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Get the latest, most relevant information about the business of public media. Read breaking industry news and learn best business practices. Find out about upcoming PMBA conferences, toolkits, and roundtables. Discover educational programming from a variety of public media organizations as well as opportunities to enhance the professional capabilities of your staff in areas such as management, finance, accounting, and human resources.

July 8, 2021

Back to the Office by Labor Day?

While companies and their employees have been enduring workplace closures due to the pandemic for well over a year, most HR teams have been imagining and planning for the physical reopening of their office spaces.Decisions about this significant, symbolic event have been months in the making. HR professionals, working in tandem with their C-suites, have taken into account state and federal guidelines, employee sentiment, the company's bottom line, and the value of inperson employee and customer interactions. 
July 6, 2021

Study Points to Ways Public Media Could Build Teen and Tween Audience—and Risks of Not Trying

A report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop released in May made plain what had already been clear to some for years: Public media isn’t on the radar of many tweens and teens.Researchers for the CPB-backed study arrived at their findings with the help of 50 interviews with participants from 10- to 17- years old. Some of the interviewees’ comments are a gut punch: “I don’t feel like I’m ever gonna really get back into watching TV, but I do know a lot of people aren’t gonna watch PBS anymore, ‘cause it’s mostly Curious George and stuff like that,” said a 14-year-old from Bossier City, Louisiana. “[It’s] little kid shows.”
June 22, 2021

FCC Tells Stations to Get Ready as 2021 Brings Biennial Ownership Report Requirement

Under Federal Communications Commission rules, all commercial and noncommercial stations are required to file ownership reports every two years. The rules usually mean that the biennial ownership reports must be filed by December 1 in all odd numbered years. This being one of those years, the Media Bureau said Monday that it will open a filing window for the reports starting October 1.
June 21, 2021

How to Build the Next Generation of Public Radio Listeners

If you ask most people to go find a picture of a public radio listener, most would come back with an image of a gray-haired baby boomer. There’s fair justification for that, as boomers have dominated public radio for more than a generation. Yet as the Silent Generation fades into the sunset and Generation X continues just to occupy space, there’s been a radical change in the public radio audience. A surge of new younger listeners have discovered public radio. They’re tuning in often enough to show up in weekly cumes.
June 17, 2021

Pandemic Had Lasting, Major Implications for Employer Flexibility, Randstad Survey Shows

Hybrid work looks to be "the new norm," Randstad declared in the survey, demonstrating that the pandemic pushed employers to rapidly embrace a change in company culture and expectations. The company's findings align with other surveys that show the move toward hybrid work is underway; a West Monroe poll released in April, for example, showed that 1 in 5 employers is already implementing the method.
June 10, 2021

Job Candidates Seek Assurances on Workplace Safety, Flexibility

Job seekers are holding potential employers to higher standards in workplace health and safety efforts, diversity initiatives, and flexible work arrangements in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and social unrest of 2020, according to a recent survey.
June 9, 2021

Radio Hits a Bumpy Road in the Car Mediascape

Perhaps the greatest negative impact that COVID has had on radio, according to Jacob Media’s TechSurvey 2021, has been on AM/FM listening in the automotive mediascape. The short answer as to why might be more time spent at home, and less in cars. It’s more complicated than that, though. Information provided in the recent survey focuses on that. Some of the information seems to contradict. Fasten your seat belt, this could be a rough ride.
June 4, 2021

CPB Analysis Finds Steep Declines in Station Underwriting, Foundation Funding

Revenues of public television and radio stations declined by $147 million, or 5%, in fiscal year 2020, which included the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, according to CPB’s latest “State of the System” analysis.The steepest losses in fiscal 2020 were in underwriting, foundation funding, and investment income. CPB’s year-to-year analysis charted drops of $66 million, or 14%, in underwriting and $60 million, or 32%, in foundation support from fiscal 2019 to 2020. Investment-related losses totaled $39 million, a 13% decline. 
May 26, 2021

By Joining Forces, Stations Find New Potential for Boosting Revenue, Content

When Vermont PBS and Vermont Public Radio formally join forces in July, the merged station will have the largest staff of any media outlet in the state.It’s a distinction out of reach for some of the biggest public media stations in the country’s largest markets. It’s also a sign to officials at both stations of the impact and reach that public broadcasting can have in a state with fewer than 650,000 people.
May 20, 2021

'Tension' Emerges Between Employers, Employees on Hybrid Work Preferences

A different set of preferences is emerging between employers and their employees on how to continue work arrangements after the danger of the pandemic has passed, a survey released May 12 by employment law firm Littler has found. While 4% of employers estimated that most employees prefer to come back full time for in-person work, 28% said they expected to require such an arrangement regardless.

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