If you’re the kind of person who appreciates an unchanging landscape in the world of public broadcasting, you may want to steady yourself and make use of your favorite coping mechanism.

Late yesterday afternoon, local public radio station KHSU quietly announced that there would be a few programming changes sweeping through its schedule. The most noticeable changes came on the weekends, where nearly half of the scheduled programs got new times, and where a few programs disappeared completely.

General Manager Ed Subkis said that many of the least popular programming changes were made because of economic reasons. Two programs that won’t be on KHSU’s schedule come July 1 include “A Prairie Home Companion” and the early-morning BBC World Service.

“Some people will probably be upset about the BBC World Service being gone, but it doesn’t make sense to spend programming acquisition dollars at a time when you can probably count the number of listeners we have on one hand,” Subkis said.

While “A Prairie Home Companion” was near and dear to many peoples’ hearts, it seems it wasn’t very dear to their wallets. Development Director David Reed said that while they ran a few on-air campaigns around November of last year imploring APHC listeners to help raise money for the show, they only managed to get enough to keep the show on life support until July. Reed says that of the $21,000 needed to pay the show’s licensing fees, the on-air campaigns only raised a little under $2,000 – less than ten percent.

“We didn’t get rid of it because we don’t like the show,” Subkis said. “If a guardian angel were to come along and promise us $20,000 a year to keep the show going then yeah, we’d bring it back.” 

You can view a copy of the revised schedule here, or you can also take a look at KHSU’s FAQ on their site.

[Eli Rohl has volunteered with KHSU doing audio production, pledge drive phone-answering, and the occasional event setup and takedown - but it’s okay, he wore his LCO hat while he was on the phone.]