State Underfunds Public Broadcasting

Government support of public broadcasting is an issue in places you might not normally think about. Federal funding has been an issue almost since its inception here with the Public Broadcasting act of 1967. The issue of the CPB's Community Service Grant here is political and partisan. Turns out the issues are the same in Estonia.

The researcher cited in the article also points out that commercial media needs to be more accountable for certain aspects of the public interest. Did somebody mention the Fairness Doctrine?

State Underfunds Public Broadcasting, Research Concludes | Politics | News | ERR

WBUR/WGBH Revisited

WGBH and WBUR continue to compete for the same market share...the NPR news listener. It was feared when WGBH switched formats to News and information that the move would split the audience. It hasn't quite turned out that way.

Certainly WBUR lost share of the market while WGBH made very modest gains. More importantly, public radio collectively lost share of the Boston Market. Public Radio's Share of the market, (Persons 6+) according to PPM data provided by RRC, has dropped from 9.5% to 7.0% of the radio audience.

I compared the quarterly topline reports from Winter 2010 to Spring 2011.
Without more data, I can only guess at what is happening. It seems public radio is less appealing now to the Boston Market than it was in the Winter of 2010.

WKAR Cuts Staff

Facing a deficit in the neighborhood of $800,000, WKAR lays off staff. Among those is WKAR reporter Rob South.

Click here for more.

KUAZ-Arizona Public Media Increases Audience

KUAZ, Tuscon's NPR news station, is now ranked fifth in the market with 5.3 share. KUAZ is the market's top ranked news/talk format according the article posted on Inside Tucson Business. Their classical station, is ranked 11th with 3.2 share. The combined share for the two stations gives Arizona Public Media an 8.5 share.

Click on the link below to see more.

KIIM back on top of radio ratings; NPR and K-Hit move up - Inside Tucson Business: Inside Media: "New radio ratings are out for the Tucson market and Citadel's
country station KIIM 99.5-FM is back up at the No. 1 position with
a lot of usua…"

Public Broadcasting and Smart phones

There's a thoughtful blog from Fred Jacobs of Jacobs Media about the habitual use of smartphones. He's suggesting we (public radio/media) run...don't walk...to get our apps and brand out there. Use of these devices is rising dramatically.

It feeds on the need to be connected. I'm old enough to remember mail delivery time at college. (Remember Mail?) There were always about 100 of us waiting to see if there were letters from friends or family. Staying in touch was important.

I think there's an issue with being connected all the time. The constant ping of email is distracting to me. My son cannot understand me, because there are long periods where my smartphone is not on. But, that's not the point. Public Radio/Media must be on the platforms being adopted by our listeners (users) is we are to stay relevant.

Please read Fred's blog.  http://jacobsmediablog.com/2011/08/08/always-with-you-always-on/

Collaborative Marketing for Public Radio

As I read some of what was said at the Public Radio Development Conference about the need for consolidation and collaboration, I thought about a similar effort in public television. Connecticut Public Television, WTTW and a few others created a marketing partnership to garner underwriting funds for stations by pooling efforts.  Market exclusivity was one of the key points. The agreement was competitive. Not only would these station have more marketing clout against local commercial affiliates, but they would also have more clout against public television stations not in the consortium. The consortium failed. They were unable to sign clients interested in underwriting on these stations as a group.

What if the idea was focused on markets? What if public radio stations within a market were to pool resources to garner underwriters?

This idea would work best in markets where there is very little program overlap. Baltimore might be a good example. WBJC offers classical music with an audience share o 2.2%. WEAA offers Jazz and programming aimed to serve minorities with an audience share of 0.6%. WTMD is a AAA station with a share of 0.7 percent. WYPR is Baltimore's NPR station with a share of 3.1%. Individually, station shares are moderate to small. Collectively the audience share is a respectable 6.6%. The top station in the market is WWIN (MAGIC95.9) P6+ in BALTIMORE in JUNE with an 8.9 share.

Of course, this assumes the stations within a market would be willing to collaborate to create more marketing clout.

Philadelphia is another market where the public radio stations could benefit from a combined marketing effort. The combined cume of WHYY, WRTI and WXPN is 6.2% according to Arbitron PPM figures for the Spring Quarter provided by RRC

Some stations already benefit from having more than one signal in a market with a different format on each of the signals. Minnesota Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio, New York Public Radio and WGBH, Boston benefit from cross-format marketing. This is something I proposed at CPBI. If approved, the combined share could have been 6%.

Combining shares:

• MPR                  10.8%
• CPR                    5.6% (CPR is about to add a third format)
• WGBH/WCRB    3.1% 
• WNYC/WQXR    4.2%

How could individual stations share combined underwriting revenue? A simple idea would be to divide up the revenue by listener hours. That could be done for the entire topline or for specific dayparts depending the client's contract.