‘Almanac’ celebrates 40 years as changing audience presents challenges

Moments after the Dec. 6 broadcast of “Almanac,” as the production crew began to relax at the end of yet another successful live show, waiters milled about with trays of champagne glasses for the audience. 

Still on their studio couch, hosts Cathy Wurzer and Eric Eskola celebrated the 40th anniversary of Minnesota’s beloved Twin Cities PBS (TPT) variety and politics show.

“It was like three or four or five general managers in a row that tried to boot me out,” reminisced Eskola.

“We persist, and we persevere,” Wurzer replied as she toasted to the show’s audience. “The reason that we are here is because [of] viewers like you – that’s the be all and the end all.”

“Almanac” is a unique success story in public television. Started as an underdog attempt to create a PBS show that wasn’t boring, “Almanac” made its name by mixing serious political discussion with live music and animals, illustrated essays, field reports and comedic setups. 

At the core of the show is the unique chaotic energy that only comes from being live. 

“It is terrifying, but fun,” said Kari Kennedy, the show’s supervising producer, who started working on “Almanac” in 1994. “I literally didn’t eat on Fridays past about noon for the first decade I worked on the show because I was sick to my stomach.”

The show broadcasts every week on Friday evening for an hour – well, technically 56 minutes and 40 seconds, Kennedy said. 

No matter what happens, “Almanac” has to stick to that window while coordinating a hopefully invisible (to the audience) dance between the hosts and the producer in their earpiece counting down time.

“We always tell people, if you want to have a perfect event or a perfect wedding – or at least have people think it’s perfect and not know something went wrong – hire a live TV producer, because we have 25,000 backup plans, because something always goes wrong,” Kennedy said.

Calm in the storm

All those backup plans may come in handy: Even as “Almanac” celebrated 40 years of resilience, it faces a host of looming challenges.

Like the rest of the TV news and public broadcast industry, “Almanac” is now in a world where viewership is on the decline, Americans and TV news are extremely polarized, and a fractured social media landscape makes accessing audiences harder than ever.

Still, for the moment, “Almanac” is a steady ship.

The show’s viewership on linear TV has held at 1 million to 1.3 million viewers each year since 2018, according to analytics provided by TPT.

In that same period, between 37,000-47,000 viewers annually have streamed Almanac (the show is available for free on TPT’s website and on the PBS app).

“The show is the ultimate ‘steady eddie,’ thanks largely to its consistency in format and its time slot on Friday evenings,” said Jess Bellville, TPT’s director of marketing strategy. 

“Like ‘PBS NewsHour,’ which is another top program in this market, ‘Almanac’ is also a live broadcast,” she said, “and there might still be some stronger interest in tuning in as an evening ritual on Fridays.”

Meanwhile, Kennedy is laser focused on maintaining “Almanac’s” hard-earned trust in today’s hyper partisan environment.

“We care very deeply about being nonpartisan and about treating all of our guests, from every corner of the political spectrum, with respect,” she said.

Kennedy sees Minnesota politics, though more divisive than they were a decade ago, as being less vitriolic than national politics. Perhaps the most important barometer for Almanac is that both Democrats and Republicans continue to seek out the show.

“People get heated and come and argue, but they also, at least for the most part, figure out how to talk to each other, and they appreciate that too,” Kennedy said. “Increasingly, there’s nowhere to go for that.”

Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the opening guest on the 40th anniversary show, also commended “Almanac’s” political stage. In a post-show toast, she referenced the last part of the broadcast, which featured a sit down with all four state Democratic and Republican legislative leaders. 

“To be able to have a show like this where you see all the [legislative] leaders go on is…a treasure for our politics in Minnesota, because it means they’re on there together,” Klobuchar said. “They’re debating issues. There’s some civility.”

Asked if “Almanac’s” approach is sustainable as polarization only seems to worsen, Kennedy said she hopes it can be. 

An illustrated essay by reporter David Gillette during “Almanac’s” 40th broadcast made the same case to viewers.

“Is ‘Almanac’ flashy? No. Is ‘Almanac’ intentionally argumentative? Not very often…I bring up these examples because they represent the ever present temptations of the television industry,” he said.

“If you want to go viral, book an argument. If you want to improve your ratings, embrace partisan talking points. If you want to move through society like a wrecking ball, well, basically, just do everything Almanac doesn’t. 

“We’re celebrating 40 years of listening, 40 years of thoughtfulness and 40 years of resisting temptation.”

Catching audiences on the open social sea

Like many media organizations, TPT is in the middle of figuring out its social media strategy, which will also define how “Almanac” reaches younger and more diverse audiences.

But these days it’s not easy to navigate the ebb and flow of algorithms, user behaviors and changing platforms.

Take Twitter, now known as X, which used to be a regular watering hole for journalists and policymakers.

“For a while, my team did live tweeting during the Almanac shows before the [COVID-19] pandemic,” said Bellville, the director of marketing strategy.

But in the early days of the pandemic, people stopped engaging with those posts, so the team decided to stop live tweeting and stick to resharing clips. In time, Twitter was bought, and arguably degraded, by billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.

Now, Bellville expects that TPT will start to migrate off of X entirely. She’s keeping an eye on Bluesky, the latest Twitter clone experiencing a surge in popularity.

Bellville’s team already has a Bluesky account for TPT and “Almanac,” but they don’t plan to jump in quite yet.

“We’ll start posting there more consistently once we start to see a little bit more of a balanced representation of both Democrats and Republicans, in terms of what we cover locally,” she said.

Meanwhile, on popular video platforms like Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube, TPT has a complex balancing act. 

As a television station, it makes sense to repackage broadcast clips, like those from “Almanac,” to reach new audiences. 

But that doesn’t automatically mean TPT benefits from doing so. Relying on social platforms is an uneven and, at times risky, path to sustainability.

Someone isn’t “going to go from engaging with us in a couple of social media posts, or watching a few pieces of content on YouTube, to becoming a supporter overnight,” Bellville said. “That’s just not how it works.”

Still, Bellville thinks investing in vertical video for platforms is “mission critical” for TPT. 

A new social media manager and a digital producer, hired only a few months ago, are already seeing success with creative history videos and guides for voters – including some videos done in collaboration with “Almanac” staff.

At the leadership level, Nick Kereakos, a former Minnesota Public Radio executive, joined TPT at the beginning of the year as chief content officer. Kereakos is helping to cement “Almanac’s” social media approach.

“We know that audiences are consuming more media in more places than ever before, and we view that as an opportunity for TPT to serve more people,” Kereakos said in a statement to MinnPost.

“That certainly means having a presence across both more media platforms, as well as in-person experiences and convenings within the community,” he said.

But for all the talk of social media, “Almanac” does have other ways of attracting younger and more diverse audiences.

Some viewers will come back to the public television station they watched as kids once they have their own children, and happen to catch “Almanac.” Some will continue a watching tradition they started with parents and grandparents on Friday nights.

Others may come because of the changing face of Almanac’s bread and butter: local politics.

The Minnesota Legislature “has never been younger and never been more diverse…we’re a place they can come to hear more about that,” Kennedy said.

“I think there are people that would look at [these lawmakers] and say, ‘You’re too young to watch PBS. You would never do that. You’re not a politician’ – but they are, and I think that makes a difference,” she said. “The people that they serve see that, and say, ‘Well, maybe [‘Almanac’] is something that matters in my life.’”

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