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.

Classical Music in St. Louis

Late this Spring commercial classical station KFUO became Christian Contemporary. KFUO was the only full time classical music station in the market. KFUO promised to run classical music on their HD2 outlet after the format change. Since hardly anybody owns an HD set...hardly anybody is listening.  Late last week KWMU announced they were adding a few hours of classical music to their programming on Saturday night. That's not enough to satisfy the classical music fan.

Classical music has proven to be popular enough on public radio stations in St. Paul, New York, Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and a few other places to be self-sustaining. These stations primarily broadcast classical music and the fan base in these markets is large enough to support these stations. Is the market large enough in St. Louis? Is there enough demand. I'm guessing the answers are yes.

According to Arbitron the St. Louis metro market has 2,308,100 listeners six and older. If a public radio station were to broadcast classical music on a full time basis, a conservative estimate of the cume rating could easily be 6% or about 139,000 cume listeners a week. If about 10% of the audience were to become members, the station might expect member revenue to be about $1.4 million. It would not be unreasonable to expect underwriting revenue to be around $300,000. Add in a community service grant and some foundation money, the station could easily expect total station revenue of about $2,000,000.

Of course, all of this hinges on the availability of an adequate FM signal in the St. Louis market. And a lot would depend on the debt load created by purchasing an existing signal, but the projected revenue could easily cover the expenses of a classical music station in St. Louis.

I should note that the Lutheran owners of KFUO got a reported $26 million when they sold their station to Joy FM. KFUO(Now KLJY) has a huge signal of 100,000 watts. The antenna is is over 1,000 feet above the terrain which makes for a broadcast radius of about 60 miles. It's an appealing signal for KLJY