NPR

NPR Labs to end run as stand-alone unit after losing consulting work

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NPR will integrate NPR Labs into its general budget and tighten its focus on public radio after almost five years of running the division as self-sustaining. Under the restructuring, NPR Labs will transition from its status as a stand-alone unit and move from NPR’s distribution division to its technology and operations division. NPR Labs will also drop the Technology Research Center name that it used to market consulting work to clients. The restructuring eliminated the top job at NPR Labs, held by Rich Rarey, a 34-year NPR veteran. Rarey, who will leave July 31, took the job of director of NPR Labs in February when founding director Mike Starling took a voluntary buyout offer and retired.

American Public Media

Salt Lake City’s KCPW hits fundraising goal to keep programming

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With a day to spare, Salt Lake City’s KCPW-FM hit its goal of raising $42,000 to pay off delinquent programming fees and avoid going dark. KCPW was six months in arrears on payments in programming fees to American Public Media. Station staffers took to the airwaves, sidewalks and online starting June 29 to try raising the money by July 3. The station hit the goal Wednesday afternoon. Of the $42,000, $12,765 came in from an Indiegogo crowdsourcing campaign.

Programs/Content

GPB coming to Atlanta airwaves with WRAS-FM deal

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In a channel-sharing agreement announced Tuesday, Georgia Public Broadcasting will expand its public radio service into the Atlanta market starting June 1 via Georgia State University’s 88.5 WRAS-FM. GPB Radio will program the station with a news format from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., providing Atlanta with its first public radio outlet to air news in midday hours. The city’s WABE, operated by Atlanta’s public school system, airs NPR’s newsmagazines but also schedules classical music from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays. “We wanted to bring something that is not currently in the market,” said Bert Huffman, v.p. of development for GPB. “We recognize that people can get classical music from WABE.”

Development

Study evaluates strength of public radio’s “halo” for sponsors

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ATLANTA — The positive associations that public radio listeners have with corporate sponsors and underwriters are as strong as ever, according to a report unveiled July 11 during the Public Media Development and Marketing Conference. Results of the 2013 NPR Underwriting Research project, presented by radio analyst Paul Jacobs, showed that the so-called “halo effect” that companies gain from public media sponsorships is unchanged since 2010, the last time researchers looked into it. A 2003 NPR study first identified the power of public radio sponsorships to influence listeners’ perceptions of the quality of the companies who pay for them. “We’re seeing absolutely no decline in how your listeners feel about you,” Jacobs said. “Despite the fact we live in a time of media fragmentation, one of the constants you have is that your audience loves you.”

“You have something that money can’t buy — your listeners trust in you so much that that trust transfers to the companies that sponsor you,” Jacobs told the audience at the PMDMC Thursday.

CPB Board

Life cycle of a reform: independence of CPB Program Fund

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Ron Hull, a former director of the Program Fund, reflects on the value of buffer from partisan politics
 

Jan. 2, 1979 — Robben Fleming, a university president and an authority on (labor) negotiations, comes to CPB as its third president. Also in January, the politically appointed CPB Board suspends its committees to reevaluate their roles. This decision shelved the board’s Program Committee, which traditionally had voted aye or nay on national production proposals for public TV. Even before Fleming arrived, the CPB Board had been rethinking this process.

System/Policy

Rochester indie-movie venue now operated by WXXI

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WXXI in Rochester, N.Y., has acquired a downtown movie house, The Little Theatre, it announced Dec. 19. The art-deco theater, founded in 1929 as part of a “little theatre” movement promoting alternatives to Hollywood’s mass-audience movies, still specializes in indie and foreign films, including anime and docs. In recent decades it was expanded from one to five screens, and to 940 seats, and it became a nonprofit. “The Little,” as it’s known locally, screens more than 100 films a year and hosts several annual community film festivals.