago when you are in Cairo.

Let me come back to you, Jeff. You mentioned cutting ties with PBS. Talk about coming to that decision and how you made it.

[00:11:49]
Jeff Owens: It was a tough decision, but one thing — unlike WILL, we were a PDP station, so we still had to provide 75% of our programming either from other sources or that we, you know, we self- —

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Brian Mackey: What does that mean, PDP, for people who aren't familiar?

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Jeff Owens: Partial differentiation partner, or something like that, where we're 25% PBS. We couldn't air the same — we had to pick 25% of the shows that PBS —

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Brian Mackey: Oh, so you — like, maybe you do Frontline and Sesame Street, but not Masterpiece, that kind of thing?

[00:12:19]
Jeff Owens: Yeah. And then we also had to make sure that our schedule didn't, you know, conflict with yours, to be honest with you, because there are rules about that. So we had like a little delay if something came out, which was fine. Those were the rules and we did it. So we really had only, at first, until we went off the air that first year — we only had to go find 25% more programming, and what we did is we did a lot of local stuff, we replayed some of our local stuff, and then we relied on [NETA] and APT to do that.

But then when this new fiscal year started and we went over digital, that's when we didn't have that backlog of 75% of our stuff that we could pull from [NETA] and APT. So that's where we went to just continuing only local programming on the digital platform. So that's kind of the timeline of how we did it. And the whole idea behind our president and the staff here was: we want to continue to work with students but also provide the community with, you know, local shows and local information.

Our News Watch is our crème de la crème show on television every night at 5:30. It's run pretty much completely by students — all the talented students, all the writing and the producing is done by students. We have three professors here at EIU that help us, but realistically, when the lights go on at 5:30 tonight, it's students that are doing a live, up to a 30-minute newscast. And so that's what we want to make sure we maintain, because there are so many kids who went through that program that are out there in the real world doing great things in television.

Conversely, FM wasn't affected. We kept our — we're keeping our FM license. And again, we're not an NPR station when it comes to FM because there are plenty of NPR stations that people can pick up here, including you guys at Illinois, so there's no need to compete with that. So we provide another training ground for FM students there as well, and they go all over the country again and get into radio or promotions or sales. And so that's what we've kind of done and focused on, and with everything we do, we want students involved. That's kind of been our focus, and under the direction of our president, he wants us to continue to do that because EIU has really been about producing broadcast students.

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Brian Mackey: And maybe just to make sure we're defining our terms here — when you say digital, can people still get you on, you know, if they have a cable subscription or satellite TV, or is it only like internet?

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Jeff Owens: Only internet right now. You go to [weiu.net] and you click about two clicks, and you can be watching what we're airing right now.

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Brian Mackey: What has that meant for outreach and fundraising and that sort of thing for y'all?

[00:14:52]
Jeff Owens: It's been different. I think we lost one sponsor in this thing, and that was because they were sponsoring a specific show that we just cannot do again. Everybody stayed with us in some form. They may have switched some of their money to FM. They may have cut back a little bit, but realistically the — our underwriters stayed with us, and they're broadcasting their spots either on our website or before the shows that are local, and they believe in us. One client — I don't know, I shouldn't say names — but, you know, she sponsors us on radio and television and she gives us another $300 every month just because she believes in our mission, which is incredible. And when that check comes every month and she continues to do that — and she's a very small business — so that's great.

And, like I said earlier off mic, we just had our most successful radio campaign ever. We call it Adopt a WATT. We raised over $26,000 this year, and so that was great because that really pays for a lot of our expenses on radio for the year. We got a $100,000 gift for scholarships for WEIU TV and radio. That's going to be put into a fund and work toward making sure that future broadcast students have a little bit of money at the end of the semesters and things like that — that's what it's directed to go to. So we're real lucky in that aspect. All three of those things — underwriters stayed with us, a successful campaign on FM, and then the $100,000 gift that we just received — has really made us feel pretty good, even though it's weird only having three people in the office every day. I'll be telling you that — that's the one thing it's hard to get used to.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah. All right. Well, we need to take another break here. Before we do, let me share another message from a listener. Helen in Springfield says our local station has done a masterful job of communicating a very mature and upbeat attitude toward the cutbacks in funding. Helen, thank you so much for that message, and I guess shout out to our partners at NPR Illinois for the work they're doing in Springfield.

You can join us today at 800-222-9455, 800-222-9455. How do you think your local public station has fared in the past year? Have you considered — or maybe you continue — to contribute to your local station? What questions do you have about what is happening in public broadcasting today? Let us know: 800-222-9455. That's 800-222-9455. More to come after a short break. This is The 21st Show. Stay with us.

It's The 21st Show. I'm Brian Mackey. We are talking today about public media funding. We're speaking in this part of the program with the leaders from several public media stations across Illinois about what it's been like one year after the end of federal funding for public media — or at least the beginning of the wind-down of funding — when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting began closing up shop one year ago today, the start of the new fiscal year. You can join us at 800-222-9455. That's 800-222-9455.

We're talking with Heather Norman, general manager at Tri-States Public Radio, which covers Macomb, Galesburg, and Keokuk. She's also president of the Illinois Public Broadcasting Council. Also with us, Jeff Owens, general manager for WEIU television station and FM in Charleston, Illinois. And John Steinbacher, who is co-executive director as well as in charge of development, budget, and resource planning at our producing station, Illinois Public Media. It's a good idea if I pronounce my boss's name correctly on the radio. You can join us again: 800-222-9455. That's 800-222-9455.

Heather, every station is different. We've mentioned that your station had funding wind down from its university campus, but we're seeing in certainly in red states some even more significant pushes to sort of continue the work that the federal government started. Other places have had complications. I saw even in the last few days, it was making the rounds that a station in Alabama — there's a state law now requiring all state employees, which includes apparently the employees at this university public radio station, to use Gulf of America in place of Gulf of Mexico. Even though NPR and the Associated Press and many other news organizations are using the centuries-long extant name Gulf of Mexico, they have to do that, otherwise it could jeopardize their funding. So what are you seeing across the system in terms of state funding for public media?

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Heather Norman: Well, it's really kind of all over the place. There are some states that have stepped up. In Illinois, we've stayed level. But a good example I like to point to is — for many years, we looked to Indiana because they were a red state and they were well funded by the state. And when all this started, Indiana stations lost their state funding with no notice — with a, like, I think it was a 1 or 2 a.m. vote by the legislature. I mean, it was really the middle of the night, and the next day all their grant paperwork was pulled. The agency had already sent the grant paperwork out, figuring that this was just gonna go through, and the next day all that grant paperwork was pulled. So, you know, there are responses to the federal action.

I'd also like to point to the positive side — I believe it was Wyoming who was going to lose their funding, and they did like a weeklong push and managed to get it back with a photo op from the governor signing the legislation. So I mean, you have to — public media gets caught in this political message. And the reality is we shouldn't be a political football. As Catherine said, we're here presenting fact-based information to maintain an informed citizenry so that our democracy can go on, or just to keep you informed by what's happening down the block. You know, this isn't something that should be controversial, but has become so.

And I also — you know, we talk about emergency alerting. One of Senator Durbin's favorite stories during rescission is one that I shared with him: that we had an active shooter event here in Macomb. And we're the only station in Macomb that has anyone in the studio. There are two blocks from where this was. There are four stations, but they're all automated and remote, so no one knows what's going on here. So we're the only people who could tell anyone [about what's going on], and that's increasingly the case — whether it's a large population center or a medium-sized population center. It is the public media stations that are mission-driven that have people in their studios that can inform the public. And that's really our job, is to inform the public. And I think it's unfortunate that we get caught up in these back-and-forth between political parties.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah. And I'll shout out my news director colleague Reginald Hardwick, who has sort of pushed our home station to do a lot more live emergency weather coverage. We hear from listeners how much they appreciate that, so it goes to exactly the point you were making.

John, a question from a listener. Lloyd in Danville says, "What strategies are there that will apply pressure to state representatives and corporate leaders to close the funding gaps? How can everyday citizens apply pressure to get their attention?"

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John Steinbacher: Well, obviously state legislatures — call them, visit them, tell them how important you think local public media is. Heather can correct me a little bit on this, but I think there have been some bills to restore our state funding to what it was before 2008, which was significantly more and would really help some of the smaller stations. I don't know where that is currently at. But certainly getting the word out there and talking to your legislators about the importance of local public media and the fact that federal funding is gone is a huge and important step.

I think one state we didn't mention was — I think New Mexico increased their funding of their public media stations to totally make up the difference, and we don't want to expect that. But especially as we're all working together more, a little increase in funding from the state would be great. And, you know, we're realistic — we know the state has got a lot of balls to juggle in the current economy — but it's really not a significant amount of funding that we are asking for. So, Heather, do you know the number, the bill, or information about that?

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Heather Norman: There's no bill we have so — yet. That doesn't mean there won't be in the next legislative cycle. Not to get too complicated here — one of the things that did happen: there are side effects to when you cancel a long-standing program, and one of them is the funding by the state in Illinois. The legislation that controls that funding is completely dependent upon CPB guidelines and eligibility. And we have to get that corrected, so that has been our first goal. That money passes through the Illinois Arts Council, but it's a line item to public radio and television. So we've been — we worked on that last year, we didn't quite get to where we needed to be, so we will continue that work. But our goal is — we are currently — the current state budget amount is $1.6 million, that is split among stations according to CPB guidelines, so it's a 70 [percent] television, 30 [percent] radio split. And then we're trying to get that back up to $5 million. Our ultimate goal is to have the state fund us at $1 per person. That's a long-term goal, but we hope to get there one day.

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Brian Mackey: $1 per person in Illinois — so what is that, 12 —

[00:25:34]
Heather Norman: $13 million.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah, yeah, OK. Heather, you mentioned consolidation earlier, right? And we have seen a little bit of that, right? WGLT in Bloomington-Normal took over broadcast operations for WCBU in Peoria — WGLT is part of Illinois State, WCBU is part of Bradley, I think Bradley maintains the license, but WGLT is basically doing the news and engineering and everything else. Why not — you mentioned Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin — why couldn't there be more consolidation of back-end functions like fundraising, accounting, while still having local news gathering, engineering, and other programming as needed?

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Heather Norman: I think there can be, and that's what we're working on now. I think — you know, when all this started, I still have it — and you're gonna think I'm strange — but I had a fortune cookie that said "your greatest opportunities arise from adversity," and I opened that the week our money was rescinded. So, but that's true. And I think, you know, it becomes more important when you face adversity. Part of the issue is we're almost all university licenses, and universities have their own bureaucracy you have to work through. So, now that we've written, "Oh, this is an existential crisis," universities are willing to kind of look at how do we make this work better for these entities that we don't want to lose. And I think sometimes you just need a motivating piece to make that happen, and we received it. But now we need to build that infrastructure so we can have all those backroom things.

Another thing that's happening, for example, is my engineer retired almost two years ago now. So I am the default engineer, and I'm not good at it. But I've started to —

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Brian Mackey: I appreciate the candor.

[00:27:28]
Heather Norman: — I've worked with an engineering firm and brought in WCBU, WGLT, and WVIK, and we've all kind of had them do assessments, and now we're looking at what a shared engineering contract looks like. Well, it turns out all the stations in Illinois are interested, so now we're gonna hold a broader conversation. So there are things like that that we're kind of working on individually to figure out our problems, because I cannot hire a full-time engineer — nor do I want to be the full-time engineer. So we're trying to find creative solutions to the things that we're running into, and the funding loss helps you be creative and helps you consolidate. So there will be some consolidation, I believe. But again, having shared infrastructure does cost some money, so hopefully this bridge fund grant will be approved and we'll be able to get the ball rolling.

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Brian Mackey: It's funny you mentioned fortune cookies. I sometimes save them on my desk as well, and I have one here that says, "Your finances will be a foundation for your financial dreams." I don't know what that says about public media, but — Jeff, just a few minutes left in our time together. One of the things we talked about with Catherine Maher of NPR is changing news consumption, right? And your hand was sort of forced, right? We hear a lot of stations talking about — including ours — you know, adopting more of a digital-first mindset. That is your reality now. How do you see public media's role continuing to evolve with these changes? We even saw Ford — although there's some legislation that might counteract this — Ford was gonna pull AM radios out of certain vehicles in the future. How do you see things changing?

[00:29:21]
Jeff Owens: I think what we're doing is going to be a model for other people, but I don't think our model is that unique. I think everybody knows to serve the community. It's kind of like what Heather said a while ago — we had a tornado hit Charleston, and the students weren't even here. It was a summer tornado, and the university was closed, but our morning guy made it in that morning to — with trees down everywhere — just to get on the air so we could tell people what to do, where there was a safe station, where there was water and food and cooling centers, because it was really hot. And so, again, just doing the stuff that's local.

You know, one of the things that we're trying to adapt here too is — since we kind of go live with News Watch at 5:30 — if there's something that breaks during the day, there's no need to hold that story till 5:30. You know, go on digital and do it immediately, because we have that immediate access. We can — now we're not breaking in over Arthur or another TV show — it's our own programming, so it makes it a little bit easier. So I think that's what we want to do, and we do the same thing on FM. If it's breaking news, we're prepared to go on live right now and go forward. And so it's just a matter of reframing how you do things in your mind, and it's a different world, and kind of that application process.

[00:30:32]
Brian Mackey: John, perhaps last question. I mentioned that idea of AM radios going out of cars. Of course, we are one of the few public media stations in Illinois that is still primarily AM for at least part of our programming. What keeps you up at night?

[00:30:48]
John Steinbacher: You know, I think making sure that we are there for the next generation. I think one of the really interesting things that we saw — and stations across the country saw — over the last year was we got donations and comments from Gen Z and millennials, which had never happened before as far as fundraising at a significant level. So they know we exist. They've seen us in classrooms, they know the kids' programming, they grew up with us in the cars. But what keeps me up at night is making sure that we are reaching out to them and providing them with a service so that, you know, we aren't sunsetting ourselves — that we are there and able to reach the next audience of public media listeners. That's the key to sustainability: to have the information and all the amazing things that all the stations across Illinois do reach the audience that's out there.

I mean, when people hear and see what we do, they love it. But, you know, in the age of 30-second TikToks, as you well know, Brian, we are trying to translate those 30-second TikToks to tuning in for the full hour and understanding how public media is sharing the world with you. So that's what keeps me up at night — is reaching that audience and making sure that they understand that we're here and we're important.

[00:32:20]
Brian Mackey: All right. John Steinbacher is head of Illinois Public Media — co-head of Illinois Public Media. We are also joined today by Heather Norman with Tri-States Public Radio and president of the Illinois Public Broadcasting Council, and Jeff Owens, general manager at WEIU in Charleston. Thank you all so much for being with us today here on The 21st Show.

[00:32:39]
John Steinbacher: Thank you, Brian.

[00:32:40]
Jeff Owens: Thanks for having us, Brian.

[00:32:41]
Brian Mackey: And thanks again and a big welcome to our new listeners on Tri-States Public Radio in western Illinois, southeast Iowa, and northeast Missouri. Be sure to check us out on the web at [21stshow.org]. That's it for us today. We're a production of Illinois Public Media. Thanks for listening.