Boston University is agreeing to share control of WBUR with a station board whose members have, until now, been advisers and donors with no decision-making power. The deal outlined Wednesday would give a new executive committee the authority to hire and fire the station’s general manager and oversee its finances.
The committee, however, would report directly to BU’s president. (BU owns, and would continue to own, WBUR’s broadcast license.)
“WBUR deserves to have an oversight structure that’s really engaging with the community that it serves and that is really invested wholeheartedly in the mission of ‘BUR. That’s not to say BU is not,” BU President Robert Brown said in an interview. “But it’s not something that our Board of Trustees can ever spend much time on in this big $2.6 billion research university.”
