Public media’s next chapter may be consolidation

You probably don’t need to know much about any of these six broadcasters to understand the most basic similarities between the three proposed mergers, which is that a larger-revenue broadcaster is consolidating with a much smaller one in a nearby geographic area.”

Alex Curley, founder and executive director of Semipublic

Last July, I predicted that up to 15% of public media stations were at risk of closing following the end of public media’s federal funding based on their financial filings. Looking back, it’s almost amusing how apocalyptic that projection now feels, but at the time, that was the dominant conversation happening in public media. We didn’t know that a wave of private and philanthropic giving would keep all but a handful of public media stations solvent.

Shortly afterwards, the conversation shifted to shared services, which has now become a cornerstone for new entities like the Public Media Bridge Fund and Public Media Infrastructure. It’s not a surprise that the thought of sharing HR services and engineers with a nearby station became much more palatable after a permanent and dramatic cut in yearly station revenue, even if the path to implementing it industry-wide is unclear and difficult.

Now, three possible mergers have made consolidation the new dominant conversation among public media workers: One between WGBH and New England Public Media, another between WHYY and WPSU, and another between KUNC (Community Radio for Northern Colorado) and Rocky Mountain Public Media.

You probably don’t need to know much about any of these six broadcasters to understand the most basic similarities between the three proposed mergers, which is that a larger-revenue broadcaster is consolidating with a much smaller one in a nearby geographic area. For KUNC, this means partnering with stations that made over four times as much revenue as KUNC did (according to FY24 990 data) headquartered about 50 miles away. For New England Public Media, however, this means partnering with a behemoth headquartered nearly 100 miles away whose revenue was over 20 times their own. For WPSU, it means combining with WHYY, which had a budget eight-times larger, headquartered over 150 miles away.

Three data points hardly indicate a trend, but what can we deduce from these proposed mergers? If we had to make an educated guess about future mergers, what else should we be looking for?

Apart from revenue difference and geographic proximity, the first telling sign is that these are not television broadcasters making a new play into public radio, but TV-dominant broadcasters that are expanding their existing offerings. WGBH makes a large percentage of its revenue from television, but also owns radio stations in Boston and Cape Cod. Rocky Mountain Public Media is much the same, running several TV stations across the state as well as two music format radio stations. WHYY and WPSU, by contrast, both run television and radio stations.

The second telling sign is that all three are independent nonprofits (or newly divorced from a university) that experienced several years of net revenue decline — over $19 million for New England Public Media since 2020, almost $2 million for KUNC since 2022, and at least $4 million for WPSU since 2023.

Something interesting my nonprofit found last year during an analysis of station financial data from FY23 was that public television stations relied more on federal funding, as a percentage of total revenue, than public radio stations. More recent financial data show that public television stations also spend more on both engineering and management costs — around 30% of total expenses — than their radio counterparts. One possible explanation for the two TV-dominant broadcasters merging with smaller radio-only entities, therefore, could be that the cost of taking over a radio station’s non-programmatic expenses is less risky than that of a public television station. The cost efficiencies also apply on the smaller broadcaster’s side too: Why not save money and integrate with an entity that already invests more in administration than you do?

It’s also possible that the larger TV-dominant parties in our two-merger dataset are counting on the radio broadcasters’ donor income to go further than their own donor income. Both public television and radio stations received a huge influx of giving following the end of federal funding, but according to data compiled by fundraising alliance Contributor Development Partnership, radio stations not only grew total revenue from individual members faster than television citations at the beginning of 2026, they also received more revenue per member. Think of it like the stock market, in a way: Larger public television stations earn more revenue by having a higher volume of members, but public radio’s members have a better return. 

So, based on these three mergers, what does the future of consolidation in public media look like? It’s clear that there’s vulnerability in being a small, independent public media broadcaster, financial or otherwise, which makes merging with a larger organization appealing. Additionally, broadcasters with both television and radio stations seem more willing to take a risk by acquiring a smaller broadcaster, as opposed to those that only operate radio or television stations. And finally, the most obvious one, physical proximity.

Alex Curley is the founder and executive director of Semipublic, a research nonprofit dedicated to building public trust in media through data, and the creator of AdoptAStation.org. Previously, he spent a decade at NPR, where he worked on product development, satellite-based audio distribution and editorial promotional strategy. He can be reached at alex@semipublic.org.