The head of Southern California Public Radio has announced his plans to retire, after leading a jump in fundraising and a growth in diversity at the organization — as well as controversial layoffs earlier this summer that roiled the company.
SCPR President and CEO Herb Scannell, a longtime media executive who has led the news organization for the last three-and-a-half years, announced his plans to the nonprofit’s full board and employees on Tuesday afternoon.
SCPR includes LAist 89.3 (formerly KPCC), LAist.com and LAist Studios, the organization’s podcast unit. LAist 89.3 is the region’s largest NPR affiliate.
Board members plan to start searching for Scannell’s successor quickly. In an interview, Scannell said he will stay on as long as the board needs for a transition to his eventual successor after the search.
He said he’s retiring for personal reasons, after the deaths of his brother and his best friend, and working for a long time far away from his wife and a daughter, who live in New York.
“It's really a matter of wanting to have another chapter of life where you're with the ones you love and doing things that you've always wanted to do,” said Scannell, adding that he’s 66 years old and hopes to travel in Europe after retiring.
“I’m so proud of the work that was done here,” he added, pointing to essential health information the station provided during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We were providing useful information every day, and people started to really look to us for whatever they could to try to figure out how they could mitigate their lives,” Scannell said of LAist’s pandemic coverage.
Drew Murphy, who chairs the board of Southern California Public Radio, said he’s sorry to see Scannell go and is appreciative of his work over the last few years.
“Personally I have really enjoyed and valued getting to know Herb and getting to work with him,” he said in an interview.
“I think all of the board feels that way,” added Murphy, who is CEO of Southern California Edison’s subsidiary Edison Energy.
The search for a new CEO
Murphy said the board will look internally and externally for candidates, including a national search. That process is expected to take months — with a successor likely to be identified sometime next year, Murphy said.
“I hope we can do this quickly, but as thoughtfully as possible,” Murphy said. That will involve bringing in stakeholders to help the board identify what the needs are for the next CEO, he said.
In a news release, the station said it’s seen a 38% growth in revenue during Scannell’s tenure, “including substantial contributions during the pandemic that enabled the preservation of jobs and initiatives.”
The move comes after Scannell led a rebrand that transitioned the radio station from KPCC to LAist in February. He also oversaw a major push to expand diversity in hiring and content after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020, and spearheaded a fundraising campaign to keep the station afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.
Recent layoffs were largest in station’s history
The announcement also comes three months after controversy erupted in and outside the organization about the sudden elimination of 21 positions in June — the largest in the station’s history. At the time, 20 people lost their jobs the day the announcement was made and one unfilled position was cut.
The cuts took staff by surprise, coming just after a successful on-air fundraising campaign and the release of public disclosures on executive compensation from a year earlier. Scannell received $625,000 in base pay and bonuses, plus benefits — up from $368,000 two years earlier. Scannell had said SCPR executives had taken large pay cuts to help sustain the company during the pandemic and the increases made them whole.
The disclosures also showed former CEO Bill Davis was paid around half a million dollars for a third year after leaving the organization, with no hours of work performed each week on average during that time, under the terms of his employment agreement.
Scannell and other leaders have said the layoffs were needed to redirect the organization on a more sustainable path focusing on daily online news.
The layoffs have continued to draw concern from many in the newsroom over how they were conducted. At the station’s quarterly board meeting Tuesday, staff members represented by the SAG-AFTRA union read a letter of concern to the board, signed by 44 station employees, including most of the rank-and-file reporters and producers.
In an interview in June about the layoffs, Scannell said the station had seen its underwriting revenues drop by “a couple million dollars” amid the writers’ and actors’ strikes.
“We had a shortfall, and we also needed to think about the way we were structured and we needed to make up for the shortfall and we needed to re-allocate jobs to create a daily news habit on [LAist.com] and that's what we did,” Scannell said.
“I believe we're set up better because of it right now.”
Since the layoffs, LAist has made 13 new hires, according to details shared by Carlo Giovanni, the organization’s vice president of people and culture, during the public portion of Tuesday’s board meeting. There are currently 189 staff members.
An uncertain financial future
Asked where things stand financially, Scannell said revenues from underwriting — a form of advertising that includes sponsored messages — are still down and will become more of a challenge the longer the strikes go on.
“Hollywood is the cash crop of our underwriting,” Scannell said.
“It’s still too early to call if we’re deeply affected,” but there’s “no alarm right now” for the organization, Scannell said.
Murphy, the board chair, said “the board feels very comfortable about where we’re at financially.”
“We did have some challenges that we had to manage around and through over the last year, and we are, I think, well-positioned to continue to be in a position of financial stability and hopefully growth going forward,” he said.
Reactions from inside SCPR
Megan Garvey, the newsroom’s executive editor, said she appreciated Scannell’s support of the station’s journalism and efforts to keep everyone employed when revenues took a hit early in the pandemic.
“I feel like he’s been a strong supporter of our news operation and the vision to try to do things differently,” Garvey said in an interview. “Herb has a lengthy media background, but not really a lengthy news background. So it was great to see him really understand what we did as a news organization and why it mattered.”
Mary Hawley, LAist’s vice president of underwriting, said that Scannell encouraged his colleagues to always think about how to improve. She said he’s had a tireless mantra: How can we be better? How can we do better?
“At his core Herb is a marketing guy. He thinks about everything through a marketing lens,” Hawley said. “As a result, he championed a lot of critical things that will take us into the future.”
Scannell on his biggest accomplishments
Asked what he feels were his biggest accomplishments at LAist, Scannell pointed to two initiatives: the fundraising campaign to save jobs during the pandemic, and expanding diversity and inclusion.
“When COVID happened we were staring down the loss of potentially up to 50 jobs. And we immediately just went and mobilized,” including sending letters and appealing to listeners on-air, Scannell said. He credited the organization’s fundraising executives Carla Wohl and Rob Risko for their work on that campaign.
“We came through,” he said. “That, to me, was an incredible accomplishment.”
The diversity efforts included more staff training and efforts to hire people who are more reflective of the communities LAist serves, Scannell said.
“To me that’s a source of great pride,” he said. “I think it’s been an important part of our culture that I think makes us a better place to work.”
Scannell’s career included time at Nickelodeon
Scannell took the helm of SCPR in March 2019 after a long career as a cable TV executive overseeing Nickelodeon and working as vice chair at MTV Networks, and later led the BBC’s entertainment operations in North America.
He made the decision early this year to rebrand the public radio station from KPCC to LAist 89.3, the name of the news website the station acquired in 2018.
Asked if he would receive any compensation after leaving the organization, Scannell said he doesn’t have an exit package and doesn’t have a contract with the station.
Murphy said compensation of Scannell after he leaves is “not something that’s been addressed or decided at this point.”
Scannell said he’s grateful for his time at the station.
“It’s been a pleasure to work with the folks at Southern California Public Radio. I think they’re incredibly smart, talented and committed,” Scannell said.
“It’s been a great experience for me…I’ve done a lot in my career and I’m glad I did this.”
Disclosure: This story was reported and written by Senior Reporter Nick Gerda and edited by Senior Editor Mary Plummer and Managing Editor Tony Marcano.
Under LAist's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly. Gerda, like all LAist reporters, is a member of SAG-AFTRA. He co-signed the letter presented to the board. He did not discuss the reporting of this story with any SAG-AFTRA members prior to publication.
