A Call For Fox To Help Fund NPR

An Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post by Steve Coll calls for commercial broadcasters and cable outlets, like Fox News, to fund public broadcasting. The idea is not new. I've heard the idea discussed since the early 8o's when I was studying Mass Communications. The idea is, a set aside from commercial broadcasters would be the best way to fund public broadcasting. This would help ensure Public Broadcasting's future and help it fulfill its mission to serve under-served communities.

Public Radio is grappling with this issue. Despite growth to about 30 million listeners in the past decade, public radio stations are looking for ways to increase diversity in its audience. Steve Coll included in his article the BBC's handling of criticism that its coverage was left leaning. BBC managers studied their coverage and did not find they leaned in any particular direction but, did find they were not covering stories that appealed to conservatives. According to Coll, the BBC solved their problem by broadening their coverage. Coll recommends a similar self-examination for NPR.

At the recent PRPD Conference in Denver, a panel that included representatives from the CBC talked about how they broadened their coverage to be more inclusive. (Panel: The Next Step Up: Inclusiveness -  Farai Chideya (Moderator); Keith Woods, NPR; Kashmir Birk, Bioss; Susanne Marjetti, CBC)   The CBC deliberately became more inclusive in their coverage to reflect the diversity of their communities served.  The panel members from the CBC their audience grew. Not just numbers, but also in diversity.

I strongly recommend this piece. There are many more ideas that can be drawn on to build a stronger Public Broadcasting system.


Steve Coll, a former managing editor of The Washington Post and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, is president of the New America Foundation.

Support for Public Radio Growing

It has been a Fall filled with uncertainty for Public Radio. The sluggish economy along with the turmoil surrounding the firing of Juan Williams has resulted in unease within Public Radio. Despite these issues, the news is good from several stations. Public support continues to rise. Here are some recent stories and releases about membership campaigns around the country.

Capital Public Radio, Sacramento's NPR affiliate, wrapped up the most successful fund drive in the station's history last week, according to president and general manager Rick Eytcheson.

The station did not release final pledge figures, but Eytcheson said, "It'll be our first time over $500,000." (Modesto Bee)

Read more: http://www.modbee.com/2010/10/25/1397723/capital-public-radio-has-successful.html#ixzz13T9eeYdm




HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Hawaii Public Radio met its $808,000 fall fundraising goal and ended its 10-day pledge drive Friday afternoon to return to regular programming.  Read More:  http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=13375120




WHQR 91.3, the local public radio station, raised $155,000 during its fall pledge drive, exceeding the goal of $125,000. In addition, it took only seven days to get there instead of the usual 11 that has been the standard for spring and fall pledge drives in recent years. (Star News Online)


In enthusiastic WAMC fashion, the on-air fund drive began at 6 a.m. on Monday, October 4, 2010 and ended in six days and a morning with 6,912 pledges. Dedicated WAMC members and listeners locally and nationally called and pledged on-line all day and into the night and manned phones to help make this happen. Says Alan himself, "Because of the wonderful and generous WAMC audience, we made it with time to spare. "We are immensely grateful to everyone who helped.  by WAMC/Northeast Public Radio

PULLMAN - Northwest Public Radio’s sixth one-day campaign on Oct. 21, “Super Thursday,” attracted more than 2,600 online and telephone pledges and raised more than $295,000. 

NWPR is a community service of The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, and listener support is its single largest source of revenue.

A healthy membership base is vital for NWPR to continue as an essential news and information source, said dean Lawrence Pintak.

“Our citizenry is hungry for the in-depth, unbiased and quality news reports heard every day on Northwest Public Radio,” he said. “This service is truly essential and will only become more so as we continue to build our regional news program.”  WSU Today

WDUQ-FM (90.5) raised more than $354,000 in its annual fall fundraising drive that ended Saturday at noon.
Of the total raised, more than $75,000 came in the final 24 hours of the drive, and more than $20,000 was donated during jazz programming on Friday. Mark Bertolet, director of marketing and communications for the jazz and NPR station, said the fundraising effort indicated there was support in this area for the station's programming. By Michael A. Fuoco, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10297/1097656-455.stm#ixzz13TFwgWC8

Public Radio Pledge Humor and Alec Baldwin

Public Radio Pledge Drives. Funny?
They're more like a the movie Ground Hog Day...or a root canal that never ends. (Root canals actually do end, it just seems like they go on forever.) Listeners perceive fundraising to be painful. PPM data demonstrates about half of the audience tunes away during the drive. This can make raising money on-air difficult.

Occasionally, there is something funny during a drive. The latest group of spots creating buzz for the system is a set of five featuring Alec Baldwin.  (KPLU has posted the spots on their website). Baldwin first made fun of public radio on Saturday Night Live. Many of my collegues were afraid the humor was dragging down the image of public radio. The bit made me laugh. We even had a show on our air that was a little like the food show being parodied.

The effectiveness of humor during pledge (if done right) should not be a surprise. Think about some of the spots created by Tom and Ray - Wait, Wait - Garrison Keillor - This American Life.

The Listener Focussed Fundraising Project that came out of Audience 98 examined various modes that appealed to listeners and didn't appeal to listeners during a drive.

Six Modes of Fundraising Messages Identified by Listener Focused Fundraising
Project. The modes line up (from those perceived by listeners as most likely "tune-outs" to most likely "stay tuned") as:

Frantic: More sound than message. It's noisy (ringing phones, loud or
busy music beds under pitches, etc), urgent, and nervous. We think it is
high energy, the listeners do not. Very unlike the usual sound of the station.
Listeners perceive this mode as highly negative.

Blame & Pleading: Characterized more by sound than message. It
includes threats, whining, "poor mouthing," guilt, self-victimization, and
weakness (such as a stated lack of control over financial circumstances that
require asking listeners for money). Very negative.

Give & Get: Sound and message. It's the sounds of selling, similar to a TV
infomercial, with the message "give to get stuff." Usually the "getter" is the
listener (sweepstakes, drawings, premiums) but it can also be the station
(challenge grant matches). Mostly negative to lightly neutral.

Funding Facts: Sound and message. "How to give" and "Why we need the
money" messages, always characterized by a calm, rational, respectful
tone. Informative, honest, professional, succinct. Neutral to positive.

Personal Importance Personified: Sound and message. Resonates with
our listeners' values, beliefs and interests, always characterized by a calm,
rational, respectful tone. Centers on appeals about the heart of our public
service, programming. Very positive.

Lighten Up, Public Radio: Sound and message. An intelligent humor
mode about taking our fundraising less seriously. Not always involving
public radio celebrities, but when they pitch it's in character - in the roles
they play on the air. (Tom and Ray Magliozzi are the quintessence of this
mode). Highly positive.

People in the system always seem surprised when well-crafted humor works. Obviously, you cannot use humor all the time. The limited number of well-crafted spots will burn out rapidly. But spots, like the five produced at WNYC featuring Alec Baldwin, can help lighten up the drive.  Obviously, you cannot use humor all the time. The limited number of well-crafted spots will burn out rapidly. Humor might not always be appropriate, especially when coming out of heavier news items featured during public radio's news programming.

Now that I've been on the outside for a while I find myself thinking, "Please, stop being so earnest all the time."  Actually the words I use are more blunt than that, but I want to hired again someday.

Bi-Partisan Panel Says New Jersey Can No Longer Afford NJN

An article published by newjerseynewsroom.com says New Jersey's bipartisan panel is recommending that the state can no longer afford NJN. They recommend that a private buyer be found and New Jersey get out of the public media business.
Read more about it here: http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/state/bi-partisan-panel-finds-state-government-can-no-longer-afford-operating-njn-tv-and-radio#

Richard Stockton College offers a dollar to take over NJN broadcasting - pressofAtlanticCity.com

Richard Stockton College offers a dollar to take over NJN broadcasting - pressofAtlanticCity.com

This an interesting article from the Press of Atlantic City about NJN. Stockton College has offered to take over the network for a dollar.

According to the article by Juliet Fletcher, there are two other offers for NJN. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wants to unload the network by December when state funding runs out.

KCET drops PBS

KCET drops PBS, risks viewer loyalty to avoid $6.8M yearly dues

It's a risky decision indeed.

One of the questions we faced on a regular basis at Connecticut Public Radio was the high cost of National Programming. Was the programming really worth it? Could we cut our losses if we just cut a few of the really expensive programs like Car Talk or A Prairie Home Companion. It was even suggested briefly that Morning Edition was too costly. Couldn't we just cancel these programs to reduce our expenses? Surely there must be something almost as good that costs a lot less? If we do that can't we put some of the savings into local efforts?

Fortunately, we took a careful look at how our audience was using the station. I even wrote an article about it for Audience 98, Public Service Economics.

We used listener hours to determine how the audience was using our programming. We then compared revenue per listener hour against cost per listener hour to determine our return on investment. The three programs mentioned above generated a large portion of Connecticut Public Radio's listener hours. The costs per listener hour were more than offset by the way our listeners used the station.

For the sake of argument, suppose we took A Prairie Home Companion and Car Talk off the air to save $32,000 in 1998. Because those programs were carried by two other public radio stations, we would have lost most of those listener hours and the revenue they represented.  In 1998 Car Talk represented about $68,000 in listener sensitive income. A Prairie Home Companion represented about $110,000 in listener sensitive income. Listener Sensitive Income is a combination of the revenue from listeners, local underwriters and local foundations. The combined return on investment was $106,000.

These numbers are a lot smaller than the $6.8 million in dues paid by KCET. The number of viewer hours represented by KCET audience is a lot larger than the 56 million listener hours generated by WNPR.  KCET has probably put a lot of thought into their decision, but they are likely to lose several million viewer hours to the other PBS stations that serve the LA Basin. The drop in viewer hours will represent a drop in viewer sensitive income. The question is, did the viewer sensitive income offset the cost of the PBS programming?
Will the new local focus generate enough viewer interest to offset those costs?