GPB President Teya Ryan: ‘There were not political motivations’ behind the WRAS agreement

• Georgia Public Broadcasting

Georgia Public Broadcasting officials have struggled to move past the outrage that stemmed from its controversial takeover of WRAS 88.5 FM’s daytime programming.

Prior to last May, Georgia State University students managed the college radio station’s airwaves for more than four decades, allowing student DJs to play an eclectic range of music while honing their radio skills. But that run came to an end on May 6 when GPB CEO and President Teya Ryan and GSU President Mark Becker announced that the state media network would begin broadcasting news and talk shows for nearly 100 hours each week. In exchange, GSU students are supposed to receive “unprecedented access” to GPB resources such as TV programming and more internship opportunities.

Five months after the deal was announced, “Album 88” student DJs met with Ryan on Oct. 28 for the first time to discuss the station’s future. Following the tense meeting, which has prompted students to explore its legal options, Ryan spoke with CL after numerous interview requests made since last May. The GPB president talked with CL about the WRAS student meeting, GPB’s entry into Atlanta’s radio market, and whether the GPB-GSU deal was politically motivated.

What were your expectations heading into the Oct. 28 meeting with WRAS student leaders?

My only expectation was that I was responding to a request to meet with the top student management at WRAS. They requested a meeting of me and I responded to that. Beyond that, I didn’t have any expectations except to have a healthy and positive conversation. ... I think it was very good to sit and listen. They wanted to be heard. We heard them. It was a good meeting in the sense that they got to hear from us and we got to hear from them. That’s a good beginning for bridge building, which is what we’re interested in. We’re not interested in a fractious relationship with the leadership at WRAS.

Look, here’s the bottom line. The people who work at GPB are good, honest people who feel passionately about the mission of public media. To characterize them in any other way is a disservice. I understand that there is a dramatic change at WRAS that’s very difficult for some of the leadership to come to terms with. But our goal is to move beyond that and move forward in a really positive way and try and open up new opportunities. There are a number of students who have taken advantage of that at this point. We hope and know we’re going to grow that in the future. I do strongly believe that the people at GPB are good, honest, and committed. They welcome the students at GSU with open arms. To characterize them as anything else is simply unfair.

The students expressed concerns about the fact that it took five months for you to sit down with them to talk about the future of WRAS. Leaving the meeting, the students felt like they didn’t have a clear idea about how they would benefit from the partnership. They said internships and a 30-minute radio show promised to them weren’t properly planned by GPB staffers. They also felt that GPB leaders had placed the burden on them to take advantage of the opportunities outlined in the WRAS agreement. Is that what you heard from them? What’s your response to those criticisms?

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The way to answer that is that these are students of GSU. We can only follow the guidelines that the university puts out. In a sense, they need to look toward the university. We have to work through the guidelines the university has given us. If they’re looking for insight into how to make the internships work or the relationship with GPB work or the work on programming, they have to funnel through the university. Those are the guidelines the university has given us. To throw that back on GPB is not where that belongs. GPB has a partnership, and a healthy, good partnership, with GSU — with another entity. If the students want to engage with GPB, they need to do that through the university and talk to their advisors about that. We can’t do that.

There are GSU students who work with us now that have taken advantage of that and seem to be extremely happy. We had an entire production class that came and is literally going to set up a classroom in our studio area. They’re moving aggressively toward that. There are a number of places that are moving toward that, but it’s through the university. So I was a bit confused as to what they were requesting of us. Their requests need to go through the university. We have worked closely with the university.

With regard to programming, I gave them a number of options to look at. I gave them guidelines. I said: “This is what I would say to any producer. The vision initiates from the organization. I gave them that vision. In fact, some of that vision is even laid out in the contract. I said: “Within that, what you ask your producers to do is to throw around creative ideas. Come up with ideas, come to us with ideas, and let’s have a civil, thoughtful, and creative discussion about how you achieve your goals.” That’s what I said to them. The truth is that it’s disturbing to me that my words are misinterpreted to you.

Is it fair to say that you feel like the frustration with GPB is misguided?

Look, it’s more accurate to say the university moved into a partnership that they felt was good for the overall university. OK? If they have frustration about that, then yes, they should have that conversation with the university. The conversation with GPB is about how do we move forward. The partnership is solid. The partnership is going to go forward as planned. How do they, as the leadership of WRAS, come to terms with that and begin to turn it into an advantage for them. How do they now begin to take advantage of that? How do they grow as students? How do they grow as music lovers? How do they grow as broadcasters? What can they take advantage of from that? That really is up to them to show initiative.

We have heard from WRAS critics a number of times. They have come to our board meetings. They have spoken to our board. I have now listened to them. We have heard the complaints. It’s not that we haven’t heard them. In fact, they had a complaint at the meeting about how they weren’t getting any promotions for their programming. We all mutually agreed that would be a good idea. In fact, to incorporate that would be a wonderful thing within the GPB programming hours. I even told them that we should get them with Bradley George, our morning anchor; Ricky Bevington in the afternoon, and Celeste Headlee. Let’s get your DJs integrated with them so they can come on their shows and talk about music, new bands, and promote ticket offers. Let’s start that dialogue. We’re ready for that dialogue. We are ready to move forward. But it’s really up to the students at this point to take that initiative.

I was told by people, including Album 88 Alumni President Zach Lancaster, that you were talking down to students and referred to them as “kids” during the WRAS meeting. I also heard that you asked them to turn off their cell phones and, overall, weren’t treating them with the respect that an equal partner with GPB might receive. I wanted to get your take on that account. How would you respond to those accusations?

I spent an hour listening to the students. Zach was asked not to speak by the university, not by me, let’s make that clear. Zach had his say twice at board meetings where he’s spoken extensively about his opinion and feelings.

I, as a leader, do not allow cell phones on in my meetings. No other student there including the other alumni had their phones on except Zach. I told Zach, “I don’t think it’s appropriate to have cell phones on in this meeting, would you please down put it down?” He said, “I’m taking notes.” I said, “That’s fine, let’s give you a piece of paper to take notes.”

We have to clarify that Zach is not part of the leadership of WRAS. He’s an outside interested party and may have a very different point of view from the students. I don’t know that. But I want to be clear that I did not say that to all the students because they were gracious enough not to have their cell phones on during the meeting — neither did any of my staff. I would ask you be somewhat circumspect about that particular situation and relationship.

Regarding calling them %22kids%22, I am much older than you think. I do have a terrible habit for calling people “kids.” For that, I would mean no disrespect by any means. It’s more of a term of respect for me. It’s probably something that I should look out for, but I meant no disrespect.

I feel that those students brought no new concerns to the table that we had not heard in both of our latest board meetings. Each person that showed up at the board meeting was allowed to speak their mind. They’ve done that twice. I heard them out. To say that I didn’t respectfully listen to them is perhaps not an accurate reading of the overall situation. We do have emails to prove that when they came to the first board meeting, I said I would be happy to speak to them at any point and to get in touch. The first time we heard from the students formally requesting a meeting, not through the media, but formally to us, we responded the next day and said we’d be most willing. We told them to get in touch with the university and set it up through them.

To characterize it in any other way is disingenuous. And, also, I’d rather start having the conversation about how we move forward in a positive way. What can we do together? I understand this is a difficult situation for them. We are all human beings sitting in this room together. But there is much that can come out of this that’s very positive. That may not seem like it right now. But in the long term, we can make great things happen. But we can’t if the hostility continues, of which we simply don’t feel toward the students. We have students work with us throughout our organization. It’s part of our mission. It’s part of our the reason the university went into the partnership was for its larger goals and, also, because GPB has proven itself to be a very good partner in the educational realm.

I really, truly wish we could move this dialogue forward and not in anger and acrimony and accusations. We’re a very open organization. Zach has done a number of open records requests. We have responded as quickly as we can. We can’t hide much. We get audited. We are subject to open records. You can go and look at us online. Not only are we open because of our federal and state funding, but because we’re a public agency. This is not a group of people who are trying to get away with anything, hide anything. This is a very good group of honest people. To characterize them as any differently is just so inappropriate.

That might be true about some GPB employees. At the same time, some people believe that the decisions made within GPB are largely politically motivated. The Chip Rogers’ hiring is another example of an instance where GPB’s decision making in the best interest of the public is questioned.

I think those are odd conspiracy theories. If you print them as fact, you will be wrong because none of that was a motivation in this. The motivation for this partnership is exactly what both Dr. Mark Becker and myself have said from the beginning. The problem is that if you don’t want to accept that as the truth, we can’t ... I just don’t know what to say. That is it. That is all there is to it. It was all done with good intentions. There were not political motivations behind it.

You’ve mentioned that you think the conversation with students needs to look forward. What are the next steps? What do you think the partnership should look like in the future?

The immediate steps are for university leadership and the leadership of WRAS to meet and formulate plans for both programming as well as setting bridges to communicate with GPB. For the programming people at GPB to be ready, which we are ready to go, we had already made a proposal to university leadership about promoting programming at WRAS. We had a whole schedule. I had no clue what happened to that with the students. But that we begin, in a sense, the small things. We begin promoting the programming, we begin to engage with those students within the other programming. I had heard the students were thinking about how they could do a little news report coming off at 7 p.m. to sort of bridge the gap between the format switch. I think that’s brilliants and be happy to help — or just enjoy listening to it. I think there are many ways to build bridges with the WRAS leadership, but they need to take the first step. And the first step is to work through their advisors at the university and then approach us. And we’re ready for that conversation.

In a year? I hope we have a fantastic relationship, that we have shown we’re good partners, that we’ve shown that we take their education seriously, that we’ve built a terrific radio service for the citizens of Georgia, and that we’re working as a team. That would be what I would hope for.

On another note, how has the entry into Atlanta’s radio market been for GPB? How has the competition with WABE, the city’s longstanding public radio station, worked out so far?

We’re pretty clear where we sit within that. We are friends with WABE. We love what they do with regard to music. We strongly believe that a healthy city and demographic like Atlanta benefits from two kinds of public media services. There are no top-nine media markets in the country that don’t have more than one public media service. If you are a believer in public media, then this is a plus. It’s been a plus 100 percent. I think examples are things like Celeste Headlee’s show. We have virtually no local talk anymore on our radio. So much is pre-programmed now. If you believe in the democratic process of an informed citizenry, we’ve added a great deal. That’s what we believe.