The National Public Radio (NPR) is cutting roughly 10 percent of its current workforce as the network’s financial outlook recently “darkened considerably” amid declining advertising revenue, NPR’s executive officer announced on Thursday.
In his memo, Lansing said NPR expects a budget shortfall of at least $30 million, despite the company creating a plan to address a $20 million sponsorship revenue falloff for the fiscal year 2023.
Lansing also noted that NPR “fought hard to avoid this” by previously cutting $14 million in expenses, including freezing a majority of its vacant job postings, suspending paid internships, as well as restricting non-essential travel. However, those cuts proved insufficient.
“To address the growing deficit, we need to further reduce our spending. With approximately 65 percent of our budget supporting personnel costs, we will need to eliminate many of the vacant positions that have been frozen. We will also need to reduce filled positions by approximately 10 percent,” Lansing said, adding that he hoped to be able to announce “final decisions about the position reductions by the week of March 20.”
“When we say we are eliminating filled positions, we are talking about our colleagues—people whose skills, spirit, and talents help make NPR what it is today,” he added. “This will be a major loss.”
It is the first time since 2008 that the public broadcaster announced a steep job cut due to budget shortfalls. During that financial crisis, the network cut roughly 7 percent of its workers and also eliminated two of its shows, “Day to Day” and “News & Notes.”
The shows were canceled because they failed to attract “sufficient levels of audience or national underwriting necessary to sustain continued production under these tough financial circumstances,” Dennis Haarsager, the network’s former executive vice president, wrote in a memo to staff at the time.
