For a little light reading over the weekend, I visited the web page that breaks down Penn State’s budget allocations for fiscal years 2026 and 2027.
The list covers 41 units. The ones set to receive the most 2026-27 money are:
1. Commonwealth Campuses ($315 million)
2. Physical Plant ($262 million)
3. IT ($174 million)
4. College of Liberal Arts ($170 million)
5. College of Engineering ($129 million)
The ones getting the least:
41. Millennium Scholars Program ($970,000)
40. Research Accounting ($1.9 million)
39. Schreyer Honors College ($2.4 million)
38. Government & Community Relations ($2.3 million)
37. WPSU ($3.25 million)
Penn State’s entire operating budget for 2026-27 is $10.2 billion.
Question: What percentage of $10.2 billion is $3.25 million?
Answer: 0.0319%
You can see where I’m going with this: To a colossus like Penn State, the cost of running a public radio station and TV station is chump change.
If, like me, big numbers make you dizzy, think of it this way. For a Penn State faculty member making $100,000 per year, 0.0319% of their salary is $31.90, or less than the $60 that prof would pay to stream all of WPSU-TV’s programs for a year.
Yes, I know, we will still be able to stream NPR and PBS if WPSU goes away. Local news and programming? Fuggedaboudit. Forget, too, our quaint clock and car radios.
I spun the dial on my bedside clock radio over the weekend to see what will be left if WPSU goes quiet next June. Among the snippets I heard:
- “We will spend eternity in heaven with Jesus.”
- “You could be our next winner.”
- “Learn how you can choose between heaven and hell.”
- “NFL Parlay Profit Boost.”
- “We’re fighting for the soul of our great country.”
- “I don’t understand Mike Tomlin not going for it on fourth-and-1.”
I don’t mean to mock religious broadcasters or their audience, but if, like me, you are not of that persuasion, not a Terrible Towel twirler, don’t bet on sports and don’t care for country music, ‘80s rock or whatever passes for the Top 40 these days, the rest of the radio dial is a wasteland.
Here’s what has me and a lot of commenters on social media all riled up:
1) The way the Board of Trustees has cast an essential community resource aside without any public expression of commitment to finding the means to keep it afloat. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the trustees are falling in line behind Trump’s view of public broadcasting as “radical left monsters.”
2) Yanking WPSU’s funding while massively increasing President Bendapudi’s compensation package. I’ve said this before: In a better world, leaders tasked with reining in spending would start by cutting their own salaries, or at least saying thanks, but no thanks, to pay package increases. I queried Madame President about the “optics” of pulling the plug on WPSU while accepting an extra $1 million in compensation. Haven’t heard back. (In fairness, she’s a busy person.)
OK, so a lot of us are outraged. But what do public media experts say? I asked two of my Bellisario College of Communications colleagues, Tom Davidson and Catie Grant, to weigh in.
Davidson held leadership roles at PBS and consulted for public media outlets around the country. His take is that the trustees aren’t necessarily spurning WPSU itself, just the deal with WHYY in Philadelphia, which was happy to take WPSU off Penn State’s hands if the university paid it $17 million to do so.
Davidson agrees it’s a lousy deal. But he compares the threat to shut down the station to the old National Lampoon cover with the picture of a dog with a gun to its head: “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog.”
In other words, the station’s various stakeholders have been put on notice: To save WPSU, the way it is funded and the amount of money it spends are going to have to change.
“Whatever emerges,” Davidson writes, “will be a smaller, leaner organization – because without the federal and university money, there’s simply not enough money to support a nearly 50-person, $10 million-a-year organization.”
Catie Grant, who was a senior producer/director at WPSU before joining the College of Communications faculty, notes that the station is more than the sum of what it airs on radio and TV: Among other things, it produces live and multi-media events for the university and the community while offering internship and part-time employment opportunities to Penn State students.
If the budget must be cut, she told me, there are going to have to be tough discussions about which of the station’s many functions best serve Penn State’s mission as a land-grant university.
That’s fine with her. What isn’t fine with her is the lack of a public commitment to keeping the station alive. That leaves the staff — and the community — in limbo.
A petition to save WPSU on change.org has 3,347 signatures – and counting.
