Proposed funding cut could sink SDPB in as little as two years, director says

This story was first published by South Dakota Searchlight and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

South Dakota Public Broadcasting could cease to exist in as little as two years if lawmakers adopt Gov. Kristi Noem’s $3.6 million budget cut, the network’s executive director said Friday.

Julie Overgaard sounded that alarm during a meeting of the Educational Telecommunications Board, which acts as an advisory council for SDPB.

Noem proposed the funding cut, which amounts to about 65% of SDPB’s state funding, during her annual budget address on Tuesday. The governor has proposed $82.7 million in cuts across state government in response to lower state revenue compared to the past few years.

Noem also proposed $10.7 million in new spending, $4 million of which would go toward $3,000 education savings accounts that lower-income families could use to pay for private school tuition, homeschooling and other forms of nontraditional schooling.

SDPB and its associated nonprofit fundraising organization, Friends of SDPB, have sent emails to supporters and offered statements to the media outlining the immediate impact of a 65% budget cut. In the near term, it could mean a loss of all original state and local programming, including high school activities broadcasts, the radio show In the Moment and television programs like Dakota Life and South Dakota Focus.

Overgaard’s message to the telecommunications board on Friday was more stark. She called Noem’s budget “devastating news.” 

Donors send their money to Friends of SDPB in large part to support local programming. Without local programming, Overgaard said, that support would dry up.

“At best, we have about a 24- to 36-month lifeline,” Overgaard said. “I don’t think there is much point in pretending this is not as serious as it is.”

Kay Jorgensen, who chairs the telecom board, said the budget proposal is worthy of a more serious look than the group had time for on Friday. The board had a full agenda, one set up before Noem’s budget speech. 

Members heard about SDPB’s financial health from its accountant, about the popularity of its high school football coverage this fall from its content director, and about an audit performed by Eide Bailly.

The audit found no financial disparities, ethical concerns or areas where SDPB strayed from best practices, one of its authors told the board. The draft audit document notes that SDPB serves 90% of the state’s geography and around 382,000 households.

“I don’t think there’s an organization in the country that can defend and be proud of its broadcast work more than the team at South Dakota Public Broadcasting,” Jorgensen said after hearing from Overgaard.

Layoffs, lost programming, potential insolvency

In a follow-up interview with South Dakota Searchlight, Overgaard said the $3.6 million cut would trigger a 50% reduction in support from the federal Corporation for Public Broadcasting, from $2 million annually to $1 million. The formula for grants from the corporation factors in state or local matching dollars. 

SDPB currently has 64 full-time employees, not counting employees of Friends of SDPB. Most of the SDPB employees would lose their jobs if the cut goes through, Overgaard told Searchlight. 

The shallow funding pool left after the cut wouldn’t be enough to pay for much more than engineering and network maintenance, she said. 

It would likely be possible for SDPB to continue recording and streaming legislative committee hearings, floor debates and meetings of the state’s various oversight boards and commissions, but there would be no news coverage. 

The money could also maintain the infrastructure needed for Amber Alert and emergency alert messages, which originate with law enforcement and are distributed by SDPB’s network to the state’s commercial broadcast systems.

Beyond that and national programming — all of which is funded through donations from listeners and viewers, Overgaard said, not through tax dollars — there would be little left of the SDPB that exists today.

If SDPB cannot remain financially solvent, she said, the state would need to find another way to get emergency alerts to its citizens. 

Per capita spending comparison inaccurate, broadcaster says

In 2006, lawmakers passed a $500,000 cut to SDPB in the waning days of the legislative session. Lawmakers found themselves inundated with comments from constituents and restored the funding.

Ryan Howlett, CEO of Friends of SDPB, told the board Friday that the group saw a major fundraising spike immediately following Noem’s budget address.

“We’ve been really buoyed by people, by their support with not only their dollars, but their willingness to contact their legislators in their district and the administration of the state of South Dakota on our behalf,” Howlett said. 

Howlett told Searchlight, however, that a short-term fundraising bump does nothing to solve the larger problems that would follow a state funding cut.

Larry Rohrer, a South Dakota Hall of Fame member known as the voice of SDPB, hopes listeners and viewers continue to rally behind the network. 

Rohrer, who’s now retired, helped lead the network into the internet age, setting up the communications network that has streamed legislative debates since 2000. A little more than a decade later, Rohrer helped shepherd through the operational framework for SD.net, which streams and archives not only legislative coverage but meetings from boards and commissions or agencies like the Public Utilities Commission.

Some lawmakers were skeptical of streaming legislative debates, Rohrer said, but the skepticism dissipated quickly.

“What eventually happened was that the legislators heard from their constituents that they liked this,” Rohrer said.

Broadcasting high school activities has also buoyed SDPB’s reputation, he said. That’s at least in part because the network broadcasts not just popular sports like football, but a wide range of sports and arts activities that might have a smaller but dedicated following. 

“This is the question that we asked internally: I want you to tell me which of those 35 high school championships don’t deserve to be on TV,” Rohrer said. “I dare you to answer that question, because the truth is they all do.”

In her budget speech, Noem told lawmakers that SDPB’s state funding is among the highest in the nation per capita. 

Noem’s office did not offer a response to Overgaard’s comments on SDPB’s solvency, nor did the Bureau of Finance and Management.

Rohrer said he doesn’t know where that per capita figure came from but that it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. Few states have radio and television under one roof through a state-held broadcast license as SDPB does, as opposed to separate radio and television networks, one or more of them licensed through a university or independent nonprofit. Even fewer offer services that range from emergency alerts and year-round government meeting livestreams to live coverage of events like the annual Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup.

The trouble with using a per capita figure, Rohrer said, is that it leaves out the nuance.

“You can say that in 10 seconds,” Roher said. “For me to explain the different flavors of public stations and the variety of services takes five minutes. Some people don’t have time for that. My hope is that people would take the time to look deeper and understand that this is not a 10-second narrative.”