Penn State and WHYY are in the process of working out the details of transferring WPSU to WHYY under an agreement the university and the Philadelphia-based public media outlet reached that will allow WPSU to continue to operate and serve central and northern Pennsylvania.
“Both parties are working hard and working well toward getting this deal done, meaning getting it into a condition where we can then apply to the (Federal Communications Commission) for the license transfers," said Bill Marrazzo, president and CEO of WHYY.
Marrazzo and others from WHYY were in State College this week to talk with WPSU employees, learn about station operations and meet with Penn State representatives. There are still details to work through, including transitioning the back-end and administrative support Penn State has been providing to WPSU.
“It's really a question of unpacking all those functionalities, detailing them out and making sure that we have a common blueprint going forward as to which functions and for how long the university needs to provide them to WPSU while we rebuild it on the other side of closing," Marrazzo said.
The boards of both Penn State and WHYY approved the transfer in October 2025. Those votes reversed an earier decision by the Penn State trustees' finance committee in September 2025 to reject a similar transfer agreement, but one that included $17 million in funding support from Penn State. Without the agreement, the university administration had said it would shut down WPSU by June 30, 2026.
The agreement that ultimately was approved does not include financial support from Penn State. Instead, WHYY has been raising funds.
Marrazzo said so far, they have raised more than $7 million in commitments to WPSU, along with another $2 million in the works. He said all contributions to WPSU will stay with the station.
“We’re encouraged, frankly excited, by the breadth and depth of support that we're receiving from predominantly individuals throughout central Pennsylvania," he said. "And I think, with time, we should be able to generate the kind of working capital we need to give WPSU its best shot.”
He said they’re also looking into the potential for support from the state, such as redevelopment assistance funds, to serve as bridge funding during the transition.
“There’s 1.5 million people who rely on the accessibility, the free accessibility of public media in central and northern Pennsylvania. It’s a large swath of the state’s population, and I think they deserve to be supported," Marrazzo said.
And, he said, bringing WPSU and WHYY together could be a model for public media outlets. Looking at the national public media system, he said, there can be overlap between stations.
"So there's a fair amount of I'll say redundancy that can be eliminated if two or more, or three or more, or four or more, of these independent entities come together and address the wants and needs of the audiences through a single enterprise," Marrazzo said.
“I think there’s simply no question about it, that both within and outside of the national public media system, all eyes are on whether WPSU will or won't go dark. If it does go dark it would be the single largest shut down of public media in the country," he said. "With that attention comes the opportunity to offer people at least a solution. There are multiple solutions. This is the one that seems to work best for WHYY-WPSU that can become a model for replicating elsewhere.”
