Community Support Coming Up Short
KGPR (Great Falls Public Radio) is in jeopardy of losing $97 thousand of its funding...all at once. KGPR does not generate enough non-federal support to qualify for CPB's Community Service Grant. According to CPB guidelines, Great Fall Public Radio should be generating $100,000 in community support. They're currently $30,000 short of that threshold.A Numbers Crunch
Is the Great Falls Market large enough to support a Public Radio Station? According to Census data about 59 thousand people live there. If 10% of the population listened to the station, they would have a weekly cume of 6,000. Of that number maybe 20% would be part of the core audience, or 1200 listeners. KGPR reported to The Great Falls Tribune that they have 450 contributors. That means an estimated 38% of the core audience is contributing. Given the market size, there isn't much headroom. This is a numbers crunch many small market stations face.
ROI for NPR Programming
Great Falls Public Radio pays Montana Public Radio $34,000 to carry NPR and APM programming. I'm not sure of the arrangement between Great Falls and Montana Public Radio, but under an LMA agreement with NPR, Great Falls must carry Montana Public Radio's entire feed. My understanding of these agreements is that Great Falls would not be allowed to cutaway from the feed to carry their own announcements or to fundraise during the feed. One solution might be to return a portion of the fundraising dollars to Great Falls Public Radio based on the zip codes of the contributors. That might not alleviate the entire funding issue, but it would contribute to the solution by having contributors to Morning Edition, All Things Considered and A Prairie Home Companion in Great Falls go to support their station.
Station management is holding a series of meetings to get input from listeners about what they should do. 40 showed up at the first meeting on Saturday.
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