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Penn State University plans to shut down its NPR and PBS-affiliated public broadcasting station, WPSU, after the university’s trustees rejected a proposal to transfer ownership to WHYY.

If approved, the deal would have transferred WPSU’s broadcast licenses — covering 24 counties for television and 13 counties for radio across central and northern Pennsylvania — to WHYY, subject to the approval of the Federal Communications Commission.

In a statement to WHYY News, PSU said that they have budgeted funds for WPSU’s operations through the end of June 2026 and the university is currently developing a plan to wind down and cease operations by then.

Shortly after the vote on the proposal, PSU’s vice president for outreach, Larry Terry, sent an email to WPSU’s staff announcing the decision.

“The failure to approve this transaction is unfortunate, as it was the most feasible option to keep the station open and broadcasting,” he said. “The other scenario provided to trustees – and the one that is now unfortunately our new reality – is for the University to wind down operations and close WPSU.”

WHYY had been in talks with PSU about taking over the station since spring 2024, WHYY’s CEO Bill Marrazzo told WHYY News. Marrazzo called Thursday’s decision “a shame,” adding that “1.5 million Pennsylvanians will not have free access to a public media experience.”

“It’s a serious blow,” he said.

The Penn State Board of Trustees Finance and Investment Committee voted against the proposed transaction, taking issue with a $17 million subsidy the university would have paid over five years and what they saw as WHYY’s lack of commitment to hire WPSU’s staff, which currently numbers 44 full-time positions.

“I don’t like to pay somebody a subsidy to run a business and, at the end of the day, there’s no guarantee they’ll stay in business,” trustee Robert Fenza told the committee. “They’re going to get all these assets and then the thing that bothered me the most is that they have not committed to hire our employees in the agreement. It said they may, and that also means they may not and that’s not good enough for me.”

Another committee member, Anthony Lubrano, called it a “difficult decision” before joining the unanimous vote against the proposal.

“I don’t think the way this deal is structured maximizes value to this institution,” he said. “And I think we need to do a little bit more exploratory work before I’m comfortable approving a deal like this.”

Marrazzo said he believed the deal was fair, noting that the proposal was the result of 13 months of negotiations between WHYY and the university.

He said the subsidy would have been paid out over five years, declining each year, and was intended to “keep WHYY whole” while rebuilding the business infrastructure of the Central Pennsylvania station.

“The rate of the subsidy over the five-year period was pegged to the business risk WHYY was willing to take to rebuild all of their revenue production capability. They have none,” he said. “I was not willing to compromise WHYY sustainability in order to get WPSU out of the red.”

Marrazzo said that the terms regarding staff were also intended to bring WPSU “back into a sustainable situation” by focusing on revenue-producing positions.

“The number of employees who are on the payroll right now who don’t have that capability, that’s unfortunate, but it is the reality, so that point was not negotiable,” he said. “We could not guarantee everyone a job, but we were certainly anxious to hire as many of those people as we could.”

The move comes in the wake of Congress’ decision earlier this year to eliminate all federal funding for public broadcasting. According to analysis by Alex Curley, a former NPR staff member who writes the blog Semipublic, WPSU and other university-owned stations may be especially vulnerable to those cuts. Curley found that college-affiliated public stations depend far more heavily on “non-operating revenue” — money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and direct university subsidies — than their independent counterparts.

More than half of NPR-affiliated stations are linked to colleges, as are dozens of PBS stations.