Put down your shopping bag and grab a pint.
This is what three public media stations – in St. Louis, Philadelphia and Birmingham, Alabama – want from their viewers who want to connect with their communities by opening a (Pubmedia-inspired) cold beer.
With funny names and creative flavors, this year the stations are marketing ale brands in partnership with local breweries.
Station executives say the partnerships give them a chance to network with local breweries, who not only have their own stories to tell, but can also connect journalists with community members they might not otherwise know. The beers provide an opportunity for events, get branding on cans and generate a little revenue.
Through the events and the creation of the drinks, the stations also have the opportunity to maintain contact between employees and give their brands a more original touch.
About 15% of public radio listeners said they had “great experiences” with beer in a 2024 MRI-Simmons listener survey provided to NPR Current, compared with 2% of all U.S. adults.
Nearly half of NPR member station listeners drink beer, according to the study, 20 percent more than all Americans. They are also more likely to buy non-alcoholic, imported or “super-premium” domestically produced beer.
Two broadcast stations, Nine PBS in St. Louis and WHYY in Philadelphia, are celebrating their 70th anniversary with beers. Nine PBS’s “70, Ale Yeah!” beer was the inspiration for WHYY’s new This Is Fresh Ale. This is the first beer for WHYY, the second for Alabama’s WBHM and the sixth for Nine PBS.
“It’s really more about community spirit” than revenue
Nine PBS has a long-standing partnership with 4 Hands Brewing Co., but the network hasn’t sponsored a beer since “Unmute Yourself” in 2021.
Nine PBS CEO Amy Shaw said the broadcaster wanted to renew the partnership to mark the station’s 70th anniversary on the air.
Originally, the broadcaster used the beers as a membership opportunity, asking viewers to donate in exchange for a vote on the name or flavor of the beer. Now, a portion of the proceeds from 70, Ale Yeah! goes to Nine PBS, Shaw said.
“For us, it’s really about covering the costs of 4 Hands and the costs of our work,” she told Current. “But really, it’s more about community spirit.”
Beer is a big deal in St. Louis, home of Budweiser brewery Anheuser-Busch, which was bought by Belgian brewer InBev in 2008. Anheuser-Busch still dominates the city’s brewing industry, but in 1990, Schlafly Brewing Co. led an initiative to legalize microbreweries in Missouri.
Over the next two decades, dozens of microbreweries emerged – including 4 Hands, which partnered with Nine PBS to create an American Blonde Ale with a special ingredient: blueberry juice.
But Shaw said the partnership between Nine PBS and 4 Hands goes deeper than St. Louis beer history.
“I mean, beer is so important,” she said. “But 4 Hands has grown to be the second largest craft brewery in St. Louis. For us, it’s really the fact that they’re so community-focused. Their Citywide IPA has invested ($300,000) in nonprofits.”
“Something nice to celebrate”
WHYY’s “This Is Fresh Ale” is simply “a little extra boost,” said Elspeth Everhart, the station’s digital membership manager.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a huge revenue generator,” Everhart told Current. “It’s more like doing something fun to celebrate WHYY and Fresh airbecause it is the 70th anniversary of WHYY’s radio broadcast.”
The Philadelphia-based station opts for a more traditional flavor profile, but the choice of a 70-shilling beer is a nod to the 70 years WHYY has been on television.
Everhart, who came to WHYY with a background in the beer industry, said she is more of a beer “traditionalist.” The 70-shilling is a malty, low-alcohol Scottish ale.
The beer hasn’t been brewed yet — or even announced. But WHYY has reached an agreement with Attic Brewing Co., a woman-owned craft brewery in Philadelphia’s historic Germantown neighborhood. The station hopes to host a beer party in October to celebrate the anniversary.
The idea for the beer came when Hilary Kissinger, WHYY’s senior social media producer, was looking at other stations’ social media campaigns for their anniversaries. Coincidentally, Nine PBS, then known as KETC, was founded the same year.
Nine PBS “hosted a great social event for the beer collaboration and the naming contest that I thought was really interactive and fun, and we kind of took half of each of those things,” Kissinger said.
WHYY is looking back over the years and hosting a bracket challenge where the audience can vote for their favorite era of public media by remembering old hosts and past shows in collages posted online weekly. The audience can vote for their favorite from the week’s two decades and the winner moves on to the next round.
“An opportunity for us to get out of this”
In Birmingham, Alabama, WBHM cooled off this summer with a light and refreshing sour beer. GM Will Dahlberg said the Top of the Hour Sour, the station’s second beer, is a good incentive for people to show up at the station’s events.
“Is it going to make us a lot of money? No,” he said. But it’s a way for WBHM to raise a little money and reactivate the station’s volunteer junior advisory board, which Dahlberg said was virtually destroyed by the pandemic.
TrimTab Brewing Co., one of the city’s top-rated craft breweries, is known in the area for its experimental sours. With plum and lemon flavors, the Top of the Hour Sour is no exception. The brewery used an Alabama-grown malt to connect the beer to its home state.
Andrea Miller, business manager of the Gulf States Newsroom based at WBHM and a member of the station’s junior board, said the partnership is a two-in-one deal for listeners.
“You get a great beer and you support an organization,” she told Current.
The beer fits perfectly with WBHM’s “News and Brews” event series, where the station meets members of the community at a brewery or coffee shop each month. This gives the station a chance to connect with people who live outside of Birmingham but are still within listening range.
“It’s just a way for us to get out of there,” she said.
When WBHM held an event in Jasper, 45 minutes outside of Birmingham, people thanked the station for “coming to our little town,” Miller said.
“I didn’t necessarily expect so many people to come,” she said. “It was really great to see this support base in rural towns as well.”
