The University of Texas at El Paso could eventually give up ownership of its public radio station, KTEP, under a newly approved agreement that gives a local nonprofit the option to buy the station and its federal broadcast license.
The UT System Board of Regents, the governing body that oversees UTEP and a dozen other public universities and health centers across the state, signed off on the arrangement Thursday morning. The regents didn’t respond to requests for comment about the agreement.
Under the deal, the El Paso Community Foundation will initially take over much of KTEP’s day-to-day operations while UTEP continues to own the station, which it has housed for more than 70 years. The foundation also has the option to buy the station outright for $1 million, the agreement says, though that would require another vote of approval from the regents.
Eric Pearson, CEO of the El Paso Community Foundation, told The Texas Newsroom that the nonprofit isn’t focused on buying KTEP right now. But if the partnership it’s entering into with the university works well, doing so would be a “perfectly viable” option down the road, he said.
The deal is another sign of a shifting landscape for public media across the country, and for university-owned public radio in Texas. Two months ago, the firing of KUT Public Media General Manager Debbie Hiott in Austin sparked a broader debate over the station's relationship with UT Austin.
While the circumstances at KUT and KTEP are different, both developments are drawing attention to the relationship between public radio stations and the universities that own their licenses.
Hiott told The Texas Newsroom the KTEP agreement could provide a model for other university-owned public radio stations, including KUT, to explore greater independence. She said it’s significant that the UT System's regents, who are appointed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, appear to be open to such an arrangement.
“I think it's an encouraging sign that the University of Texas System is willing to discuss this and it doesn't mean that it would work in every situation, but it's good that that's an option that's being considered,” Hiott said.
A new model for KTEP
KTEP has operated at UTEP since receiving its broadcast license in 1950 and became an NPR member station in 1971. Under the proposed agreement, that relationship won’t immediately end.
The El Paso Community Foundation will take over KTEP's daily operations, programming and fundraising, the agreement says, while UTEP will provide the station’s studio and broadcasting equipment. The university would also continue paying rent for the station’s antenna site and certain equipment costs.
The agreement also makes clear that the university would still have “ultimate authority” over the station’s programming and finances, as well as “the right to reject or preempt programming.”
But it also leaves open the possibility of a more significant change in the future. It gives the foundation the exclusive option to buy KTEP’s assets, including its broadcast license, for $1 million until 2029. The option would become nonexclusive for two years after that.
Any sale would require another vote by the regents as well as approval from the Federal Communications Commission, which issues broadcast licenses.
Pearson said the partnership has been years in the making. The foundation first discussed a possible arrangement with UTEP during the COVID-19 pandemic, but he said the timing wasn't right. More recent cuts to federal public media funding helped revive those conversations.
The foundation has previously given money to KTEP, according to Pearson. Nonprofit tax filings show the foundation awarded about $3.1 million to UTEP through eight grants from 2020 to 2023, though it’s unclear how much of that funding went directly to the station.
Pearson said the foundation now wants to provide more staff support and build on that work under the new arrangement. He described KTEP as an “underperforming station” that the foundation hopes to give “some new life,” while expanding opportunities for students and the broader El Paso community.
Public media and higher education face political pressure
The change for KTEP comes as public media faces increasing political pressure on multiple fronts. Republican leaders in Texas and beyond have criticized NPR and PBS over their coverage, and Congress last year eliminated $1.1 billion in previously approved federal funding for public broadcasting at the urging of President Donald Trump.
At the same time, Texas’ Republican leaders are taking a more active role in how public universities operate by implementing new curriculum restrictions and consolidating or eliminating programs centered around race, ethnicity, and gender.
Those developments have put many public radio stations in Texas in an unusual position, since many of them are owned by those same public universities. For instance, UT Austin owns the broadcast licenses for KUT and KUTX, while the University of Houston holds the licenses for Houston Public Media's radio and television stations. All of their full-time employees are university staff, though their newsrooms are editorially independent from university administrators.
Katherine Jewell, a history professor at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts, said those structural ties can become more significant when disagreements emerge over a station's mission, management or relationship with the university that holds its license.
“They're a site of conflict for all of the different interested parties who see some kind of value to these non-commercial educational radio stations,” said Jewell, who studies the history of public broadcasting and its relationship with higher education. “They’re kind of a crossroads for these clashing visions over what the function of these stations should be.”
Those tensions came into public view in Texas following Hiott’s firing by UT Austin in June. Hiott said that while universities have been good stewards of public media, increasing polarization and partisanship makes it prudent for stations to create more distance from the institutions that own them.
“It's not inherently a bad thing, but everything in our society seems to be becoming more and more polarized, and unfortunately, public media is something that has been made a partisan target in many instances,” Hiott said. “So I think it's probably best to create distance between those organizations and any sort of governmental entity.”
Given the KTEP agreement, Hiott hopes the UT System will consider a similar arrangement for KUT in Austin.
“I think there's a possibility that, at the very least, the university would consider some sort of station operating agreement that takes those specific operations out from under the university purview,” Hiott said. “I think that is something that could work well for this community, but it has to be economically viable. It has to make sense for the community and it has make sense to the university too.”
