“NewsHour” came under criticism in a confidential May 2012 report commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the program’s major supporters in recent years, that concluded bluntly that the program needed to aggressively “modernize news gathering production.”
The report stressed the need for a major reorganization that included developing new digital platforms and clarifying its editorial focus. It also said more “decision-making transparency” was needed from MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, the profit-making company that co-produces the program for PBS. (The company is controlled by Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil, its founding anchors. Washington public television station WETA is the other producer.)
The pressures facing “NewsHour” are not unique. “What every traditional media organization is confronted with today is how to change profoundly to reflect the revolution in how people consume media,” said a former CNN bureau chief, Frank Sesno, now director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. But many organizations have moved more quickly to adapt, equipping producers with inexpensive video cameras to reduce news gathering costs, and investing in online and mobile platforms.
Mr. Sesno said that he “desperately” wants “NewsHour” to succeed. “They’ve got to figure out how to do the deeper dive and bring people along with them,” he said, by developing more of a conversation with the audience and becoming a “multimedia information experience. You can’t just be a TV show anymore.”
In the year since the Gates Foundation report was delivered, the foundation, whose $3.56 million, three-year grant to “NewsHour” to cover global health expired in December 2011, has yet to return as a supporter. A foundation spokesman, Christopher Williams, said in an e-mail on Wednesday that the consultants’ report “was not conducted as a prerequisite to any further funding.” He added, however, that the foundation does not discuss “what a particular grantee’s prospects for funding might be.”
A “NewsHour” spokeswoman, Anne Bell, said in an e-mail that the study was “helpful,” adding that “many of the recommendations have been acted upon” and that the program had “increased dramatically” its Web and social media initiatives.
With corporate funds running short, however, the program’s financial situation has deteriorated rapidly, leaving the production company to close a gaping hole of about $7 million on a $28 million budget this year, according to public television employees familiar with the numbers.
Corporate underwriting, which has declined elsewhere in public media, has fallen far short of what program officials hoped to raise, partly because the program was asking too much for sponsorships, said two public television employees.
Four times in recent months, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions executives have asked PBS officials for emergency $1 million infusions so they could pay the “NewsHour” bills, the public television employees said, and they received at least $3 million. Ms. Bell said the show would close the fiscal year with a “relatively small operating deficit.”
MacNeil/Lehrer Productions and WETA produce “NewsHour,” which is a nonprofit program, under an annually renewable contract. PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting contribute a portion of the program’s budget — $12.5 million this year — with the rest to be raised from corporations and foundations by the production company.
PBS, in a statement from Beth Hoppe, its head of programming, declined to comment “on financial information regarding specific programs,” but said it was working with “NewsHour” to ensure that the program’s “critical services” continued.
With a new fiscal year starting July 1, the program’s immediate financial squeeze will be eased, said the public television employees. But the end-of-year request for emergency funds requests revealed the intensity of the financial pressures.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/business/media/venerable-format-of-newshour-struggles-with-new-era-of-media.html?partner=rss&emc=rss