Changes are afoot at Wisconsin Public Television and Radio. After decades of being part of UW Extension, the public media outlets are now back under the domain of UW-Madison.
But will this affect Garden Talk with Larry Meiller? Not really.
Gene Purcell, director of the newly created Wisconsin Public Media division, says the restructuring is “mostly boring stuff.”
“This is a year of transition. A lot of work is happening behind the scenes. But it should be invisible to our listeners and viewers,” says Purcell. “Over the next year, we are figuring out how to move [public media] under the UW-Madison umbrella. In a sense, we’re coming home. But in a sense, we’ve never left.”
Since the early days of radio a century ago, Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Television have been headquartered on the UW-Madison campus. Wisconsin Public Radio has been broadcasting on the AM dial at 970 kHz since 1941. The television and radio stations have called Vilas Hall home since the Brutalist building was erected on University Avenue in the early 1970s. For the last 40 years, these outlets were overseen by the Educational Communications Board in partnership with the UW Extension.
As part of a broader restructuring of the UW system given final approval by the Board of Regents in June, the state’s public broadcasting entities were moved back under the purview of UW-Madison.
Over the next year, Purcell will lead the transition that will convert payroll, budgeting and other administrative tasks over to UW-Madison. He says “it’s business as usual” at Vilas Hall and doesn’t anticipate many growing pains with new management.
“UW-Madison has been really accommodating. It doesn’t feel like a merger,” says Purcell, who oversaw public media as director of the Educational Communications Board until the restructuring. “They want to have us and we want to be there. It’s a perfect situation for us.”
Wisconsin Public Radio operates 37 stations. In addition to its flagship station in Madison, it operates bureaus in Milwaukee, Green Bay, Wausau, La Crosse, Eau Claire and Superior. Wisconsin Public Television operates four channels and broadcasts statewide via six transmitters. Fundraising and listener support cover the majority of programming costs, with state tax dollars covering approximately a third of operating expenses.
Purcell says state funding covers infrastructure costs associated with maintaining a statewide network — basically getting the signal on the air.
In 2015, the Educational Communications Board withstood around a $1 million budget cut in the state’s biennial budget. But since then, Purcell says Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled legislature have held funding flat. “At this time, I feel no pressure from the legislature,” says Purcell.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has threatened federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but Congress holds the purse strings. So far, lawmakers have preserved nearly a half billion in annual funding to thousands of non-commercial television and radio stations across the country, including Wisconsin Public Television and Radio.
The new Wisconsin Public Media division will also be in charge of licensing educational programming and producing Wisconsin-centric, multimedia instructional materials for use in classrooms across the state — a program that also used to be part of UW Extension.
Purcell says public broadcasting, like other media, is adapting to the digital age. This year, the public radio studios will be getting major facility upgrades.
Even with entertainment and news programming proliferating on the internet, Purcell says Wisconsin Public Radio had its largest audience ever last year, even managing to attract listeners under the age of 35. Combined, Wisconsin Public Television and Radio reach a million people each week.
“That to me is an amazing figure. And our listeners are younger than you think,” says Purcell. “We’ve done a lot work over the years in terms of creating a digital space and presence. We have this base to build off of and a service people trust. I think that sets us up well for what the future might hold.”