Courtesy WORT-FM
exterior of the WORT radio station building on Bedford Street.
As part of its cost-cutting measures, WORT-FM laid off longtime music director Sybil Augustine and business development director Doug Holtz.
After losing $112,000 in funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Madison community radio station WORT-FM laid off two of its seven full-time staffers this week and is working to deal with what its board vice president called, in an email to volunteers, “a substantial deficit which is unsustainable.”
“We can no longer spend our reserves without replacement,” Tanya Graham, vice president of the WORT board wrote in her Nov. 10 email, obtained by Isthmus. “The board must act to ensure that WORT not only survives but thrives in the years and decades to come.”
Graham cited high health care costs as contributing to the station’s budget deficit. The cut in public funding constituted 12% of the station’s 2025 budget.
The staffers laid off were longtime music director Sybil Augustine and business development director Doug Holtz. According to Graham’s email, Holtz's job included administering the Corporation for Public Broadcasting grant.
Graham announced that Aaron Scholz will “step in to support the music department” and that former news director Molly Stentz would join the organization as a consultant to “help support the station through this transition.” Stentz is a member of Isthmus' board of directors.
WORTstock, the station’s annual springtime outdoor music festival, has also been cut for 2026, according to Graham’s email.
Graham did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.
The email noted that the station’s donor relations director position would be reorganized. Stuart Levitan, who stepped down as president of the board on Nov. 6 but remains a member, says in a phone interview that the idea is to establish a “director who would have the responsibility for not just individual donor relations [and] running pledge drives, but also include grant writing and perhaps a cadre of commission-based sales persons selling underwriting.”
In July, President Donald Trump signed the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” that included a $1.1 billion cut from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds stations affiliated with NPR and PBS, but also smaller community radio stations like WORT.
On Nov. 19, the WORT board of directors will continue deliberations on the finance committee’s proposed 2026 budget and will make final decisions on Dec. 17.
