Station Resource Group, Public Television Major Market Group will merge

The Station Resource Group and the Public Television Major Market Group will merge operations to create a new nonprofit that will strategize with public TV stations, radio stations and joint licensees.

PTMMG Board Chair Amy Shaw said the merger will unite two organizations that share increasingly similar short- and long-term goals, especially after their boards began connecting for meetings more than a year and a half ago. Discussions about merging have “been in the ether for a while,” said Shaw, who is CEO of Nine PBS in St. Louis.

PTMMG, a limited liability corporation, will merge into the nonprofit SRG in the coming months. The organizations’ board leaders expect to decide on a name for the new nonprofit by the end of the year.

Founded by Tom Thomas and Terry Clifford in 1984, SRG supports radio stations and joint licensees through research, policy work and strategic planning. Thomas and Clifford stepped down as co-CEOs in 2021. Bill Davis succeeded them the following year.

PTMMG is a consortium of 40 of the largest public TV stations by market size. Valerie Blackburn, a consultant to PTMMG, has been leading the group on an interim basis since former president Susan Scott left the organization in January. 

SRG Board Chair Nico Leone said the goal is to appoint an executive director for the new organization as soon as possible, though the timeline is flexible because Davis is willing to retire after a new leader is named. Blackburn similarly will stay on until the executive director is appointed.

“Having planned turnover in both organizations really can help bring something together,” said Leone, who is CEO of KERA in Dallas. “We’re very fortunate in that way.”

‘Joy and possibility’

In March 2025, as local and national public media groups were rallying support for continued federal funding for the system, Shaw, Leone and other SRG and PTMMG board members met at WETA in Washington, D.C., to discuss the industry’s future and how to grow major giving.

“We were all pretty much encumbered with the fight for federal funding, but in the background at all times there was this conversation about ‘We really think there’s more benefit to being together than remaining separate,’” Shaw said.

After Scott resigned, Shaw said, the PTMMG board decided not to find a permanent leader and to focus instead on determining what merging with SRG might look like. Committees representing the organizations’ boards met in March of this year at KERA and determined that they needed a new organization focused on the needs and priorities of stations.

“It happened somewhat organically, but it wasn’t just the leadership,” Shaw said. “It was the members and leaders all simultaneously having these conversations and the boards being ordained to explore that opportunity.”

Leone said the groups came together amid Scott’s departure, concerns about federal funding and Davis being up-front with SRG’s board about his desire to retire. “Those kind of overlaid with each other,” he said.

“There are probably eight or 10 of us that belong to both MMG and SRG as joint licensees, and over time we kept noticing the conversations converging and stepping towards each other,” Leone said. “It wasn’t that they were the exact same conversations. It was more that they rhymed.”

Almost all of PTMMG’s members approved moving forward with a merger at a meeting in Austin, Texas, prior to the PBS Annual Meeting in May.

SRG’s annual retreat in August, which PTMMG members attended as guests, cemented the growing collaborations and was full of “joy and possibility,” Leone said. “Having been involved in a number of merger conversations, those are not the types of words that people usually use to describe them,” he said.

Leone said that station leaders shared concerns throughout the process, including leaders of music radio stations who wondered how a merger would serve their needs. But those leaders found “unexpected pieces of alignment” at the August retreat with TV stations that feature music, he said.

The leadership search

Folding PTMMG into SRG “accelerates the timeline,” Shaw said, because it doesn’t require starting a new nonprofit. “We’re marrying into something that’s already there,” she said.

“It really is that rare case where something called a merger is an actual merger, not just an acquisition named a merger,” Leone said.

“The time to do a uniting of these two organizations is when you don’t have to. We didn’t have to do this,” Shaw said. “We could’ve hired a new executive director. Bill could have retired, but it just didn’t make any sense to keep those separate.”

The organizations’ assets “are fairly equally matched in terms of our reserves and our budgets,” Shaw said. “You really are talking about two organizations that are fairly equal in terms of size and status coming together in a way that creates something that just isn’t there right now,” she said.

Shaw said the boards are seeking “a bit of a unicorn” to lead the new nonprofit. They opted not to use a search firm to save money. Minnesota PBS and Minnesota Public Radio are assisting with recruitment.

Minnesota PBS CEO Sylvia Strobel will become chair of PTMMG Thursday and will chair the new merged nonprofit, which will have new bylaws. All members of both organizations’ boards will join the new board, with elections held in fall 2027.

Leone said the organization will try to evenly divide board seats among representatives of radio-only stations, TV-only stations and joint licensees. The goal will be to walk in the door as “equal partners” and “truly make sure it feels like a merged organization,” he said.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly said that almost all of the members of SRG’s and PTMMG’s boards approved moving forward with a merger at a meeting in Austin, Texas. The meeting was for PTMMG, and almost all of PTMMG’s members approved moving forward.