Keillor to Raise Funds for Obama

Garrison Keillor announces that he is raising funds for President Obama. The Pioneer Press and Minnesota Public Radio are reporting the fundraiser will be in Keillor's St. Paul home this week.

Garrison Keillor will host fundraiser for Obama

What are your feelings on this? If it was your station, would you allow one of your hosts to take a political stand, or would you prefer they stay neutral. FCC guidelines do not allow public radio stations to advocate on issues of public interest. Garrison Keillor is not advocating on the air. The fundraiser is something he doing as a private citizen. But, others in the media (and public media) have been let go because they advocated as a private citizen. Should the same rules apply here?

Garrison Keillor 'Rethinking' Retirement Plans | AllAccess.com

It has to be hard to leave this all behind. Stay tuned. There will be more before 2013.

What's your thinking on this?
Should he stay?

Will he be on the road more? Less?
What's APM's take?

Are still able to raise member dollars around APHC?

Before you jump that shark (take it off the air)...find out what your core audience thinks. Don't base your changes merely on your fund drive.

I've made some hasty decisions in the past. Two were additions to the schedule and one was a deletion from the schedule. All three led to decreases in the core audience (P1 listeners). In the core there were fewer occasions and shorter duration per occasion. The result was a decrease in listener sensitive income (A combination of member dollars and underwriting revenue). The decreases were overall...not just during those programs.

In each case we made changes. We added back the show I dropped. We made a big deal about it with a special event, letters to members and an OES (Optimum Effective Schedule) promotional run. We were pretty quiet about the two shows we dropped. We had calls and letters complaining about the changes but, we were prepared with bullet pointed talking points. In the end we increased our core audience and increased occasions and duration.

Garrison Keillor 'Rethinking' Retirement Plans | AllAccess.com

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.

'Prairie Home Companion' Host Garrison Keillor Suffered Stroke.

Sometimes I wonder about the fragile state of Public Radio’s hit shows. A Prairie Home Companion still matters to public Radio’s core audience. When I worked for WNPR fundraising around the program was often hit or miss. That didn’t mean the audience did not appreciate the program. The weekly audience was usually around 40,000 persons. The average audience was usually over 12,000. Core loyalty was usually over 70%. A Prairie Home Companion was a destination for the core audience. The core is the group of listeners most likely to give to public radio.

So what’s the big deal if Garrison decides in two years he wants to retire? Or, what if the Tom and Ray decide, because of failing health, to hang it up? It means that the audience that is most likely to contribute will be spending less time with their public radio station. The less time these listeners spend with their station, the less likely it is they will give.

The new compelling programming that draws in the core and creates new audience is in short supply. The latest public radio hit is Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me! WWDTM is at least ten years old. It took a few years before it developed into the show it is now.

Garrison says he'll be back in just a couple of weeks. For now public radio does not have to face this issue.

What happens if public radio loses a hit like A Prairie Home Companion? Is there something in development that can replace it? I hope so. Like A Prairie Home Companion and Car Talk the go to place for the core might have to develop locally first.



You can read more about Garrison’s stroke in the Huffington Post.