Public broadcasting's systemwide revenues, which had been heading toward $3 billion, declined 2.5 percent instead during fiscal year 2008. Data: CPB. Chart: Current.
System ’08 income fell $73 million: blame investments
Many months into the recession, pubcasting’s fiscal 2008 revenue from investments and “other” revenues had declined by $167 million from the previous year, according to CPB’s recently released annual system revenue report.
The drop in “other” revenues pulled down the system’s total revenue by $73.4 million, or 2.5 percent, to $2.85 billion.
Kevin Martin, CPB’s v.p. of station grants and TV initiatives, told Current the primary reason for the large dip was “a sharp decrease in investment revenue.” The “other revenue” category includes proceeds from endowments as well as capital campaigns and subsidiaries.
Fiscal year 2008 ended more than a year ago, and its figures capture only the beginnings of the present downturn. The country’s official arbiter of recessions, the National Bureau of Economic Research, pinpoints the start of the recession as December 2007. Of the stations whose revenues are counted in CPB’s FY08 report, 70 percent would have figures including six months of the recession period before their fiscal years ended June 30, 2008. The rest of the stations end their fiscal year Dec. 31, CPB said. Their FY08 numbers included a full year of recession.
Declines in the “other” revenue category overwhelmed TV and radio’s relatively healthy gains from members, underwriters and colleges, leaving the system with reduced revenues overall. All of the decline was on the TV side, totaling $78.8 million or 4 percent. Public radio’s core revenue gains were stronger; it ended the year slightly better than flat, with a $5.4 million increase over ’07.
The radio system continues to post healthy membership revenue increases, almost doubling in the last decade, from $154 million in 1998 to $304 million in 2008, moving toward closing the gap with public TV, though its overall revenues are just half of public TV’s. Over the decade, TV’s member revenues grew less rapidly, from $341 million to $430 million.
Public radio joined TV’s worrisome decline in number of contributors, which is overcome monetarily in both systems by increasingly generous average gifts. Each lost about 100,000 contributors in a year. TV’s long membership slide continued; it has lost almost 1.2 million donors in a decade. Radio’s membership had slipped for only two years after a four-year plateau. Average contributions are nearly identical: PubTV’s average gift is $124, up from $116 in ’07 and $73 in ’98. For radio, it’s also $124, from $114 in ’07 and $70 in ’98.
Before panic hit Wall Street in fall 2008, public TV business underwriting earnings were still healthy, rising $42.6 million or 16.3 percent in a year. Radio underwriting rose $6.9 million or 3.5 percent.
Reported by Steve Behrens and Dru Sefton
Web page posted Oct. 13, 2009
Copyright 2009 by Current LLC
