By Delaney Newhouse | Focus Editor
On Feb. 28, Baylor informed Waco public radio station KWBU that it would no longer be providing cash funding to the station, effective June 1.
KWBU station President Joe Riley said this decision came as the university and the radio station prepared budgets for the upcoming year. In previous years, Baylor provided around $209,000 to the station. In-kind services that have been provided in the past will continue. according to Jason Cook, Baylor vice president for marketing and communications and chief marketing officer.
“We will continue to provide in-kind operational support to KWBU, including office space, information technology and accounting services, which includes a dedicated staff member,” Cook said. “We are hopeful the community will step up and support KWBU at the level Baylor has for many years.”
Cook said the cuts come during a time of financial pressures felt by higher education institutions across the country.
“Baylor has been affected by the uncertainty and many financial pressures that have impacted higher education nationwide,” Cook said. “As Baylor aims to be good stewards of students’ tuition dollars, we are reducing the direct financial subsidy and underwriting the University provides to the station as part of a campuswide strategic budget reallocation process.”
Despite its over $2 billion endowment, Baylor uses only around 5%, per the Office of Investments. According to the American Council on Education, the average spending for a private university is 12% of the endowment.
Distributions from the endowment covered a little over 9% of Baylor’s 2024-2025 budget of $962.7 million, including scholarships. Baylor’s overall budget is largely dependent on outside sources of revenue.
“KWBU is a community public radio station serving the Greater Waco area. Like other KWBU supporters, Baylor University does not direct KWBU’s programming, content or news coverage.”
Robert Darden, professor emeritus of journalism at Baylor, said he was “crushed” by the announcement. He and his wife, Mary Landon Darden, were founding members of the station, working with Larry Brumley, former Baylor associate vice president for communications, to bring public radio to Waco in 1997.
“This product gives so much to the community for the little cost that it is, and it’s in the great scheme of things very cheap,” Darden said. “It costs more to send the football team to an away game than it does to run this station.”
Darden shared the complicated history of KWBU, which he said started as a student-run station in the 1950s. As it began to fizzle out in the 90s, an opportunity opened up with Clear Channel Communications, now known as iHeartRadio. It needed the station in order to not have the signal conflict with one of the many stations the media giant ran through town.
“So they made a swap,” Darden said. “‘We will give you 103.3 and will pay you to take 107.1, so we can get the FCC off our backs.’”
Despite its links with Baylor, KWBU is not a branch of the university. Instead, Baylor is the only legal member of the nonprofit organization which holds KWBU’s license, the Brazos Valley Public Broadcasting Foundation. This membership is like owning shares in a for-profit organization: Baylor representatives make up half of KWBU’s governing board, while the other half is made up of community members.
Cook said “KWBU is a community public radio station serving the Greater Waco area. Like other KWBU supporters, Baylor University does not direct KWBU’s programming, content or news coverage.”
Since KWBU does not answer directly to the university, but to the public, Riley said radio provides an essential service to the community.
“The idea is to get important, vital information — news and other information and cultural information and those kinds of things — to the communities all over the country so everyone has equal access, and it’s not just run by commercial enterprises,” he said.
Darden said often, public radio is the only means for community members to get quick, accurate information during emergencies, as corporate broadcasting stations in small towns are often unmanned. He shared his belief that Waco residents ought to become more involved in supporting the station because they can not only benefit from radio but enjoy it as well.
“I would love to see Waco step up, including students — the students who start listening to NPR become addicted because it’s like 24/7 free podcasts because the stuff is presented in short chunks, heavily curated, heavily edited, so there’s no waste,” Darden said. “And you can pop on their podcast or you can just let the station run and you will come away informed and entertained and enlightened.”
Riley said that while the station has around 15,000 listeners a week, only around 700 donate. The station has been working to build up members — the term used for donors — but this change in funding has greatly increased need.
“We no longer need to gradually build our member base,” Riley said. “This is much more urgent.”
Darden emphasized the ease with which a large group of members could support a radio station with small donations.
“It’s the cost of a latte once a month,” he said.
