New York Public Radio cuts 26 positions, ends ‘Notes From America’

New York Public Radio is eliminating 26 positions and will cut back on podcasts and live events, CEO LaFontaine Oliver announced in an email to staff Thursday.

The station will also end production of the show Notes From America, which it began distributing nationally two years ago. Its last broadcast will be Dec. 29.

The eliminated positions are “spread across operational and content teams, union and non-union,” Oliver wrote, amounting to a workforce reduction of 8.5%. Twelve of the layoffs were voluntary.

Oliver first announced last month that the cuts were coming. NYPR faces a projected budget deficit this fiscal year of almost $12 million, according to spokesperson Jennifer Houlihan Roussel. It projects that it will save approximately $6 million to $6.5 million annually as a result of the reductions.

“As I said in my note in August, I am deeply sorry to lose the talented colleagues and friends who will be leaving us, and I wish we were in a different place,” he said in the Thursday memo.

“As I’ve said before, the media landscape is extremely fluid and the financial headwinds we are facing are strong,” Oliver said. “Membership, development, and sponsorship are each facing long-term challenges. Trends that started years ago — consumers’ turn towards digital platforms, the slow but steady decline in radio listenership across both commercial and public radio, advertisers’ turn away from legacy platforms — accelerated during the pandemic and have not reversed course.”

In addition to the staff reduction, Oliver said the station will stop producing seasonal podcasts for WQXR, its classical music service. Such podcasts “require significant time, funding and marketing power in order to become sustainable,” Oliver said. Moving forward, “new launches and additional seasons of pre-existing shows will not be greenlit without significant funding from a partner or donor.”

WQXR will also move to unhosted music during overnight hours and will drop morning newscasts. NYPR will also cut back on events held in the Greene Space, its live events venue, and will only stage events directly tied to the station.

Looking ahead, Oliver said, NYPR will increase its focus on local news. It will be “judicious” in its investment in national shows, prioritizing those “that are consistently attracting both audience and revenue,” he wrote.

“For the foreseeable future, new national programming will not be a focus of our work,” Oliver said.

The CEO added that NYPR will “reimagine” its membership model “in response to changing audience behaviors and the potential of the digital marketplace.” Oliver said the station is planning to use fundraising around its 100th anniversary “as a springboard for a transformative multi-year campaign that will help ensure our viability and our vitality for years to come.”

The cutbacks follow another reduction of 20 positions last year. 

“We are gutted that our organization’s leaders have once again decided to lay off the people who make New York Public Radio,” said union stewards representing the station’s news staff in a statement quoted by Gothamist, NYPR’s news website. 

“NYPR continues to recycle a playbook focused on content cuts that amount to a short-term Band Aid rather than a long-term solution to our multi-million dollar deficit,” said the stewards, who are unionized under the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

In a staff meeting Thursday afternoon, NYPR announced that it would extend the voluntary layoff period through the end of November.