Lunch or be lunch: The urgent need for bold leadership in public media

Boards have only two critical tasks: Hire that CEO and ask them hard questions about the organization's strategy in a time of rapid change. But in my time in public media (and consulting engagements since), I’ve seen too many boards fail at the strategic task.”

Tom Davidson, the Bellisario Professor of the Practice in Media Entrepreneurship at Penn State University

One of my favorite business school professors, Charles O’Reilly, used to talk about the dangers of leadership becoming paralyzed with fear. Fittingly, he used a public media analogy to make his point:

Imagine penguins in a PBS nature documentary. They’re clustered at the side of the iceberg. They know there are fish in the water — lunch! But they’re also worried that a sea lion may be in the water — death!

“They want to get the food … but they don’t want to be the food,” he’d say. Every penguin wanted some other penguin to go first. Then they’d dive in.

I think about that analogy nearly every time I discuss stations’ boards of directors.

Too many are timid — waiting for some other station to figure out answers to our strategic challenges — to be the first penguin in the water.

Too many are disengaged — showing up to quarterly meetings to schmooze and probably write some nice checks, but not asking hard questions of their CEOs about content and fundraising strategies in a tumultuous time.

A few have been so checked out that financial collapse, even literal embezzlement occurred on their watches.

Every station CEO I talk to — and most of their senior leaders — know the issues facing us: Aging over-the-air audiences, fragmented by near-endless choice via digital media, leading to sharp declines in membership, and increased competition for advertising (sorry! “underwriting!”) dollars.

But are your boards conversant on those topics?

Do their meetings regularly devote time to discussing them?

When Tom Karlo was CEO at KPBS in San Diego, he reminded his peers that they really had only three critical tasks: Set a strategy for their station, hire a team to execute it and raise the money for the team.

I’ll borrow his framework to argue that boards have only two critical tasks: Hire that CEO and ask them hard questions about the organization's strategy in a time of rapid change.

But in my time in public media (and consulting engagements since), I’ve seen too many boards fail at the strategic task.

They give rubber-stamp approval to budgets that smack of “We’ll do what we did last year — plus or minus 3%.”

They’re not regular users of the NPR app or PBS Passport, let alone the competing services like Apple Podcasts or Disney+ that are peeling off audience one stream at a time.

They want the prestige of serving on one of the most prestigious boards in their communities. However, they are unwilling (or perhaps aren't able) to ask the hard questions needed to ensure their organizations will survive in a media world rapidly shifting to on-demand streaming.

To be sure, there are exceptions — thoughtful, proactive boards led to high-potential mergers like Vermont Public Radio and Vermont PBS and, more recently, Rhode Island PBS and Rhode Island Public Radio.

But I can name too many other strategic initiatives, including mergers, that have been scuttled by boards (including one that boiled down to “OUR board should be in charge of this new entity, not THEIRS!”).

This issue is critical because public media is going through a generational change in leadership.

In the last year-plus, such longtime (dare I say legendary?) leaders like Jon Abbott (GBH), Steve Bass (Oregon Public Broadcasting) and Lisa Shumate (Houston Public Media) have retired or announced plans to do so.

I could easily add another half-dozen names to that list, and that’s before we add those planning to hang it up in a year or two … or the GMs leaving public media entirely for education or other nonprofit roles.

For every one of these, a station board of directors must perhaps make the most important decision they’ll ever make.

And even if they have a terrific CEO, those boards have to pressure-test budgets and strategic plans to ensure their organizations serve local audiences — not just maintain broadcast services that are rapidly dwindling in relevance.

If you’re a board member or a station leader who works with them, ask yourself: Am I willing to be the risk-taking penguin who gets in the water first? Or the laggard who lets someone else eat their lunch?

Tom Davidson is a professor of the practice in media entrepreneurship at the Bellisario School of Communications, Penn State University. He previously was a reporter, general manager and product leader at Tribune, PBS, UNC-TV and Gannett. He can be contacted at tgd@tgdavidson.com.