AlaskaOne terminates staff, shifts to live children's feed

KUAC/AlaskaOne is shrinking its staff by a third due to a $450,000 budget deficit, according to The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Two employees are gone effective tomorrow, the start of KUAC's fiscal year. Five long-vacant spots "are no longer on the books," Gretchen Gordon, the station’s director of development and outreach, told Current. Also, two full-time positions are now part time. One of the new half-time jobs is the station's marketing slot. "That may also impact our ability to cultivate and solicit donations, because our presence in the community is going to be effected," Gordon said. All the changes reduce the staff to 19 employees from 28. Also, the station said on its website that the budget shortfall requires changes in its children's programming schedule, "because we no longer have the resources to record and schedule them manually." The pubcaster provides FM radio to Interior Alaska, and public TV to the Interior, Juneau, Bethel and Kodiak.