System/Policy

State aid down $85 million in four years

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In four years that include the deepening recession, fiscal 2008 through 2012, public broadcasting stations in 24 states have lost a total of $85 million in financial support from state governments, according to a study released last week by Free Press, a progressive media-reform group. Those states reduced spending on public media by 42 percent of their 2008 amount. Free Press, which has joined the defense of federal and state aid to public media, gave the study a timely release date, one week before the congressional Super Committee’s Nov. 23 [2011] deadline to cut vast sums from the federal budget and deficit. “As federal lawmakers are considering making further cuts to public broadcasting nationally, we wanted to make sure they understood the full picture of public broadcasting in their states,” said Josh Stearns, co-author of the study and associate program director of Free Press.

System/Policy

Western stations ask for new election to fill McTaggart’s seat on NPR Board

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When a candidate wins re-election but withdraws from service before taking office, does the electorate get another chance to vote? Given the irregular turnover after NPR Board elections this summer, station leaders in Western States Public Radio think so. After American Public Media President Jon McTaggart won re-election to a three-year term and resigned before taking the director’s seat, WSPR objected to the NPR Board’s decision to appoint a replacement rather than hold a new election. The resolution said its complaint involved procedure, not McTaggart or the board’s selection to succeed him, Marita Rivero, g.m. of television and radio at Boston’s WGBH. Managers attending the regional association’s meeting, Nov.

People

APM chief McTaggart, seen as competitor, leaves NPR Board

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American Public Media’s president, Jon McTaggart, won re-election to the NPR Board this summer but won’t be taking the seat after all. McTaggart resigned from the board at NPR’s request after an outside legal analysis determined that his promotion to president of APM and Minnesota Public Radio presented a potential conflict of interest with his service on the NPR Board. Since his first election to the board three years ago, McTaggart had been promoted from chief operating officer to chief exec of American Public Media Group, the parent company of APM/MPR. That put him uniquely and simultaneously on the boards of the two largest producers and distributors of public radio programming. Marita Rivero, v.p. and g.m. of WGBH’s television and radio stations, will fill the NPR Board vacancy instead.

System/Policy
Lisa Simeone

News leaders draw hard line on employees’ public comments

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Update, Nov. 10: The NPR Board postponed considering the ethics policy scheduled for its Nov. 10-11 meeting. Spokesperson Dana Rehm said work was not complete on two of the three ethics documents. “Management and the board determined that the best course of action would be to release the guiding principles of NPR’s journalism, the handbook and the employee code of conduct at the same time so we’re in a position to confidently answer everyone’s questions about which principles apply to whom,” Rehm said.

Programs/Content

Knell: familiar with dynamics

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NPR’s next president already knows how a strong production house can continue to work with pubcasting stations — and also expand its reach with non-broadcast distribution partners. For nearly 12 years Gary Knell has managed one of PBS’s prize program providers, Sesame Workshop, which made cable deals and vastly enlarged its audience on the Web while keeping the first play of its primo content on PBS. Knell, like his NPR predecessor, Vivian Schiller, as well as recent PBS leaders, wants to play the major original productions in as many venues as possible, though with the member stations continuing to hold an exclusive broadcast window. “It’s radio-first distribution,” Knell told Current, “Then it should be made available more broadly, tweeted and smeeted,” he said, coining a word for additional varieties of social media. “We’ve got to make sure that we’re all over all that stuff.”

Under David Britt, Knell’s predecessor as president of the Manhattan-based production institution, the Workshop negotiated an end to PBS’s exclusive rights to its flagship program, Sesame Street, and in 1999 released older episodes to a cable venture — Noggin, a cable net co-owned with Viacom’s Nickelodeon.

Tech

Producers invited to crowdsource the translation of their programs

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Universal Subtitles, a project of the nonprofit Participatory Culture Foundation, is looking for long-form public media projects to translate into multiple languages through its crowdsourcing network. In January the project worked with the PBS NewsHour and volunteers to produce translations and subtitles of President Obama’s State of the Union address. Within 17 hours, the speech had been converted to nine languages, said Nicolas Reville of PCF. Now Universal Subtitles has partnered with American Public Media’s Public Insight Network, APM said at the PRPD conference. The aim is to extend public media’s reach and value by creating and publishing reports in multiple languages, said Joaquin Alvarado, APM’s digital innovation chief.

Programs/Content
Jad Abumrad speaking at PRPD Sept. 2011

Public radio ‘dancing at the edge of change’

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There’s some heavy-duty soul-searching going on in public radio. The Public Radio Program Directors conference, Sept. 20–23 in Baltimore, sidelined its usual celebrations of pubradio’s audience growth and its journalistic ascendency. Instead, participants grappled with big questions about challenges ahead and wondered aloud about how to move forward after a year of political calamity at NPR. Progress reports about ongoing reforms were freighted with a new urgency: giving exposure to innovative new programs, raising stations’ ambitions for local reporting, opening the field to more diverse voices and listeners.

Localore

Localore: matchmaker for innovation

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Two years after its Makers Quest 2.0 project tapped independent producers to stretch the creative boundaries of public radio, the Association of Independents in Radio is launching Localore, a major CPB-backed initiative designed to jump-start new-media experiments at local public broadcasting stations.

Development

WBUR finds ROI for stores in underwriting

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Looking to expand the pool of companies that place underwriting spots on public radio stations, Boston’s WBUR unveiled results from its first-ever study demonstrating that sponsorship credits deliver a return on investment for corporate underwriters. Online surveys by Lightspeed Research, conducted in two waves since October, measured substantial gains for both new and continuing sponsors across 12 different product categories — including banks, supermarkets, health care and auto services. WBUR Station Manager Corey Lewis, who initiated the research, said the results demonstrate that public radio underwriting can compete with and even outperform advertising campaigns on three metrics: influencing customers’ purchasing frequency, perceptions of quality and consideration of a company for future purchases. NPR’s influential research on the “halo effect” of public radio sponsorship — identified in 2003 and confirmed by further survey research last fall — showed strong links between listeners’ perceptions of quality and purchase consideration for companies that underwrite public radio programs, according to Lewis and other research and underwriting specialists. To measure the underwriters’ return on investment, the WBUR study added questions about purchasing frequency.

Programs/Content

Two news competitors in deficit, so one buys the other in Buffalo

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Talks exploring a union between two major public broadcasters in western New York state will culminate with the $4 million sale of Buffalo’s WBFO-FM, the dominant NPR News station in the region. WNED, a public TV and radio operation with a weaker AM signal for news, in addition to an FM for classical music, will buy the news station from the State University of New York’s University at Buffalo, retaining its call letters and news format. With the stronger FM news signal, WNED plans to enhance WBFO’s appeal to Canadian audiences, who comprise 68 percent of member contributors to WNED-TV, according to Don Boswell, president. Broadcasting on WBFO’s 50,000-watt signal on 88.7 MHz “gives us the totality of what we need to grow into the Canadian marketplace,” Boswell said. WNED, which has a $23 million endowment from the sale of its second TV channel in 2000, plans to finance the purchase with a loan, he said.

Development

Subsidies lost, urgency gained

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As public broadcasting braces for expected cuts from its most predictable revenue source — the annual CPB appropriation — system leaders are talking as much about saving money as raising more of it. Collaboration and consolidation — ideals that pubcasters have long espoused but rarely implemented — were buzzwords at this month’s Public Media Marketing and Development Conference in Pittsburgh. Top fundraisers, station execs and analysts urged their peers to tear down walls that separate local stations and cooperate to preserve and strengthen audience service. 

Keynoters Fred and Paul Jacobs, sibling radio consultants from Detroit, delivered the starkest diagnosis and most urgent prescription — formation of a commission to analyze station finances and design a restructured, pared-down system of stations. Pubradio leaders already working in these trenches described a new strategy for preserving service as more universities spin off their stations. In his first major speech since promotion to chief exec of American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio, Jon McTaggart said pubradio can tackle its funding challenges and competitive threats by relentlessly focusing on audience service.

Programs/Content

Life without CPB aid scary to LJC startups

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The seven Local Journalism Centers that launched with major support from CPB have suddenly found themselves on a short timeline to find ways to earn more of their keep. So far, CPB has committed only the two-year sums announced at the initiative’s launch last year and has told some grantees to expect smaller amounts for 2012. Uncertainties over future CPB aid — as well as problems with the diffuse management structures that cloud decision-making and fiscal accountability for at least one LJC — have complicated plans to keep the regional news collaborations going, according to news directors who participated in a June 24 panel at the Public Radio News Directors conference in Arlington, Va. Station execs behind Changing Gears, the LJC that staffed up last August to cover efforts to revive manufacturing in the Upper Midwest, have begun making contingency plans to continue the work if CPB aid ends, said Torey Malatia of Chicago’s WBEZ, one of three stations behind the center. “We’re committed to keeping it going in some form,” he said.

Development

After scandal, fundraisers debate ethics

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Having witnessed the damaging one-round knockout of NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller in March, public radio’s development pros are working to adapt the lessons they’ve learned about ethics and prudence into a set of best-practices guidelines for use throughout the field. But they’re already tiptoeing around a clear discrepancy between the major ethical code of professional fundraisers and a common practice in public broadcasting — paid commissions on underwriting sales. DEI, the national agency for pubradio fundraising that convenes its annual Public Media Development and Marketing Conference in Pittsburgh later this week, has assembled a group to draft ethical standards for fundraising in nonprofit public media. DEI is leading the re-evaluation as part of its CPB-backed Leadership for Philanthropy project, which aims to help stations improve their major-gift fundraising. The main starting point for DEI’s advisory council is the Code of Ethical Principles and Standards of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, which prohibits commission-based compensation for nonprofit fundraisers.

Programs/Content

Life without CPB aid scary to Local Journalism Center startups

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The seven Local Journalism Centers that launched with major support from CPB have suddenly found themselves on a short timeline to find ways to earn more of their keep. So far, CPB has committed only the two-year sums announced at the initiative’s launch last year and has told some grantees to expect smaller amounts for 2012. Uncertainties over future CPB aid — as well as problems with the diffuse management structures that cloud decision-making and fiscal accountability for at least one LJC — have complicated plans to keep the regional news collaborations going, according to news directors who participated in a June 24 panel at the Public Radio News Directors conference in Arlington, Va. Station execs behind Changing Gears, the LJC that staffed up last August to cover efforts to revive manufacturing in the Upper Midwest, have begun making contingency plans to continue the work if CPB aid ends, said Torey Malatia of Chicago’s WBEZ, one of three stations behind the center. “We’re committed to keeping it going in some form,” he said.

Programs/Content

Appropriation cut, lack of channel doom FM for young Latino L.A.

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Los Angeles Public Media, the CPB-backed startup that hoped to serve a new generation of minority listeners in one of the nation’s most competitive and ethnically mixed media markets, shuttered its operations June 15 after failing to acquire an FM station and secure renewed support from CPB. Radio Bilingüe, the Fresno-based public radio network that oversaw LAPM, disbanded the staff of five and stopped adding material to its website, LA>Forward, launched last fall. Like a number of other forward-looking CPB projects, LAPM became an aftershock casualty of the House-Senate conference committee’s agreement to cut $30 million of CPB’s requested $36 million add-on appropriation for digital projects. CPB had given Radio Bilingüe $2 million in 2009 to start LAPM, and project leaders had hoped for a renewal. “We’re obviously disappointed,” said Hugo Morales, Radio Bilingüe founder and executive director.

Programs/Content

Georgia ramble turns exposé

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Ira Glass didn’t know what he was in for when he walked into the post office in the seaside burg of Brunswick, Ga., and asked the first person he met to name the most interesting character in town. Glass and his This American Life production team had given themselves a special assignment: to collect the best stories they could stumble upon far off the beaten path of their day-to-day reporting routines. They followed the standard operating procedure of the Atlanta Journal’s “Georgia Rambler” columnist Charles Salter, who researched more than 500 columns in the late 1970s by roving around small towns of the Peach State in a company car. Nine of the radio show’s producers and reporters adopted Salter’s technique for an episode that aired last summer. They drew the names of their assigned Georgia locales from a baseball cap, went in-country with mikes and recording equipment and, on fast turnaround, collected a trove of human-interest material.

Quick Takes

Sale closes on Palm Beach’s WXEL-FM

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Florida’s WXEL-FM, the public radio station that broadcast on 90.7 FM in Palm Beach, has been converted into full-time music outlet WPBI, owned and operated by American Public Media’s Classical South Florida.The FCC approved the $3.85 million license transfer agreement last week, overruling objections from local groups who sought to prevent longtime owner Barry University from splitting the NPR news/classical music station from its public TV sibling. Sale opponents, including the WXEL Community Advisory Board, lobbied unsuccessfully to retain local control of both stations.“This is an exciting day for public radio listeners across South Florida,” said Doug Evans, Classical South Florida president, in a news release announcing that the sale had closed. “We’re excited about the opportunity to serve the Palm Beaches and the Treasure Coast with high-quality public radio programming, and to strengthen the reach and quality of public radio throughout South Florida.Under the sales contract, Classical South Florida has a one-year lease on the Boynton Beach studio facilities that housed both WXEL stations; the WXEL radio staff of seven full-time and four-part-time employees now work for new owner, the Palm Beach Post reports.The future of WXEL-TV, which Barry University has been trying to sell since 2004, is unclear.

System/Policy

‘Required’ station fees for web services are just a ‘proposal,’ says NPR Board chair

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Plans to restructure NPR’s digital services to pubradio stations, in the works for months, have finally gotten down to specifics: what NPR will offer, what it will cost and who will pay. Based on prices that NPR has proposed — between $1,800 and $100,000 a year — some stations are now experiencing a new virtual variety of sticker shock. In round robin meetings that began in April, NPR execs have been briefing station leaders on their planned offering, a comprehensive package of technology support, training and content, but some station leaders reacted angrily after a May 12 NPR memo said all member stations would be required to pay fees for the services. Joyce McDonald, v.p. for member and program services, notified top stations execs — the so-called “authorized representatives” who speak and vote on behalf of their stations — of NPR’s plan to begin phasing-in new required digital services fees. The memo coincided with the NPR Board’s May 12-13 meetings in Washington, D.C.

Many misunderstood the message as a statement of board policy and a done deal, when McDonald intended to give station execs advance notice of proposed dues increases for next fiscal year, according to NPR. Reactions posted on the A-Reps message board prompted NPR’s top leaders to backpedal, reassuring stations that no decisions had been made.

Programs/Content
Malone on mic

Radio joins local probes, ruffles local feathers

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WLRN Radio and the Miami Herald have been collaborating on multiplatform news production for eight years, but the investigative-reporting package that they published this month, “Neglected to Death,” took their partnership to a new level. The package of radio reports by WLRN’s Kenny Malone and articles by Herald reporters grew out of a year-long computer-assisted reporting project that revealed systemic failings in the regulation of Florida’s assisted-living facilities. Over several months, Malone followed up on the Herald investigative team’s findings of incidents of negligence and abuse to produce two character-driven radio features, the first of which aired locally and on NPR’s Morning Edition. Malone’s first piece focused on the case of Aurora Navas, an 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient and facility resident who wandered outdoors one night without supervision and drowned in 18 inches of water. It was one of many accidental deaths for which Florida regulators failed to probe or prosecute.