🔒2022 Forecast: Maine Public to expand news coverage, seek additional radio frequencies

Maine’s public radio and television broadcaster aims to expand news coverage as it seeks to add FM radio frequencies, according to the company’s new leader.

“We’re about telling stories to Mainers and potentially telling Maine stories to a wider audience,” says Rick Schneider, who succeeded Mark Vogelzang as president and CEO in July.

Schneider previously worked in broadcast journalism, philanthropy and public media, most recently at the National Center for Family Philanthropy in Washington, D.C.

Maine Public, which is headquartered in Portland with additional facilities in Lewiston and Bangor, is also proceeding with plans for a new headquarters in Portland’s Old Port that Schneider aims to have built by 2024.

In the shorter term, Schneider aims to ramp up news coverage and editorial staffing in several areas to make up for recent downsizing during the pandemic through voluntary retirements, saying, “We are now scaling up in the wake of that.”

Maine Public, which has 100 employees including 20 journalists, recently hired a state house correspondent in Augusta to replace a staffer who retired. Schneider says the company also plans to add a Bangor correspondent and hire a correspondent dedicated to climate change — with plans to create a specialist team, or desk, devoted to the topic.

While there has been less television production in recent years, Maine Public plans to produce more videos for distribution on digital platforms, which can be accessed from anywhere. Travel programs about Maine, of interest to a nationwide audience, could be distributed through the Public Broadcasting Service system, he says.

Launched in 1992 as the Maine Public Broadcasting Network and rebranded as Maine Public in 2016, the nonprofit is dependent on charitable donations, general fundraising and corporate support that Schneider says has been steadfast even during the pandemic.

“We do better when people use and value our services,” he says. “Certainly people have an appreciation of Maine Public during these times, and of news and journalism” more generally. “I do think the services Maine Public provides are so important in a world like this.”

Other priorities include expanding foreign-language programming and coverage of immigrant communities, as well as potential radio news and classical music expansion, with Maine Public applying for additional FM radio frequencies from the Federal Communications Commission. Maine Public submitted multiple applications in November and won’t know the outcome until later this year.

“Nothing is certain,” Schneider says, “but we are optimistic about several of the applications.”