Consider the to-do list of a public broadcasting station leader: Deepen community engagement. Grow audience. Unlock the potential of digital platforms — and balance these goals while staying financially sound in an unpredictable media environment.
On occasion, we check in with leaders who are relatively new in their roles to ask how they’re navigating change while keeping a level head. All four GMs and CEOs we spoke with this time moved into the top job last year. They run stations of various sizes and formats in different regions of the country. Two are newcomers to the system, while two have track records at multiple stations. But they share a love of public media and a desire to form stronger bonds with their audiences as they strive for excellence.
These interviews have been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Anthony V. Hayes
CEO, WMHT, Troy, N.Y.
Started in role: January 2023
Julian Wyllie, Current: Now that you’ve been in the leadership role at WMHT for 18 months, what are your priorities and how have they changed since you started?
Anthony V. Hayes: My priority from day one still remains a top priority: I’m focused on my team. I’m the type of leader who believes in building up his team and creating the right culture internally. And so for the first time in our organization’s 70-plus–year history, we were voted as a top workplace in the New York capital region by the Times Union. That happened because I placed an emphasis on creating the right culture in the organization.
When I first joined WMHT, my first order of business was to have one-on-one meetings with each member of my team. So I did that. Afterwards, I had one-on-one meetings with each board member, each trustee. In doing that, I had a pretty good picture of the existing culture.
I’m also placing additional emphasis on telling local stories. We conducted a listening tour that … was extremely helpful in helping us create a road map for how we’re going to move forward, as we’re currently working on our three-year strategic plan. What I’ve heard from the community is that they love WMHT. They greatly appreciate us, but they wanted more of what we’re already doing. They wanted more local stories, more local history.
Current: How did you go about organizing these listening tours?
Hayes: There were two phases. For the first phase, we partnered with the local organization Planetarium, which consisted of a series of focus groups. In total, there were about 10 focus groups, six in-person, four virtual. In addition, they sent out a survey, so in total, during that phase, we engaged with approximately 800 residents of the capital region and beyond. We got a lot of great data from that. But then, in sharing that data with my board and going through it with my team as well, it was suggested that we expand upon it.
With me being fairly new here, we thought it might also be helpful for me to get out in the community more, so we started holding these town hall–style discussions. So far we’ve completed eight of those. We’re placing emphasis on reaching out to audiences and communities that we may not necessarily have relationships with, so wider, more diverse audiences who have never engaged with WMHT before. And now, all of a sudden, they have the president and CEO, along with members of his executive team, coming to them, listening to them, asking for their thoughts and ideas about how we could better serve them. And oh my goodness, it’s been so enlightening, extremely helpful and beneficial.
For example, earlier this year Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. did a docuseries on the history of gospel music. As soon as I learned that, I said to my team, “Let’s tell the local story of gospel music in the capital region.” And so we did a companion piece to Skip Gates’ docuseries called Echoes of Praise.
Oh my God, this thing was so successful. We had two events. We had a VIP screening of it in our studio, and then we also had a public event. All events were well attended, but the feedback was tremendous. And now that Henry Louis Gates is coming out with another documentary about the Great Migration, we’re going to do a story about how the capital region was impacted by it for Black History Month next year.
Current: When it comes to local programming, WMHT has New York Now, the public affairs weekly program, and Field Trip, which features different locations in the area. You also have TvFilm to showcase indie projects and AHA! to promote the local arts. Does more money need to be invested in those programs, or is it more about marketing them better to audiences who don’t already watch or listen?
Hayes: It’s both. … We need to continue to make the appropriate financial investments in the programs we have. We want to super-serve our audience and reach more diverse audiences.
When I first started working here, I was surprised that there were certain segments of the population that weren’t familiar with WMHT. And then I realized that we had never really placed an emphasis on marketing and promoting, so that has changed. We’re doing a better job there. That has paid huge dividends.
We also need to have a better digital presence. … We’re doing some of that with having some of our programs on platforms like YouTube, but we need to do more. That opportunity is available to us.
Current: Before you got to public media you worked in commercial radio at Bloomberg. How did you get the opportunity to enter public media?
Hayes: I’m originally from Queens, New York, so my career in media actually started as a college senior at 1010 WINS. … The door opened up for me at WOR in New York when I got into media sales. And then I was later recruited to CBS for more media sales. And then, as my family started to grow, the decision was made to actually move more south, where I have family in the Virginia area.
… When I was working for Bloomberg, they sold the station, and it became a Spanish-language format. … I found myself unemployed for the first time in my career with a young family in a new market.
… Vince Gardino approached me. I worked for Vince at WOR in New York and later he was at WNYC. He said to me, “Come back to New York. I got a job for you. All you got to do is come on up.” But I left New York for a reason, right? I did this for my family. … I declined the opportunity and explained my reason, and he understood.
Two weeks after that conversation, he called me again, and he’s like, “Anthony, I got an opportunity for you. It’s right there in your market. … All you have to do is go for the interview. … You’ll win them over. The job is yours. Just go up and show up and be yourself.” And I did, and that was my introduction to public media. That was at WETA.
Current: That shows how when one thing wasn’t a good fit for you, you trusted yourself.
Hayes: I’m ecstatic with the way things turned out. This is my dream job. It really is. I love what I do, the people I work with, this market. They’ve been so supportive and welcoming to me here and encouraging. I have a tremendous board. … The best career decision I ever made was getting involved with public media. Everything else just fell into place after that. If I were to look back at my entire career and ask, “Is there something that perhaps I could have done differently or should have done differently?” — sometimes I now question if I stayed too long in engineering [at 1010 WINS]. … But I think everything worked out as it was supposed to work out. I was there for as long as I needed to be to prepare me for the next step.
Sherry Brownrigg
GM, KVNO, Omaha, Neb.
Started in role: July 2023
Mike Janssen, Current: You joined KVNO in 2020 as assistant general manager and program director. That was your first job in public media. How and why did you make that jump?
Sherry Brownrigg: I had a marketing company that was doing great, but I missed radio so much. I contemplated, what did I want to do? I decided I really wanted to get back into radio. … I wanted to get back into the day-to-day, and I focused on KVNO because I loved it, and it was the next rung in my career.
I’d always been a fan of public media and all its different formats. The assistant general manager position came up, and at first, I thought I really wanted to come in as a general manager. I’d been a president of a radio network previously, but I just decided, you know what? That’s fine. I can be at this wonderful public radio station.
The GM was also a faculty member here at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He said, “I’ll be honest, you will actually be functioning much like a GM, even though your title is assistant GM.” So I said yes, I’d love to do this. He retired last year. So I finally got the title to go along with all of the different things that I had been doing since then.
Current: In the press release announcing your promotion to GM last year, you said one of your goals was for the station to reach a wider audience. How have you advanced that goal?
Brownrigg: Being out in the community. That’s the important thing. In this day and age, people really want local, and they want to know that we’re out there. Our donors want to know that we’re out in the community. So becoming a media sponsor of lots of diverse events. … We have the Crossroads Music Festival coming up in early August. It’s an outdoor music festival that features great, different types of classical music, but it’s also crossover music and performers from around the world. We’re the media sponsor for that, and we help them get the word out. Last year, over 2,000 people attended, and this year is on track for an even bigger audience.
Current: Can you discuss any upcoming projects or initiatives that you’re excited about?
Brownrigg: … On August 17, we have the Good Vibrations Used Instrument Drive, which we do in conjunction with the Omaha Chamber Music Society. We collect used instruments. The Chamber Music Society has a grant to get them refurbished. They take them to luthiers and different people who will make the instruments top-notch. Then they are given free of charge to students in need across the Omaha–Council Bluffs metro, and they get to play a great-sounding instrument. So we are the collection part of that. That’s a really fun event.
We also have a restaurant week that we are the media sponsor for this year. That’s done by Visit Omaha. It’s a fundraiser for the Heartland Food Bank, which feeds a lot of Nebraska and even into Iowa. … We also have several live broadcasts of the Omaha Symphony coming up. So it’s a pretty busy fall schedule for us.
Current: Are there things you’re doing differently from your predecessor?
Brownrigg: Yes. My predecessor was a wonderful professor. He actually only had 10 hours a week to spend with us. So there wasn’t a lot that he could really do in terms of moving the station forward, as he put it himself. It was more [that] he just he held things together until I came on board.
His predecessor focused a lot on moving the station to an exclusive space. Omaha–Council Bluffs is not a large market. We’re a medium market. But we have a lot of people who love the arts, and we have a lot of people who we need to make sure that classical music is accessible to them. We’re not on one of the coasts where you have a huge number of people and can get by with being a little more exclusive. We have to make sure that we are accessible and a station that people love.
Current: What do you see as the biggest challenges faced by your station and other classical public radio stations?
Brownrigg: Expanding the audience. I’ve had a long conversation with others in classical music about who we really are. Most of us, in fact, are in the educational band. And so we have a mandate to educate. And I think we do that. But I also think that we do our listeners and ourselves a disservice by consistently assuming that people view us as educational, because they don’t really view us as an educational place. They view us as a place where they have a respite from the consistent news cycle, from the chaos at work or whatever is happening. And we provide that respite. … We have to understand how listeners approach us and why they come to us and really capitalize on that, and at the same time make sure that the integrity of the music is there.
We understand the integrity of the music. Many of our audience members and where we’re going to get that growth, that’s not necessarily in their thought process. We just need to be able to understand that better.
Current: How do you see the future of classical music radio evolving in the next decade?
Brownrigg: Certainly different platforms. We’ll have to make sure that we are on top of that, because we’ve had some fairly stable platforms for a while. There’s radio, of course, but also smartphone apps, streaming online, smart speakers. But new things will be coming up.
I look at it as a hierarchy. We still have a lot of low-hanging fruit because we have to ensure our sustainability. So we have to be able to get those people who have the ability to donate to us. And, if we can do that, then that ensures the funds to get younger listeners who will eventually become donors.
We have to understand that we can’t just focus on getting millennials to listen. We have to continue to get people who are very predisposed to us and could be big donors. We have to get them to tune in at the same time that we’re going for all these younger audiences as well, because there’s still a lot of work to do with that.
David Lee
GM, WUWM, Milwaukee
Started in role: March 2023
Tyler Falk, Current: You’re new to working in public radio. What has surprised you?
David Lee: What was a little bit eye-opening is this idea that, as storytellers, we do an awful job telling the story of the impact of the work that we do. This is not just my own reflection. This has been a reflection that I’ve heard from other GMs from across the nation.
From time immemorial, we’ve all assumed that our radio broadcast was enough of an advertisement. It almost defended itself. In many ways, it does. Our work defends itself, but it’s not enough to just do that by itself. We have to augment, particularly now in this moment, … what we’re putting out there in the world with a marketing message about how impactful, and how essential, having trusted, fact-based news and storytelling is to helping people be able to develop a consensus reality.
Current: What have you learned in your first months on the job that changed your priorities or approach?
The radio clock forgives nobody. And I think in some ways that sense of absolute urgency has permeated our staff in very important ways. But I think in other ways, what I’ve learned is how we kind of need to take a little bit of a step back, too, to be able to reflect and be creative and breathe.
Particularly in news, the last four-plus years have been nonstop. That’s just an unsustainable pace. The thing that I’ve learned … is, how do we build those moments into the ways we work together to honor the pace of news and the pace of daily production and all of that with moments where we can share in each other’s humanity and kind of just be. Because we can’t be creative if we don’t have that time.
Some of the ways we’ve done that are big and small. We celebrate everybody’s 89.7th day [at the station], which is 3:30 on a Thursday, typically, because people typically start on Monday. We do a little celebration. These small moments that interrupt the all-go, no-quit pace of news and of our organization are some of those little spots where we interrupt that, where we interrupt the clock, so to speak.
Current: Given your experience in fundraising, what opportunities for growth do you see in WUWM’s development program?
Lee: Our development shop has been a little bit under-leveraged in people. Over the last year, we’ve been slowly growing our development shop. We’re hopefully bringing on an institutional giving officer in the next few months.
We’re vastly under-leveraged for foundation grants. That’s an immediate area of growth for us. Also because our development shop has been so under-resourced, we just haven’t fully developed a major giving program. From my conversations with people, this is not an “us” problem. This seems to be an industrywide problem. … I can’t tell yet if that’s related to the membership question: Why would you start a major-giving program if you have people giving at a monthly or a sustaining membership? If we can’t figure that out, we’re just going to continue to stay in stasis, because every other major nonprofit in our community has either figured it out or is working at it.
One of our goals is to become a premier philanthropic destination in southeast Wisconsin. That’s a big goal given that we have a lot of incredible places for people to invest their hard-earned dollars.
Current: What are your plans for producing original content?
Lee: I’d be curious what other people say about this, because it’s at once the thing that’s going to distinguish us from everybody else and also the thing that is the most expensive. That’s a unique problem to solve.
We have a daily talk show, Lake Effect, which covers public affairs, cultural reporting and things happening in Milwaukee. Our goal is to maximize the impact and the community awareness of such an important daily talk show. … Goal number 1a is maximizing our incredible award-winning newsroom and the reporting that they do. Once we can figure that out, we can figure out the adjunct to producing new original content.
Current: What strategies are you considering to reach new audiences?
Lee: What we realized is that for our core audience, which has basically built the radio station, we need to continue to figure out ways to not only serve them, but also reengage them. Because some of them have stopped listening to us. I think in some ways when we’re thinking about, what is our new audience? I think we have to figure out how to reengage the audience that we can most get, which are the folks that have basically listened to us for the last 60 years. And then figure out ways to authentically engage and listen to people who are used to getting their news over TikTok or YouTube or podcasts. So we’re working on it. We’re at the very beginning of it.
Current: What trends have you seen in the station’s audience?
Lee: Our core audience [is] not listening as much. … That’s probably a result of a lot of different things — macro-level society stuff, micro-level society stuff and just changes in habits. That makes me nervous.
A lot of the folks within my social group know about the station, but they don’t listen. They know that we provide incredible, trustworthy, great news reporting. But they don’t listen. That’s a curious thing. I can’t make heads or tails as to whether or not that’s good or bad. There’s some awareness, but if that doesn’t translate to membership support or listening, what will? If you know that it’s an important thing to have in your community, but you don’t engage with it, what else can we do?
Adrienne Fairwell
CEO, South Carolina ETV
Started in role: August 2023
Austin Fuller, Current: Having previously worked at South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio, what differs from what you expected stepping into the CEO role?
Adrienne Fairwell: When I was here most recently, I was the assistant GM, overseeing all of the department’s day-to-day activity. In that role, you’re working on succession planning, strategy building and advocacy for your team.
Now that I’ve returned, I’m the one that has to understand and facilitate what’s going on in each of the divisions and what the budget and staffing needs are. It’s not just a matter of making decisions that are beneficial to one division or two divisions. I have to look network-wide and sometimes make decisions that are best for the network but may seem not as good for one division or another. That’s been very different for me.
It’s been eye-opening going from a role of advocacy to strictly decision-making based on the vision, goals and strategies that we’ve set. They have to match internally, but they also have to meet the needs of South Carolinians.
Current: How did your work as the GM of Arizona PBS prepare you for this role?
Fairwell: It very much prepared me in terms of relationships with stakeholders. Here, I have a board of commissioners who are appointed by South Carolina Gov. McMaster. I also have a community advisory board. There are a number of stakeholders that have a direct influence on what we’re doing and saying on a day-to-day basis.
In Arizona, I had a community advisory board, which was just that — an advisory board. We were able to bounce ideas off of them and exchange thoughts about innovative projects and partnerships. That really prepared me to be hyperlocal.
The great thing about Arizona and South Carolina is that both stations are hyper-focused on being local, being a part of the communities that they serve and reflecting the communities they serve.
Another thing that really helped me make the transition was budgeting. Maintaining a budget is extremely important when you are making decisions based on data and analytics.
Current: Your online biography talks about how you led Arizona PBS through “its transition into a multi-platform public media organization, tripling its digital only/first productions and podcasts.” Could you unpack that for us a bit? And what did your teams stop doing to allow them to create more digital content?
Fairwell: First and foremost, when I left South Carolina, the station was highly successful in digital content creation and curation. That was one of my specialties. In my conversations with the folks in Arizona, that was one of the things that they needed to turn the curve on. They were headed in the right direction but needed to fast-forward their implementation of digital.
For me, it wasn’t about what we stop doing; it was what we started doing more of, and that was development and fundraising. We became more strategically focused on digital. We put together a strategic plan with the tactics and tools we’d use to help implement the strategies. That, overall, allowed us to meet our goals, but we had to ramp up our underwriting, development and philanthropic gift programs.
Current: Other public media stations across the country have been struggling with shrinking audiences and growing expenses. They’ve had layoffs. To what extent is SCETV affected by those pressures?
Fairwell: We’re hiring. The legislature just appropriated funding for three additional full-time employees. We’re very fortunate and very blessed to have the support of the South Carolina General Assembly.
One of the things that South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio do well is create partnerships and relationships, which involve a lot more than just talking once a year and asking for things. Being able to share your successes and show that you are 100% a partner in whatever the work is — we do a really good job of that as a network. This was my first legislative session, and I would call it a success.
Current: I read that you helped create the partnership between South Carolina ETV and Furman University’s Riley Institute to offer diversity training to public media leaders. What’s the status of that program, and do you see an opportunity to expand it?
Fairwell: We are now in our ninth cohort. It is still very useful and seen as a great resource on both the radio and the television side of the house. That program was designed to educate, inform and inspire individuals on how to communicate and relate with all constituencies of their audiences.
Current: South Carolina ETV is known for its commitment to supporting education. How has that work evolved to meet the post-pandemic needs of educators and their students?
Fairwell: When we went into the pandemic, I was here as the assistant GM. We immediately went to student focus.
We had always focused on professional development with teachers and supporting parents and students. But in that moment during the pandemic, South Carolina ETV really focused on supporting state-aligned curriculum and the Department of Education to help students, meet them where they are and at least help sustain them if not move them forward. I believe that that work was extremely impactful.
We have now transitioned to more professional development for our educators and helping them get the resources and tools they need in their classrooms so they can, in turn, empower students and parents to be successful. We do a lot of teacher professional development. We have courses available online. We actually go out into the communities to the schools.
Going back to the Public Media Diversity Leaders Institute, it’s important to build relationships and know that certain communities require certain things so that my education staff can feel comfortable communicating and working and partnering with teachers, parents and grandparents. We have programs to educate senior citizens and grandparents because, let’s be honest, they’re also raising young children.
We are now wrapping a pencil drive. There are drives all across the state for school supplies. We are taking up school supplies for the classroom. We partner with communities and nonprofit and for-profit organizations to help us purchase classroom supplies for teachers. The hope is to alleviate some of the burden on parents, too.