Coronavirus leads South Florida PBS to pull bid with Miami-Dade Schools to run WLRN

Citing the coronavirus pandemic, South Florida PBS has withdrawn its bid with the Miami-Dade County school district to manage WLRN, South Florida’s only public news radio station.

The company announced the decision in a statement emailed Tuesday by spokeswoman Jeneissy Azcuy.

“In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are making a very difficult decision to withdraw our proposal for the management of WLRN and focus our resources on serving the people of South Florida via our coverage, programs services and efforts of keeping our community informed about this health emergency,” the statement read.

Azcuy said in a phone interview that South Florida PBS’ decision had nothing to do with the district’s bidding timeline.

“This a real need and that’s why we decided to focus our resources, our time, our energy, our everything on meeting this need,” she said, referring to health programming. “It was a difficult decision that we had to make but we had to make it.”

South Florida PBS’ decision ends the possibility of consolidating all of the region’s public broadcasting under one entity. It is the latest twist in a saga over control of WLRN, the broadcasting license that has been held by the Miami-Dade County School Board for decades. The district has had a tumultuous relationship with WLRN.

Last fall, a school district committee of five, three of whom are district employees, narrowly recommended that the district award the bid seeking media management services for WLRN to South Florida PBS. The fundraising arm for WLRN, Friends of WLRN, was the only other entity to put in a competing bid.

Friends of WLRN filed a notice of protest shortly after the committee’s scoresheet was made public. It stayed the awarding of the contract to South Florida PBS, and the School Board pulled the contract off its December board meeting agenda. In its filing, Friends of WLRN requested a formal hearing with an administrative judge.

The case was in the discovery phase of the administrative hearing. A court date was set for April 7.

Friends of WLRN chair Dwight Hill said he was aware of the withdrawal of South Florida PBS’ bid.

“In all that’s going on in the world today we’ll figure out where we’re going with this,” he said, “and we want to work with the school board and the school system to do the best thing for WLRN Radio and TV.”

School district spokeswoman Natalia Zea said a formal recommendation has not yet been made to the School Board on how the district will proceed in this matter. She declined to comment further, saying that the request for proposal is still under the “cone of silence.”

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

This story was originally published March 31, 2020 at 7:02 PM.