WBUR says sponsorship shortfall could mean layoffs

WBUR is considering a hiring freeze and eliminating jobs as the station has seen “a dramatic loss of sponsorship support,” chief executive Margaret Low wrote in an email to donors on Wednesday. “This is a different story than we’ve told before. It’s unlike our usual on-air fundraising appeals,” Low wrote in the email. “The stark reality is this — in order to survive, we need the people who count on us every day to dig deeper than they ever have before.” In an interview with the Globe last week and in the message sent to donors, Low said that on-air sponsorship revenue — also known as underwriting — fell by 40 percent over the past five years. Low communicated the financial challenges to WBUR’s staff in an all-hands meeting last month. Members of a WBUR union that represents editorial staff — a local branch of SAG-AFTRA — said in an interview that they have met with station management. Boston University owns WBUR’s broadcast license. Across the country, radio stations — public and commercial — are being squeezed due to a decline in advertising. The current financial challenges are just the latest example of a yearslong slump in revenue from advertising that has hampered the industry. With fewer people listening to live radio, WBUR, GBH, and other stations have expanded into podcasts, digital coverage, and more. While there’s a need to try to come up with new approaches to reaching listeners who may not tune into live radio, particularly younger listeners, digital advertising has not been a steady form of revenue for most media companies. “In the digital age, almost all that money now goes to the big platforms — like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Spotify,” Low wrote in her email, which WBUR later posted on its website. “This is bad news for the news business and has created big gaps that can’t easily be filled.” — AIDAN RYAN