WFAE is reducing its workforce by a half-dozen staff members as it faces a difficult revenue environment and the loss of federal funding due to the defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The staff members impacted by the job reductions include people from all areas of the company, including those in the newsroom, business and membership departments, with voluntary and involuntary separations. Other positions are being eliminated, reduced, or will be combined with remaining staff duties.
“One challenge of an immediate rescission is that it strips away two years of pre-approved funding without giving stations like WFAE sufficient time to replace those dollars," said WFAE President and CEO Ju-Don Marshall, in a statement. "That said, the loss of federal funding is just one of the financial pressures facing WFAE and public media stations. We are also seeing a decline in philanthropy, which has been a lifeline for communities across the Carolinas that are still recovering from natural disasters. That is only exacerbated by the increased demand funders face because of the broader federal cuts to nonprofits providing direct support and services to our community."
"As a result, like many stations across the country, we are reducing our expenses, which has led to staff reductions and the elimination of certain services. We are working hard to ensure that no further reductions will be necessary, but it's too early to say," Marshall said.
WFAE has been attempting to balance its revenue and expenses for several years. Following a revenue surge during the first Trump administration and rapid growth in audience during the pandemic, both revenue and audience numbers have fallen off in the post-COVID era. A large majority of WFAE’s $7 million-plus in annual revenue comes from the local community, chiefly through individual giving and business underwriting. However, both of those revenue sources have also been increasingly strained in recent years.
Now, the elimination of federal funds for the CPB — which provides grants to local NPR and PBS affiliates — means the loss of an additional roughly 10% of the station’s budget. In fiscal year 2024, which ended June 30, the CPB provided WFAE with $432,000 in operating expenses and approximately the same amount in indirect services, such as music licensing, satellite interconnection, and emergency broadcast system support. The CPB also funds a collaborative project, the NC Newsroom, which employs two full-time reporters in Raleigh who cover the General Assembly and state government for all North Carolina public media stations.
On Friday, Congress finalized plans to pull back funding for public media, part of a $9 billion rescission package requested by Trump. Public media stations across the U.S. are now scrambling to backfill the holes in their budget, while NPR and PBS work to deal with the effects on their programming. Other large public radio stations, such as KQED in San Francisco, WAMU in Washington, D.C., WNYC in New York and WBUR in Boston have also announced major staff reductions in the last year.
WFAE is a non-commercial public radio station serving the greater Charlotte region with a 24/7 schedule of international, national and local news content from its studios in the University City area of Charlotte. The station is an NPR affiliate, but is an independent nonprofit governed by its own board of directors.
Disclaimer: This story was written and reported by WFAE Executive Editor Ely Portillo. It was edited by Program Director Eric Teel and Digital Director Jennifer Lang. Under WFAE's protocol for reporting on itself, the company's executive leadership did not review this story before it was posted publicly.
