Current (https://current.org/category/development/page/15/)
With the increasing likelihood that budget cuts once thought to be too big to take effect will slash spending across the federal government March 1, CPB is planning how to handle its payments to stations in the event that its $445 million 2013 appropriation is altered again.
A volunteer DJ has been charged with stealing donors’ credit card information from a Houston radio station and using it to make personal purchases. Michael Whitfield was arrested in December after police found him in possession of credit card information taken from more than 300 donors to KTSU, a jazz station licensed to Texas Southern University in Houston. He is being held on $200,000 bond. Police began their investigation in July 2012 after a KTSU donor reported unauthorized charges on their credit card, and they traced them to an IP address to Whitfield’s apartment. Investigators have confirmed 25 cases of theft so far, according to Donna Logan, an assistant district attorney for Harris County, Texas.
When the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Massachusetts announced a settlement with Boston’s WGBH over its handling of $60 million in federal grant funds, it was the second time in two years that a major producing station had come under scrutiny by auditors for its handling of grant monies for public TV productions.
This item has been updated and reposted with additional information. WGBH has agreed to pay more than $300,000 in a civil settlement with the U.S Attorney’s Office to resolve allegations that it improperly tracked and accounted for federal grant money, The Associated Press is reporting. U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz told AP that from 2005–08 the Boston pubcaster maintained an inadequate accounting system for tracking grant expenditures. The settlement, announced Thursday, is for damages incurred by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. WGBH spokesperson Jeanne Hopkins told Current that the settlement involves a payment equal to the error rate of half a percent to one percent of the total value of the grants, which was $60 million.
Independent Public Media has unveiled a new program to provide bridge funding to financially troubled pubTV stations. The loans will help them stay on the air through the FCC’s incentive spectrum auction, and require a payout from auction proceeds. IPM designed the loan program to assist noncommercial broadcasters until they can sell off some, but not all, of their spectrum bandwidth through the FCC auction, and assumed that stations will gain big payoffs by participating. Once auction proceeds begin rolling in to a borrower station, IPM will pay off expenses incurred by participating in the auction and then recoup the principal and interest on its loan. The remaining auction revenues would be evenly split between IPM and the station.
Basic memberships offered during pledge drives and in direct-mail appeals are a time-tested enticement for converting pubcasting viewers and listeners into contributors, but station-based development staff are perplexed about how to set the rate for this donation level. Some pubcasters are weighing whether to stop offering basic memberships altogether. A survey conducted this fall by Plymouth, Mass.–based direct-marketing consultant DMW Direct found that most stations charge below $50 for a basic membership, and few have adjusted the rate within the last five years. The basic median rate among the 41 public TV and radio stations that participated in the survey is $40, but 16 stations reported to DMW that they charge less. These rates are far below average gift amounts for public stations.
More than a decade ago, I was appearing on-air during a television pledge drive when a phone bank volunteer said a caller on his line insisted on talking to me. I picked up the phone with some trepidation and — sure enough — a WXXI member complained angrily about getting too much direct mail. He was especially upset because he had received a letter inviting him to join WXXI when he was already a member. I apologized and, to make up for his inconvenience, invited him to lunch and a tour of the station. He accepted, and took a bus to the station (he didn’t drive) to meet with me.
One of the most promising new membership initiatives to come along for public television in years doesn’t involve phone banks, on-air pitches or premium packages. It’s door-to-door canvassing, the grass-rootsy technique for talking up causes and soliciting donations face-to-face.
With one of its biggest corporate sponsors pulling back from a multiyear underwriting commitment, NPR has an uphill climb to rebuild its sponsorship revenues from 2011, when the network’s sales reps reeled in enough deals to set a new earnings record. High turnover — or “churn” — among its corporate clients, and the pullback of companies that spend the most money on advertising, cut into NPR’s bottom line in the fiscal year that just closed. After netting $2.4 million in profits in 2011, largely on robust sponsorship sales, the network aimed high for 2012. But sales fell far short of projections. For fiscal year 2012, which ended on Sept.
When WCNY-TV announced that its September 2007 pledge drive would be its last, skeptics predicted the new policy would be short-lived.
To the editors:
Amanda Hirsch asks if the “value proposition” for public media is different today from what it was in the 1960s, and if tax dollars are essential in support of noncommercial media (Current, Oct. 22). I was there in the 1960s, making the case along with a great number of others who believed in the “educational broadcasting” that was at that point the core of our movement. The notion of federal funding came only after all other options had been declared politically or financially impossible. Many of us continue to worry that in our treasured democracy public money in support of any mass medium is precarious at best and downright dangerous at worst.
Former NPR correspondent Andrea Seabrook, who covered Congress until departing in July to launch an independent podcast called Decode DC, crossed the finish line on her Kickstarter fundraising campaign Oct. 17, hitting her goal of $75,000 and ultimately topping out at over $100,000. Seabrook launched the campaign Sept. 25 and met her fundraising target with two days to spare. Seabrook conceded during an Oct.
DEI gives its Benchmarks Award each year to a consistently top-performing station in terms of net revenue per hour of listening. While the median station raises .95 cents in underwriting revenue per listener-hour, HPR last year sold 2.25 cents per listener-hour — all handled by HPR’s single underwriting salesperson. In presenting the award, Robin Turnau, president and c.e.o. of Vermont Public Radio and DEI treasurer, cited HPR’s peculiar challenges. “Their location is one of the top vacation destinations in the world. They deal daily with the challenges of serving a transient population, while raising funds from a permanent listenership where the local median income is only modest, while the cost of living is extraordinarily high,” said Turnau, noting that HPR’s net-revenue-per-listener-hour stat put it in the top 10 percent of DEI surveys for both membership and mid-level giving.
Since becoming WPR’s director of membership director in 2005, Rebecca Dopart has upped membership revenue by 30 percent — from $5 million to $6.5 million — and increased the number of donors from 40,000 to almost 49,000. Since she assumed the additional title of director of corporate support two years ago, sales have risen nearly 30 percent, to around $1.8 million. “She turned a team that suffered from low morale into one that has sold so many spots that their underwriting rates had to be increased and new avails created,” said Gordon Bayliss, v.p. of sales and marketing at WBFO-FM/WNED-FM/WNED-TV in Buffalo, N.Y., and PRADO’s immediate past president, in presenting the award. “She achieved those results by providing the team with training retreats, instituting new contact management software, creating a copy review team and a new media kit, and by simply applying her own can-do attitude and moral support of each team member.”
This is the 16th year for the PRADO award, which honors the station-based fundraising professional who has demonstrated excellence at his or her public radio station. Dopart received the award at the Public Media Development and Marketing Conference (PMDMC) July 13 in Seattle.
Pitch spots requesting donations for an audio preservation project at Detroit’s WDET did not violate fundraising ethics, according to an accredited fundraising consultant who reviewed the campaign at the station’s request. The spots, which simulated tape decay of recorded music in the station’s library to solicit donations for the preservation project, prompted an internal complaint that WDET had misled listeners about the state of its collection (Current, Sept. 10). WDET General Manager J. Mikel Ellcessor, who approved the spots, apologized to staff and to listeners who donated to the campaign, and pledged to have an independent consultant evaluate the matter. Rick Kress, a credentialed advanced certified fundraising executive retained by WDET, reviewed an audio sample from the spots and other materials generated by the fundraiser — including the letters of apology.
NPR Digital Services is negotiating with an unidentified vendor to provide cloud-computing products to member stations, potentially transforming the ways they manage their membership programs and relationships with audiences. Bob Kempf, chief of the Boston-based NPR unit, would not identify the vendor, but acknowledges that NPR has been in close negotiations with roundCorner, a three-year-old company that specializes in designing customer relationship management (CRM) systems for nonprofit organizations. He aims to have a master services agreement with a third-party vendor in place by the end of the year, and launch a pilot program with as many as 10 stations in early 2013. NPR’s goal, he says, is to offer all member stations the opportunity to buy a license to a cloud-based, customizable CRM product later next year. “We are not building a single platform in the sky for stations to sign on to,” Kempf says.
The 2013 budget approved by the NPR Board Sept. 14 projects a $5.1 million operating deficit, with expenses adding up to $185.5 million and revenues projected at $180.4 million. Management plans to cover the shortfall with working capital and operating reserves. The 2013 spending plan anticipates a 5 percent gain in sponsorship income, which fell far behind projections this year. NPR expects to close fiscal 2012, which ends Sept.
Detroit’s WDET admitted in an August letter to donors that it used suspect advertising tactics in on-air fundraising spots promoting an ambitious music-restoration campaign.
A new agreement between Southern Oregon University and Jefferson Public Radio settles the months-long dispute between the two parties over control of the 22-station radio network and related real-estate projects that had caused concern among university auditors. The mediated settlement, announced Aug. 27, splits JPR’s radio activities from the theater restoration projects that a related nonprofit, the Jefferson Public Radio Foundation, had undertaken in recent years. Southern Oregon University will assume control of all 22 stations in the JPR network, seven of which are now owned by the foundation. Meanwhile, the foundation’s theater properties will be controlled by Jefferson Live!, a new limited-liability corporation to be established as a subsidiary of the JPR Foundation.
‘Sleepwalk With Me,’ is the program’s latest (and biggest) attempt to break into the movie business.