In the movie Moneyball, based on Michael Lewis’ novel, there’s a moment when Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) and Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) argue about whether or not to start Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt) at first base. Howe doesn’t want to because Pratt is new to the position, and doesn’t have great hitting numbers. Beane wants him to because according to complex statistical analysis, Hatteberg helps teams win in subtle ways, by getting on base, and by tiring out pitchers, and that benefit is stronger than his defensive liabilities.
Eventually, Howe refuses and tells Beane “Billy, I’m going to play this team in a way that I can explain in job interviews this winter”. In other words, I’m not going along with your weird moneyball philosophy.
Howe is setup as an antagonist in the movie, a force of opposition that Beane must overcome to prove that his philosophy of baseball can work. But, if you think of it from Howe’s perspective, Beane is the villian. He’s assembled a team of losers, traded the handful of star players away, and made Howe’s job of winning nearly impossible. Howe’s declaration that he’s seen the trajectory, and he’s going to make sure he has a soft landing is understandable, if wrong.
What does this have to WBEZ? Maybe nothing.
Much of the frustration and anger about the recent layoffs by WBEZ is directed at outgoing CEO Matt Moog. I feel that frustration and anger too, and it’s tempting to pile on with snarky jabs and insinuations. But, while venting is necessary, and there may be real grounds for outrage here, to me, the most important thing is that those of us who care about great audio content, and about public media, learn the right lessons. And I’m not sure piling on helps.
Really, I want to undersetand what’s going on. I’m going to focus my reflections on WBEZ’s now defunct CDU (or podcast department, to civilians) even though I think there are deep parallels to the story and trajectory of Vocalo, also eliminated by CPM.
Much has been made of certain details that have been revealed in recent reporting, much of it by the excellent veteran investigative reporter, Dave McKinney. The reporting is all the more impressive when you consider he’s reporting on people who have a say in his salary and job security. Some of those details that are often mentioned:
A recent 6.4 million state of the art studio renovation
A recent 19% pay increase for the CEO bringing his salary to $633,000, and a well compensated C-suite, with 5 people making over $200,000.
Moog suggested there would be no layoffs if revenue growth was consistent with expectations and that CPM planned to add 20-30 jobs when the acquisition was announced in 2022.
I’m upset about the layoffs and loss of the podcast unit, and it can be tempted to make snarky remarks, and damning insinuations, based on these data.
There are different explanations for what happened floating in my brain (and in the ether, amidst the reporting by Dave McKinney and others) conversations I’ve heard on podcasts, blogs, twitter.
Possible Explanations
Matt Moog and the board are greedy, they don’t care about the mission of the organization, and they’re extracting excess value for themselves.
Matt Moog is a tech entrepreneur, and along with the board, and what interests him about this job is solving the conundrum posed by failed revenue models for newspapers and other media organizations. The content is secondary to innovating a new, robust kind of company that succeeds fiscally in a moment when everything is shifting.
These are tough times for public media and podcasting, and Moog feels duty bound to leave the organization with no loose ends for a successor to untangle. In other words, he’s cleaning house before he goes.
I’m not sure which of these it is, but, as angry as I am, my gut tells me it’s some combination of 2 and 3, in some unknown proportion.
I’ve seen a lot of chatter in editorials and social media mentioning the salary and the studios. And I worry that we might be learning the wrong lesson from those details.
Possible distractions
The Studio
I think the Saga of the CPM Studios has a story to tell about what’s wrong at the organization. The studios have needed a renovation for a decade. If not longer. I started keeping a list of “minor grievances” while at WBEZ, and studio issues constitute a high percentage of the items. Among other complaints:
They’ve never been soundproof. A thing about audio production: If you’re recording somebody’s voice in a room, you don’t want to hear sounds from outside the room. WBEZ’s studios were not soundproof in the years I worked there. The walls are soundproof, but the soundproofing only goes as high as the drop ceiling, hiding various electrical infstracture and plumbing. Sounds travels through the ceilings. You can hear people walking. You can hear doors shut. You hear the HVAC. You hear weird sounds in the pipes. You can hear people moving things in the studios. You can DEFINITELY hear live music played in the peformance studio). Whenever I was recording something in a studio, and I heard sound bleeding in from somewhere, my first thought was “The people in charge here don’t actually care about making audio.” A bit dramatic, but that’s how it felt.
The mics, mixers, and wiring in the studios were constantly breaking. We usually had 4-5 full time engineers, and it seemed like they collectively spent half their time just keeping the studios working. It got progressively worse in my time there (they initially told us the studios would be redone as part of the 2019 renovation, which didn’t happen). In my last year at WBEZ, if I booked a studio to record something, it was 50-50 I’d need an engineer to help me get things working.
The studios only record to two tracks. (Forgive me, this is technical). This is ridiculous. WBEZ records panel interviews ALL THE TIME (a panel is more than one guest). The technology to make sure EACH recording is made to a separate synced audio track has existed for… decades. (At least since the 70s). It might have been pricey in the early 1990s, which I think is when the studios had last been renovated. It’s absurd they’re not setup that way. (For comparison, the rather modest studios I worked at from 2006-2010 at Virginia Humanities had an 8 track audio interface, so you could record 3 hosts and 2 guests and still have 3 tracks leftover).
CPM needed a studio overhaul. Now, did they need to cost 6.4$ million? I don’t know. I don’t know how much a studio renovation should cost. $2-3 million wouldn’t seem high to me, if they actually made the studios durable, soundproof, and have multitrack recording. However, I think critics may have a point that much of the money was spent on aesthetics. I don’t think $6.4 million is as extravagant as it sounds if the studios will serve the organization well for a couple decades.
It’s not like the money is interchangable. Even if they were expensive, everybody I’ve ever talked to in nonprofit fundraising tells me that it’s much easier to fund capital improvements than day to day operations, and you can generally do a big ticket capital campaign every 7-10 years. Wealthy people would rather fund something tangible. Something they can see. Something on which you can hang a plaque with their name.
So, even if the studios were a bit wasteful, it’s not necessarily like they could have taken that money and spent it to keep podcasts and Vocalo alive.
The Real Question
I think the real question here is why are the studios at an audio-first media company, allowed to languish in semi-functionality for over a decade, until there’s a big flashy, multimillion dollar renovation. I think, again, the $6.4 million renovation might be more emblamatic of the problem of priorites and incentives than a direct cause of the problem. It’s the kind of project CEOs and C-Suite folks like to take on because it’s how they prove to future employers they’re competent. It’s an accomplishment. And the shinier the renovation, and the more expensive, the more impressive the accomplishment can seem to future employers.
I don’t think our public media non-profit system is very good at rewarding leaders who are quietly competent, and keep things going with minor changes, high morale,and slightly improved efficiency. Leaders are expected to do big bold things to evolve to an ever shifting media landscape. This is operative at the C-suite level too, which is why we get a lot of flashy “initiatives” and “projects”. New accounting software. New DAW software. New program calendars. New branding campaigns, new logos, new brand identity. New HR evaluation systems. New expense tracking systems. Things you can talk about in job interviews in the winter. And often, these new things are not well-aligned with the actual goal of making stuff on the radio, web, and podosphere. Which is what it’s supposed to be about.
The Salary:
I think the CEO’s salary is too high, and I think if there are going to be layoffs, the C-suite should take paycuts (as they did, along with the rest of the staff in 2020).
But, again, this is one of those things I think might be more emblamatic of the problem, than a direct cause.
If you cut the top five salaries by 33%, you would save about, $500K, which would be enough to save maybe 4-5 jobs (including benefits and overhead) of the 14 jobs that were cut. I’m not sure that would save podcasts or Vocalo (although it would be EXTREMELY meaningful for those 4-5 people)
I don’t think the high salaries were motivated by greed. Matt Moog has experience working in for profit companies that pay a lot more. If you want money, why be overpaid $633K when you could be overpaid $6 million? I think the insistence on maintaining the high salaries and Moog’s raise is more about stubbornly standing on principle. I think Moog and the board believe that the kind of leadership he brings is valuable, and it should be valued, and they need to send the signal to future CEO candidates, and future C-suite candidates that they value their leadership, and won’t be cowed by public opinion of the Union. It’s a good story for job interviews in the winter.
So I don’t think the salaries are THE problem. I think it’s more likely the high salaries are emblematic of THE problem. And I think some of the C-suite salaries may be justified given the value of the work to the organization.
Part of the reason I think these details are a distraction is I’m not sure the Board was concerned with saving money in a financial crisis. I think they’re concerned about clearing the decks for future priorites. I think Moog feels he’s doing the unpopular dirty work now, so a successor won’t have to, and can move forward without the dead wood of podcasts and Vocalo. And that’s a story he can tell in job interviews in the winter. So even if there weren’t a crisis (and I’m not sure there is a crisis) I think podcasts and Vocalo would be on the chopping point at some point.
I don’t think that paying the CEOs and the C-suite less would solve the problem, but I’d be curious to see if that worked. Perhaps that would bring in people who only care about the content. (And some of the people in CPMs C-suite are huge fans and supporters of the work we did, I can attest) I suspect some of that work is vital, and in some cases, you need high salaries to attract the best people. I just think that business oriented people may have become too influential within the organization, both at the board level, and among the staff. I think the problem is that a financial mindset can make it hard to evaluate the success of creative programming that is produced for a mission.
Details like the $6.4 million renovation and the C-suite compensation have been held up to suggest either financial mismanagement, or greed. But I don’t buy either explanation. I think simply put, Moog and the board don’t value podcasts and Vocalo because they are not perceived as financially self-sustaining. And I think that’s the wrong way to evaluate their value.
What does it all mean?
Are the CEO and board villians? Are they too focused on financial health to correctly value content and mission? Or are they making a painful but necessary adjustment to get the organization on the right track?
To answer that, there are other questions I feel we would need to know the answers to. Some maybe knowable. Some probably not.
Is WBEZ really losing money? If so, does that have to do with the Sun-Times merger or is it independent of that? Did the organization grow too quickly, or has the funding model that was more or less reliable from 2010-2020 become unviable? Has there been growth of digital subscribers, and has the CST contributed to that? How is on air listening going?
Does WBEZ know the value of its podcasts and Vocalo when it comes to brand recognition and overall audience growth? Are there studies that document those hard to study factors? Were attempts made?
Were the recent renovations (one that began in 2019, and the more recent studio remodel) wasteful or necessary? Did those renovations solve long standing issues with clunky studios and crowded office spaces? If money hadn’t been spent on those, could it have been invested in programming?
How much should the CEO of a major market public media organization make? And what kind of person should they be? Should they be a business person? Or a content person? Or (like the presidents of many universities) a skilled fundraiser and symbolic leader, who leaves the day to day decisions to others?
And while we’re at it, what do these C-suite positions mean? What do these people do? Are these salaries really required to get great people who love public media and are aligned with the mission? I have friendly relationships with some of the people on the list, and I think some of these roles are vital. But does organizing the institution such that the top people in these roles form an leadership team make the most sense? Should the CTO, CFO, VP of Communications, and General Counsel be co-equal decision makers with the people in charge of the content strategy?
For those of us who love podcasts and longform audio content, can you make an organization that makes those things successfully, finds and audience, and saves money by not having a collective $2 million salary for the C-suite? These are questions Mia Lobel and others are researching and thinking about.
Is on demand audio and podcasting part of the future of public media? If the financial struggles WBEZ has is based on disappointing on air and digital growth, does it really make sense to cut podcasts adn Vocalo? Does investing in podcast series and podcast producers represent an important intermediary step to the future listening and funding model? Or is it dead wood?
What is the proper makeup of a public media board? I’ve often heard that non profit boards should be made up of the 3 W’s, roughly in equal parts: Work, Wisdom, and Weath. Looking at the CPM board, I see a lot of the last category. Is that how it should be? I think having successful business leaders on a board is GREAT, and I’m certainly grateful of their donations and in some cases, volunteer work. And that’s not to say the current board doesn’t also posess wisdom and people willing to work for the good of the organization. But where are the leaders of scrappy Chicago-based community organizations? Where are the leaders of other innovative public media adjacent initatives? Should there be more people with knowledge of the mission and content of CPM to balance to the strictly business perspective? WBEZ has an advisory board called the Sounding Board, that’s filled with these sorts of people. Does the Sounding Board interact with the governance board? Should it? Should the governance board have more Sounding Board type people?
Should the board get to know the staff (and vice versa)? I feel guilty that I never attended a board meeting during my 7.5 years at WBEZ, but I can say that it wasn’t really encouraged. We could find out where the meetings were and get credentials by asking the CEO’s assistant, but it was a chore and it invited scrutiny. (We were encouraged to attend the Sounding Board meetings) Other organizations I’ve worked for host board/staff mixers. There are board weekends with a mix of board business meetings and social activities designed to get the staff and board to interact, for the staff to learn more about the board members, and for the board to learn about the day to day operations of the organization. Why isn’t it like that at CPM?
What do the CPM board members think of all this? Have any shared their thoughts publicly? I haven’t seen it if so.
What do I think?
I honestly don’t know the answer to these questions. Based on what I do know, I think the decision to shutter the podcast department and Vocalo was short-sighted and will prove to be a step backwards. I think the CEO and the board probably think they’re doing the right thing, making hard decisions now to ensure a successful future. And I think they’re mistaken about those decisions. I also think CPM is a resilient organization with a strong audience base in a big city, and will probably survive, and eventually be OK.
If I’m right, we might see more layoffs in the next two years. If those are avoided, CPM will realize it missed out on the opportunity to build on the audiences engaged by podcasts and Vocalo, and will make efforts to re-engage those audience, perhaps by making Vocalo-like content within the WBEZ umbrella, perhaps by launching new podcasts. And the people working on those efforts, will scrap to build audiences from scratch, having lost the momentum built over the last decade and more.
If I’m wrong, we’re done with layoffs, and in a few years CPM will be financially healthy, growing, and engaging bigger and more diverse audiences through content that builds upon the core newsgathering operation. On-demand audio will mostly be news based, will be produced as part of the same daily news cycle, and will really reflect different platforms more than different aesthetics. Much of the audience growth with be around digital, and specifically online print, graphics, and video, with on demand audio being a small part of the pie. Longform podcasts (like Motive, and Curious City) and niche cultural podcasts (like Nerdette, When Magic Happens, and Making) will seem like anomalies from another era, as jazz programming on WBEZ does now. As will Vocalo. We lovers of creative longform audio will look back at 2014-2024 and think “Well, it was fun while it lasted.”
I’d like to hear from you if you agree, have more informationt to add, or think I’m mistaken. Comments are open, and you can email me at jpdukes at gmail dott com.
(NOTE: I’ve updated this article a few times to correct spelling and grammar mistakes, and clarify my thoughts as they just keep swirling around)
Jesse,
I love the "Moneyball" analogy. It's very accurate not only to this situation but the broader problems faced by legacy media today. Having worked directly with Moog, especially in the early part of my time at WBEZ, I found him to constantly be thinking about how monetize Torey's brain. Or, to put it another way, to make Torey's ideas fail fast or at least faster than they were known to at the time. What I didn't realize then was that these were the last straws for Torey, and as I alluded to in a Facebook comment previously, the financial people decided that the innovative, creative side of WBEZ, much of which existed because of Torey's leadership or encouragement, was not the right direction for the future. However, they were faced with a legacy product that wasn't going to stay afloat long term. Personally, I think it's a mix of traditionally wealthy people trying to apply old solutions to a now-old problem (what the Internet has done to legacy media) and innovative business people like Moog trying to shove WBEZ into a startup box it wouldn't fit in. Every newspaper, television, and now public radio station(s) I've worked at struggled with the exact same issues, especially after a merger or aquisition. And every single time they cut out the beating heart of the organization, the raw talent that kept the subscriptions going, albeit on life support. And so I think you're asking all the right questions, and as we still haven't seen solutions for other legacy media outlets, I don't think they're necessarily answerable in the current age. Part of me wishes I could see some future historical analysis of this to show what we guessed right at and where we were blindingly wrong, because we're looking at it within the limits of our ability to see the big picture.
Hey Jesse, there's a spelling error in your title!