William H. Kling

William Hugh Kling (born April 29, 1942) is an American businessman who created Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and American Public Media. He was also a founding Board Director of National Public Radio and the founding Chairman and president of Public Radio International. Kling is a social media entrepreneur who built both successful non-profit public media companies and for profit companies to support those non-profits. He is currently President Emeritus, American Public Media and offices in the IDS Tower in Minneapolis.

Kling holds a BA in Economics from Saint John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota and an MS from the Graduate School of Communications at Boston University. In 1964, Kling was asked by Saint John's University (where he had just earned his baccalaureate in economics) to attend graduate school in mass communications at Boston University and return to build a radio station. That station became the first in a series of 44 public radio stations ranging from Minnesota to Los Angeles and Miami. Kling is the recipient of honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from Saint John's University (2011) and The College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, Minnesota (2013). In 2014 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The first station, KSJR FM, went on the air in January, 1967, and was later spun off into a separate nonprofit community corporation (MPR), of which Kling was the founding president. Over the years, he helped lead the station to grow into a statewide network in Minnesota while building similar networks in California and Florida. He was a founding director of NPR and in 1983 he created a nationwide public radio distribution arm (American Public Media (APM)).

Kling served as President and CEO of American Public Media Group (APMG) until June 2011. APMG is the nonprofit parent support organization of Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), Southern California Public Radio (SCPR), Classical South Florida (CSF) and American Public Media (APM) and is the sole shareholder of the for-profit Greenspring Company. Kling also served as CEO of MPR|APM and of Greenspring Company and Vice Chair of SCPR and CSF.

As president of MPR|APM, Kling was responsible for MPR’s three regional networks of thirty-eight public radio stations (serving 5 million people in the Minnesota region) and its national program production centers in Saint Paul, New York and Los Angeles. American Public Media is the second largest national producer of public radio programming, following National Public Radio (NPR) in Washington. Southern California Public Radio, which Kling serves as Vice Chair, operates radio stations KPCC (Pasadena) and KUOR (Redlands) under public service operating agreements with their respective licensees. SCPR serves a population of 14 million people in the Los Angeles area. Classical South Florida owns and operates public radio stations in Miami, Palm Beach and Naples Florida. Greenspring, which Kling served as president until 2011, is the parent company for Greenspring Media Group, a diversified regional and national magazine publishing and event management company. In 1998, Greenspring sold another subsidiary, Rivertown Trading Company, to the Target Corporation for $134 million.

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