Georgia Public Broadcasting is introducing a brand new logo for the new year, along with a five-year strategic plan.
Bert Wesley Huffman, who took over as chief executive officer of the statewide public media operation last year from a retired Teya Ryan, has had to grapple with cutbacks from the state Legislature and an increasingly cluttered and diffuse media environment.
“It was time to look internally and focus on what our plan is for the future,” said Huffman in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at headquarters in Midtown Atlanta earlier this month. He joined the station in 2014 focused on underwriting and fundraising and became Ryan’s right-hand man for several years. “We want to build a future for GPB where we lean into our status as a cultural touchstone for the state of Georgia.”
Credit: GEORGIA PUBLIC BROAD
Credit: GEORGIA PUBLIC BROAD
The strategic plan identified GPB’s key constituents: families seeking safe content for their kids, high school boosters into sports, voters seeking information about key issues, and cultural aficionados “who relish wholesome, intelligent content.”
GPB’s donor base has nearly tripled since 2014 with plans to grow that number, currently at 87,000, by 25% over the next five years. The plan said GPB’s focus is now on “mission critical areas”: literacy and learning, arts and culture, health and wellness and civic engagement.
“I think our vision of uniting and uplifting Georgia is pretty audacious but it’s aspirational and it has to be,” said Emmalee Hacksaw, vice president of development and civic engagement.
GPB is a multifaceted operation with 120 full time employees who generate news, sports and educational content. Its mission is to cover the entire state, unlike WABE, which focuses on metro Atlanta.
The most prominent segment of GPB is its 20 NPR radio stations and nine TV stations. In Atlanta, it runs GPTV on Channel 8, the dominant of two public TV stations, and 88.5/WRAS-FM, which has remained far behind 90.1/WABE-FM in ratings since GPB partnered with Georgia State University to take over its daytime analog signal.
Its newsroom is a relatively modest team of a dozen journalists who pump out newscasts and podcasts such as “Georgia Today,” “A Fork in the Road” and “Peach Jam.” Its annual “Lawmakers” program, focused on the state legislative session, has been running for more than 55 years. GPB did not replace its once popular “Political Rewind” show after dropping host Bill Nigut in June 2023.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
GPB is also home to Georgia high school sports, including airing the high school football state championship games at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in mid-December.
Its sprawling Midtown headquarters features eight studios, which are regularly rented out by TV shows and films, generating more than $2 million a year. It was built in the late 1990s for $27 million, funded by lottery money, a move that critics felt was excessive at the time and those studios were underutilized for years.
But since Georgia passed the film and TV tax credit in 2008, those studios have generated significant dividends for GPB. Movies and TV shows such as “The Resident,” “Ozark” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis″ have shot scenes at the studios and judge shows such as “Couples Court with the Cutlers” and “Divorce Court” create multiple seasons there.
Credit: RODNEY HO
Credit: RODNEY HO
The less obvious part of GPB’s operation is generating educational lessons for K-12 classrooms statewide. That is largely funded by the state Legislature, which also provides money for capital maintenance and investment. GPB is also a primary deliverer of emergency information when there is a disaster like Hurricane Helene this past September that damaged huge swathes of the state.
But there is risk relying on politicians for so much money. In 2023, the Legislature cut support by more than $1 million to $13 million for the past fiscal year, an amount that remained steady this year. Blake Tillery, a Republican state senator, in a text to the AJC, said “other NPR-like stations in Atlanta were asking why we are funding their competitor, GPB, and not them. It brings up a great question about why government was in that space. We suggested that they redirect their programming monies to educational content.”
As a result, the state’s share of GPB’s budget has fallen to about 33% from 40% to 45% through the 2010s.
“We continue our work to diversify our revenue streams and leverage donor dollars and our studio space rentals to help make up gaps in funding,” Huffman said, adding, “We’re excited about the opportunity that we have this session to share with legislators how we have remained a fiscally responsible organization and still continued to grow and expand our contributions in public safety and education.”
Huffman is excited for 2025. He said individual donor dollars are up 5% year over year with a goal of reaching $11 million for the first time. Underwriting from corporations and foundations is up 8%, reaching $1.3 million halfway through the fiscal year.
And while WABE recently cut staff, Huffman said GPB has no plans to do so. He said GPB recently added a 20th radio station in Kingsland and will incorporate two more stations in the state in 2025.
Credit: AJC Staff
Credit: AJC Staff
He wants to interact more with other state departments to develop more content such the 2023 “Crisis of Substance,” a documentary about Georgia’s opioid epidemic GPB created with the Department of Behavioral Health. “We are working to build a series of prevention initiatives with that department for kids,” Huffman said.
GPB is also set to debut in February a new program profiling prominent Georgians hosted by Jeff Hullinger, the veteran Atlanta news anchor, dubbed “Georgia Legends.” And new episodes of GPTV’s long-running “Georgia Outdoors” are forthcoming, he added.
“We at GPB have spent the last decade professionalizing what we do,” Huffman said. “We want to ensure that we can be here to serve people not only with news and information but be a place where we can bring out Georgia stories.”
GPB’s new multicolored circular logo, set to be introduced on all platforms Jan. 1, is meant to represents the “diversity of what we do,” Huffman said. “I was passionate about a circle. I wanted to represent something holistic. I wanted to show the reach of GPB.”
He would love the circle to eventually represent GPB in such a recognizable way that the letters GPB wouldn’t even need to be attached for people to recognize it, similar to the Target logo or the McDonald’s golden arches.
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