WOODS HOLE — Staff at WCAI, the Cape and Islands public radio station, learned on Oct. 25 that the station’s parent organization, GBH, had made plans to sell the house in the center of town from which the radio’s programming is broadcast.
The move was necessary, according to a letter from GBH CEO Susan Goldberg to WCAI staff, because the station “has been operating with a budget deficit, making the current location unsustainable.” The announcement came without any prior warning to staff and included a notice that GBH would be “looking for a new home” for WCAI.
Since then, a fundraising effort led by the Woods Hole Community Association — a neighborhood preservation nonprofit — has resulted in a contingent offer from the association to buy the historic Captain Davis House so that it can remain WCAI’s broadcasting home base.
Woods Hole Community Association president Catherine Bumpus told the Independent on Nov. 18 that the nonprofit was “well within striking distance” of the building’s purchase price. When asked about the status of sale negotiations, she said: “No comment, but I am optimistic.”
WCAI has operated out of the historic 1840s house at 3 Water St. since 2000, when journalist Jay Allison founded the station. Along with Allison’s production company, Atlantic Public Media, which has produced nationally renowned shows including The Moth Radio Hour and This I Believe, WCAI airs such locally focused features as “A Cape Cod Notebook” and the Local Food Report. The Independent is a regular contributor to WCAI’s weekly news roundup on Friday mornings.
Elspeth Hay, who joined Atlantic Public Media in 2008 to host the Local Food Report, said that the building “really feels like a community gathering spot.” Hay used to commute once a week from Wellfleet to broadcast her show from the Captain Davis House. Though she now records at home, she said the building is a central knot of the region’s sonic tether.
“One thing that has always struck me as special about the station is that it really knits together the Cape and Islands into this one central gathering place,” she said.
Provincetown’s Dennis Minsky, who writes a biweekly column for the Independent, began contributing his musings on Outer Cape life to “A Cape Cod Notebook” in 2018. He also drove to the Captain Davis House regularly before the pandemic hit.
“I am glad that I did — it felt like a family there,” Minsky said, adding that he was “very dismayed” by GBH’s plan to sell the property. “I hope it can be rescued,” he said.
A ‘Spreadsheet Decision’
In her letter to WCAI staff, Goldberg wrote that “the proceeds from the sale will support our journalism.”
The newsroom at WCAI includes seven full-time reporters and a news director. “At a time when many local news organizations are shutting down or reducing their reporting, we are acting to ensure that the Cape and Islands have a trusted public media outlet serving your needs well into the future,” Goldberg wrote.
The announcement of WCAI’s financial troubles came as a surprise to staff members, and perhaps also to listeners who are accustomed to hearing about the station’s fundraising successes on the air.
“This deficit exists in the recesses of the WGBH budget, to which no one here is privy,” Allison wrote in an impassioned statement on Atlantic Public Media’s website. “We’re proud to say we have been hitting our fundraising marks all along.”
The Independent’s questions about WCAI’s deficit sent to GBH Chief Marketing Officer Tina Cassidy went unanswered.
GBH, however, has had its own documented financial troubles. The Boston Globe reported earlier this year that the broadcast organization had laid off 4 percent of its workforce, or 31 employees. GBH executives told the Globe that increases in costs had plunged the organization into an $18.7-million operating deficit.
The layoff affected 10 percent of the organization’s newsroom, which the Boston station’s senior staff told the Globe was a “disgrace” to local news.
According to Allison’s public statement, GBH had told WCAI staff that it had already settled on a buyer for the Captain Davis House and “the deal was final.”
“I can understand this in a colder, harsher corporate context, but not in public media, which has staked its reputation on trust and openness,” Allison wrote. In an interview with the Martha’s Vineyard Times, Allison called the strategy a “spreadsheet decision.”
There was wider dismay in Woods Hole as well. The station has received over a quarter of a million dollars in local Community Preservation Act funds, which come from a property tax surcharge.
Seth Rolbein reported in his online newsletter A Cape Cod Voice that the buyer of the Davis House would be Beth Colt, a real estate investor who also owns the Woods Hole Inn, the Treehouse Lodge, and Quicks Hole Taqueria. Colt did not respond to questions from the Independent.
A Community Offer
Within a few days of Goldberg’s announcement, however, the nonprofit Woods Hole Community Association began raising money to buy the Captain Davis House, starting with $300,000 from the association’s reserves to go toward the $1.7-million purchase.
Goldberg met with representatives of the association and WCAI staff on Nov. 7, and the next day she announced that GBH would consider the association’s offer.
“After our plans to sell the building and relocate in the area became public, many of you expressed your thoughts with us: having CAI broadcast from the house on the hill is like a beacon, a reminder that your local radio station is still there, at a time when so many local media outlets are disappearing,” Goldberg wrote. “We also heard from some of you who were dismayed that we were not more collaborative in our decision-making about selling the property. For that we apologize.”
Goldberg also wrote that CAI has been losing $500,000 per year, and has lost more than $2 million in the last five years. “Once we realized we needed to move, an offer came quickly, and we accepted it,” she wrote. “Now, assuming the Woods Hole Community Association comes forward with its promised offer, we can evaluate that as well.”
