Listeners to WFSU have no doubt heard about state and federal funding cuts to public media. You’ve also likely heard a voice telling you that we are operating at reduced power and suggesting alternate ways to listen. Finally, you may have noticed crackling and humming noises that sound like interference.
These three issues are unrelated, according to WFSU Public Media General Manager David Mullins.
"Our primary focus is on serving our community," Mullins said as he sat down to answer our questions.
WFSU: Let's start with the reduced power situation. Why is that happening?
Mullins: We have a radio transmitter that has gotten quite old because we want to make sure when we purchase a piece of equipment like that, that we get as much out of it as we can throughout the years. So this radio transmitter is a good number of years old. We've only been able to produce a certain amount of power out of that transmitter...
The further south you go from the transmitter, the harder it has been to receive WFSU on the radio. We then began the process of acquiring and purchasing, and then we will be in the coming weeks putting that transmitter online, putting it in place so that our signal will be back up to full power...
We've been really experiencing some hum and crackling, not just on WFSU but also on our classical station WFSQ. Our engineers have been baffled by this. In fact, they're in the operation center right now trying to figure out what is causing this so that we can eliminate that humming sound and that crackling sound. (Note: the issue has been fixed.) None of this has anything to do with the funding cuts.
WFSU: Let's move to these funding cuts. Let's start with what happened at the federal level. What have these federal policy makers done, and how does it impact WFSU?
Mullins: It has no immediate impact on WFSU as far as what happened with the rescission package. What happened back in the spring was that there was an elimination of funding through the Department of Education for Ready to Learn efforts — PreK through first and second grade, which was a PBS and a Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) program.
WFSU has been one of the stations around the country for decades now that has participated in that and has provided funding for our education services to help teachers and families and students... We've made no changes staffing wise or anything with regards to that. We just have not been able to do all of the things that we've wanted to do.
The rescission package is eliminating funding from the CPB for future funding. We actually have the dollars that we've already received from the federal government through CPB for our current fiscal year budget, so no immediate impacts on our services at all... It will be eliminated for us for our budget year next July...That is a little more than $2 million.
WFSU: The governor vetoed state funding, which was a surprise. How does that impact WFSU?
Mullins: The governor's veto was for funding for the current state fiscal year, July 1 to June 30. So we've made some some adjustments to our planned operations budget. It's really premature for me to explain anything about how that really is impacting our services. We are making great efforts on the fundraising side to raise as many dollars as we can through our local support of donors and businesses, because that's in my mind how we're going to overcome and deal with certain reductions of funding.
WFSU: A rough count has us around little over 50 employees in this building. Does that sound right?
Mullins: That's about right. Programming costs and staffing costs are the two largest expenses in our budget.
Hear the full conversation by clicking LISTEN above.
