David McGowan, President & CEO, WJCT Public Media

In an interview with Invest:, David McGowan, president and CEO of WJCT Public Media, talked about the evolution of public media and how the company leverages digital and social media platforms, and creating partnerships to offer services that address the educational and information needs of the community.

How do you see the role of public media evolving in the digital age?

Public media is evolving in many of the ways that all media is evolving. We are all aware of these trends as media consumers. There is an evolution from printed media to online media, and from linear broadcast media to much more on-demand and streaming consumption. We, of course, are participants in that industry and are changing right along with it. In the public media space, and this is particularly true for WJCT Public Media here in Northeast Florida, we are also evolving our role from being a traditional broadcaster and media entity to much more of a service organization. As a mission-driven nonprofit, we seek to address our community’s most vital needs in information, education, and access to the arts and world-class entertainment, using media as a primary tool, but not our only tool. There is a lot of “evolving” going on.

How has the Jacksonville Today initiative progressed and transformed the way that Jacksonville interacts with local media?

Jacksonville Today is fast becoming a leading source of local news for this region. We now serve over 30,000 direct subscribers every weekday. That number has been growing at an average rate of about 1,000 per month for some time now. We have also deepened our coverage and added resources to our coverage team. For example, we now have a dedicated reporter covering St. Johns County. We recognize that St. Johns is a fast-growing county that is encountering all of the issues associated with rapid growth. Jacksonville Today is a great example of this organization’s evolution and how we are moving to play a vital role in local news as traditional news media has declined.

How have the Family and Community Learning workshops in partnership with the Kids Hope Alliance impacted early childhood education?

Indeed, that is a great example of the evolution I’m talking about as we change to meet our community’s most vital needs in early childhood education. We have recognized several challenges associated with early learning here in Duval County and the region, and we wanted to address those. The community is focused on improving third-grade reading level proficiency. Right now, less than 50% of third graders read at grade level in this region, and we recognize that as a critical issue. We have focused, through a broad consortium of partners involved in READ JAX, on family engagement as a central component in improving third-grade reading level proficiency. 

This led to us developing a series of year-long workshops with Kids Hope Alliance, which is the city’s funding agency for youth services. We worked with six early learning centers across the county in a year-long program that engaged 80 children in the 2023-2024 academic year. The workshops we use have been well-tested and supported by the U.S. Department of Education, and are designed to teach children, their siblings, and their parents the skills needed to be successful in school in a fun way. In 2025, we plan to expand the program by partnering with Head Start centers, reaching even more children who can benefit from these workshops. It is a great example of how we have leaned into being an essential service provider, helping to meet our community’s most urgent needs in an area where we have proficiency.

How does WJCT integrate digital and social media platforms to engage with younger audiences, and what are some of the technological components involved in that?

Part of our transformation includes moving from old-line broadcasting technology into making the content that we produce and distribute available in many other ways. We operate so many more platforms than we used to. There are five different full-time audio streams available through WJCT. You can watch all kinds of programming either on YouTube or on our proprietary on-demand streaming service. We are also an active newsletter publisher now. This includes not only Jacksonville Today but also our Jacksonville Music Experience service, which is a true multimedia cross-platform set of services that brings subscribers updates on the latest in music news, both locally and nationally. We are a fully modern media organization. Even though we are small and proudly local, we are moving fast.

As media consumption habits continue to change significantly, what is the plan to adapt content delivery methods now and in the future?

We are committed to delivering information, education, and access to entertainment in ways that people consume those things today. That means remaining active on various forms of digital media. I think digital media is now too broad a term because everything is digital media. We have a substantial and growing newsletter audience, and significant audience sizes for our social accounts, audio streaming services, on-demand audio, on-demand video, and video streaming services. All of these ways that we reach people require resources to operate, but we are committed to doing that and have moved a long way. 

One thing I would add is that live experiences are really important, and we are committed to creating and delivering live experiences in our facility and around the community. Our facility has been converted into an amazing live event venue. This includes everything from concerts, which we do under our Jacksonville Music Experience banner, to our Lunch and Learn series, a free luncheon series with panel discussions on anything from financial issues to healthcare and so forth. We do about 100 events a year here.

Looking ahead, what are some key projects or initiatives that you are particularly excited about, and what are the top priorities for the next few years?

We are really doubling down on some of the investments that we have made and the services that we have created, and we are seeing fast growth in these areas. Jacksonville Today is one of our innovations that continues to grow, expand and evolve. We are actively in the product development stage right now. We have two products under the Jacksonville Today banner: a daily newsletter and a news website. We are testing some other products, but we are not ready to announce them just yet. 

I have already mentioned the work that we are doing in early childhood education. We continue to develop and invest in that space and are seeing really good results. We are working hard in the music area, which includes a wide range of activities. This includes everything from a newsletter audience to a live event audience to three radio services and streaming services. I think you will see us continuing to accelerate the growth of those new services. 

I also want to make sure I mention how important the relationship with the business community is. We serve nearly 500 clients across a range of business sizes and industries. We are a nonprofit organization that is primarily locally funded and the support of the corporate community is essential to our ability to serve the region. It is an important leg of our revenue stool alongside our sustaining member program and private philanthropic support.

We are committed to developing opportunities for our corporate partners and small-business partners to reach the audiences they need to reach. Jacksonville Today is a great example of that. We have an advertising opportunity that reaches our newsletter subscriber base, which has been successful. It is sold out as we speak and is in high demand because we designed it carefully and it delivers great value. 

With the strong residential growth Jacksonville is experiencing, how have you seen that translate into the arts and entertainment sector of the region?

The arts and entertainments sector operates in a virtuous circle with residential growth.  A vibrant cultural sector is vital in attracting residents, who then feed the success and growth of the arts.  

How has the support of organizations such as the Culture Council allowed WJCT Media to continue its work in the community and focus on the organization’s mission?

The support of the city and the Cultural Council has been absolutely vital to WJCT Public Media’s contribution to the vitality of our city and region. We are enormously grateful for the vision of our city’s leadership that has enabled that support to happen.

What projects are in the works now for WJCT Media that will shape the future of the overall arts and culture industry in Jacksonville?

So much of what we do at WJCT Public Media is in partnership with our region’s arts and culture institutions and with artists and creators themselves.  The Florida Theatre, The Jacksonville Symphony, and scores of local musicians are each partner in what we offer on the air, on demand, and online.