The University-owned news station is not in a position to stay in operation

Have you ever wondered what the big letters on the outside of Grady College stand for?

WNEG is the newly-acquired University-owned and operated television station serving Northeast Georgia.

After moving from Toccoa, Ga., into Grady on Jan. 1, the station is already facing extinction. Having nearly burned through its $5 million grant meant to last for five years in less than five months of production, the station could be off the air by September.

Where did the money go? And how could management not have planned better?
The Red & Black editorial board believes to justify nearly $800,000 in staff salaries, WNEG has to produce content that equals that of other professional television stations.

And it doesn’t.

Businesses nationwide are constantly cutting costs and people, and the journalism industry is the poster child of reducing costs to survive. And that is exactly what WNEG needs to do.

WNEG’s business strategy has been relying too much on “hopes” and not enough on concrete and realistic plans.

Hoping to have access to UGA athletics to expand viewership, as dean of the Grady College Culpepper Clark said the station did last year, is not a business plan.

It’s a death wish.

The Southeastern Conference did not make its record television deal with ESPN a secret, which gave the network exclusive coverage to football rights, amongst other sports.

Nor was the UGA Athletic Association’s agreement with ISP Sports for exclusive media rights for the rest of Georgia sports a secret. If WNEG leadership sincerely believed sports would carry the news station through this economic crisis, then they have more problems on their hands than a low quality production.

Clearly, what the station is producing is not cutting it, as evidenced by low advertising revenue and a nearly exhausted fund. Cutting programming — one of WNEG’s proposed options — will not draw regular advertising and seems like a prolonging of the inevitable. And maintaining the “status quo” has already failed the station.

The best option is for the station to temporarily go off the air and develop a sustainable business plan.

In the long run, is it best to keep bleeding money into a news station that does not appear to have the ability to survive?

Or know when to pull the plug?

— Michael Fitzpatrick for the editorial board