Penn State trustees to revisit sale of WPSU during special meeting Monday
The Penn State trustees scheduled a special meeting for Monday to consider a proposed sale of WPSU’s operating assets, according to a meeting agenda posted online.
The finance and investment committee and the board of trustees will meet in an executive session at 1:30 p.m. and publicly at 2 p.m. Monday via a conference call; the public can watch via livestream. The only item on the agenda is a “proposed asset sale transaction concerning the operating assets of WPSU.” No other details were provided.
The finance and investment committee last month unanimously voted against moving forward with a proposal for WHYY, a public media organization in Philadelphia, to acquire WPSU, leading Penn State to start the “wind down process” of WPSU. The PBS and NPR Member station and a service of Penn State Outreach was slated to close no later than June 30, 2026.
Sara Thorndike, senior vice president for finance and business/treasurer and chief financial officer for the university, in September said WHYY approached Penn State about acquiring WPSU to continue public broadcasting in central Pennsylvania. If approved, the university would have entered into a purchase and sales agreement to transfer all WPSU assets to WHYY, which would have formed a new entity that it controls.
The proposed agreement stated Penn State intended to lease the current office space used for WPSU operations to the acquirer, as well as other real property necessary for continued operations. It stated WHYY may offer employment to any current Penn State employee who works in the WPSU operations. In a release, the university said while it would have allowed WPSU to continue broadcasting, most of its staff would have likely been laid off from Penn State, with some being offered positions by WHYY.
The new acquirer would have paid Penn State $1 at closing, and the university would have subsidized the post-closing operations of WPSU over the next five years, Thorndike said.
That amounted to about $17 million over five years, a similar amount to what the university would have funded WPSU with during the same timeframe, Thorndike said, calling it a “fair offer.”
“We appreciate the value of WPSU to our community, but can no longer fund WPSU with student tuition, giving our declining resources for core teaching and research needs. If the board does not approve this offer from WHYY we will start the wind down process of WPSU,” she said at the time.
Earlier this summer, WPSU was hit with a $1 million funding loss, or 20% of its overall budget, when Congress eliminated funding that was already committed to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting over the next two years. Penn State also cut its annual budget allocation by 20% this fiscal year, leading to some layoffs.
During the September meeting, most committee members did not publicly share their reasoning for voting against the proposal. One trustee said more work needed to be done, another said he didn’t like the idea of paying someone a subsidy to run a business.
In the weeks since, WPSU has received an outpouring of support from the community it serves, and supporters have tried to remain hopeful that there would be another way to keep WPSU operating.
This story was originally published October 12, 2025 at 2:01 PM.
