Radio Survivor

There’s more sad news on the college radio front today, with the report that Rice University is selling off the 50,000 FM signal for their long-time college radio station KTRU. According to a press release issued today, University of Houston System plans to buy KTRU’s tower, frequency, and broadcast license for $9.5 million in order to expand their public radio network. They plan to air classical music and fine arts programming over KTRU’s frequency and will devote their current station KUHF’s frequency (88.7 FM) to news and talk. The press release states,

“‘The acquisition of a second public radio station delivers on our promise to keep the University of Houston at the forefront of creating strong cultural, educational and artistic opportunities that benefit students and the city of Houston,’ said Renu Khator, chancellor of the UH System and president of the University of Houston.”

Ironically, these same arguments about the cultural and artistic benefits of the radio station are also being used by fans of KTRU who don’t want Rice University and listeners to lose an existing cultural institution.

KTRU, which began as a student experiment in 1967, will continue to operate as an online-only college radio station, but this option is not being embraced by those who see the ongoing relevance of having a terrestrial signal.

Official word from Rice University indicates that they believed that KTRU’s audience was too small to merit a the 50,000 watt station. According to a set of FAQs on the Rice University News and Media relations website,

“The economic downturn, and the resulting losses to Rice’s endowment, led to careful evaluation of how the university prioritizes and spends its resources, both its annual operating budget and its assets. In KTRU’s case, it became clear that the radio tower and 50,000-watt frequency served very few people. Because of Internet technology, KTRU can continue to serve its audience through www.ktru.org, while the university applies the proceeds from the sale to programs and services that will serve more people and help achieve the university’s aspirations.”

Students, alumni, and fans of the station couldn’t disagree more and are already stating their displeasure and have set up a number of groups in order to try to convince the administration of Rice University to reconsider. According to the website Save KTRU, Rice University abruptly shut down KTRU in 2000 and after talks with station members failed, the university agreed to continue running KTRU after more than 400 alumni wrote to the school stating that they would no longer donate to the university. Those with an interest in saving the station are encouraged to write letters to university officials, sign an online petition, join the Save KTRU Facebook page, follow Save KTRU on Twitter, and spread the word about the plight of the station.

A post on the Burn Down blog expresses the important role that KTRU has played both on campus and in the wider Houston community:

“KTRU provided a sense of community, creating a joint pride that despite our research-oriented ways, Rice was one of the hippest places in Houston. KTRU’s eclectic music requirements ensured that it constantly played music that was on the edge. More so than any other Rice institution, KTRU provided new and exciting art to anyone with a radio. Not just the Rice campus, but all of Houston benefitted from KTRU’s artistic endeavors. By selling KTRU, Rice is selling one of Houston’s most valuable artistic centers, and it was located on Rice University.”

Personally I’m disappointed to see another example of a university selling off a station for some quick cash. The result of this particular transaction will be that the Houston airwaves will become less diverse, with yet another public radio station (and presumably national programming) taking the place of a long-standing, well-respected local college radio station. FM does still matter, why else would University of Houston offer to pay over 9 million dollars for it.

NPR's Howard Berkes

National Public Radio’s ombudsman Alicia Shephard pondered an interesting conundrum this week. What do you do when you are covering elections in a state like Utah, where just about everybody can be classified as a “conservative”? How do you grade the distinctions in conservatism?

The network’s Howard Berkes decided to roll out the term “ultra-conservative” in order to describe the two candidates who vied for now deposed Republican Senator Bob Bennett’s seat. But this provoked a mildly irate listener response, quoted by Shephard.

“You called the two Republican candidates in Utah ‘ultra-conservatives,’” he wrote. “Does NPR ever call a candidate an ‘ultra-liberal’? Barbara Lee? Dennis Kucinich? Bernie Sanders? Or are only conservatives ‘ultra’ in NPR’s world?”

Not true, Shephard pushed back. In fact, NPR does apply the u-word to liberals, and  she cited various reports to back her claim.

“Given the context of this particular story, it was reasonable for Berkes to call Bennett’s opponents ‘ultra-conservatives’,” she wrote, “if only to help listeners outside Utah understand why that state’s Republicans were choosing a replacement for a veteran senator.”

But I think I’ve got a better term to use in this instance. How about we revive the word “reactionary”? The concept is defined by Wikipedia as so:

“Viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state (the status quo ante ) in a society.”

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Bye Bye 1-91 FM

Why do I always feel like I’m the bearer of bad news about college radio?

In another sad sign of the times, Clover Park Technical College in Tacoma, Washington has decided to cut costs by passing along control of its 51,000 watt college radio station KVTI to Washington State University’s Northwest Public Radio. As a result of this change, the formerly top 40 station known as I-91 FM began piping in classical music programming and NPR news on June 21st. An article in the Tacoma News-Tribune stated that:

“The new programming at 90.9 FM doesn’t require a person, let alone students, to operate the studio in Lakewood. WSU’s radio arm, Northwest Public Radio, is based in Pullman. It sends feeds to Clover Park and 14 other participating stations in Washington, Oregon and British Columbia.”

It’s really sad to see another college turning control of its radio station over to an outside entity, especially when the previous format seems to have been doing quite well. According to the Tacoma News-Tribune piece, Clover Park Technical College plans to eliminate its radio broadcasting program:

“The college also said it was paring back programs that offer less promising careers, and that radio broadcasting is struggling along with other media. ‘We can’t sit back and invest money in something that doesn’t have a strong future for students,’ Clover Park spokesman Shawn Jennison explained this week. ‘If a program is considered successful, you have to have more than a dozen students interested.’”

This is a comment sure to send chills down the spine of college radio DJs everywhere, as radio programs and radio stations are notorious for attracting a low percentage of students. Their corresponding value, however, isn’t necessarily linked to campus popularity. The article points that out in sharing the perspective of KVTI’s former station manager, program director and radio instructor John Mangan, who said that the station was extremely popular:

“Mangan…said even as the station counted down to its inevitable closure, it grew in popularity. Its audience peaked to an all-time high of 160,000 listeners per week over the winter, and hovered around 120,000 listeners when it closed this month. He said it also had plenty of local sponsorships and support from local businesses. And while the broadcast program had a 20-student maximum, 19 students were enrolled when the closure was announced last year. The last six students graduated this month. He estimates that more than 500 students enrolled in the program since 1982, and many went on to work at radio stations all over the country.”

I fear that more and more college stations may be heading in this direction, which unfortunately means that there will be fewer independent radio outlets on the air. When the same programming gets duplicated on a number of different stations, I think it’s an unfortunate loss for local communities.

I-91 FM A History from Martin Brockhaus on Vimeo.

source: Wikimedia commons

Since I wrote my last post on the calamitous state of Pacifica radio, various correspondents have complained that my figures on the network’s subscriber/staff elected board expenses were inaccurate. I roughly estimated them at “close to a million” since the organization has transitioned to an elected board regime.

“When we speak about these matters publicly, we should try to be accurate about the figures,” one Pacifica station KPFA local station board member lectured me.  “Pacifica does have financial stresses, but they are caused by many factors including structural operating deficits at several of the stations. We don’t help when we oversimplify or say things that are simply not true.”

This critic continued her quest for complex truth by blaming me for the chaos at a national board meeting that I didn’t even attend. Whatever. In any event, her post was useful, since it pointed to the network’s updated financial audits page (and Terry Goodman has some helpful annotations to my comments).

Sure enough, my guesstimate was way off the mark. The situation is much worse than I thought. Since the network began its process of democratization in 2002, by my arithmetic, Pacifica has spent $2,424,662 on its boards. And if the organization blows about the same sum that it did in 2007 on these wasteful and internally destructive elections, the figure will edge toward $3 million.

Here are the numbers with their accompanying line item descriptions:

Take a look at some of these numbers. Unbelievable. Nearly 400K in 2007. What on earth did Pacifica spend this on? A free chocolate truffle for every subscriber who voted? Single transferable voting fact finding trips to Australia? That probably would have been money better spent than the actual expenditures, which are not detailed in these audits.

In previous posts I’ve complained that board members spend most of their time on internecine politics and precious little on building up the organization. The 2008 audit says it all. Of that 377,977, the line item says 377,902 was spent on “management and general.”

How much was spent on “Fundraising and development”?

75 bucks.

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The Knight Foundation has taken a lead in funding grants for promising new ideas for journalism, in particular those that exploit opportunities in digital media and are local in focus. The Knight News Challenge Grant is providing $2.74 million in funding to twelve projects that aim to inform specific geographic communities. The winners were announced at the Future of News and Civic Media conference at MIT and this year two grants are going to radio organizations.

The PRX StoryMarket is a project that allows any person to pitch or help fund the production of a story for a local public radio station. When the amount of money raised for a particular story is sufficient then the local station can hire a professional journalist to produce it. Proposed by PRX CEO Jake Shapiro, The StoryMarket received a $75,000 challenge grant and is built on software developed for a 2008 challenge winner Spot.us, which uses a similar model for online news in four cities, including Los Angeles and Minneaplois. The project PRX is the Public Radio Exchange which is seven year-old online market for public radio content.

Public radio station WBUR in Boston received a $250,000 challenge grant to create a laboratory in a Boston courtroom that aims to establish best practices for digital court reporting. Called Order in the Court 2.0 the project’s courtroom will have a designated blogging area with wi-fi and the ability to stream court proceedings live. The project, headed by WBUR executive editor for new media, John Davidow, will also publish a daily docket on its website and develop a wiki for common legal terms.

Once again, it’s impossible not to notice that the innovation happening in radio is coming from non-commercial, and in this case, public radio. This segment of the radio industry readily embraced the internet while at the same time emphasizing local service. I’m glad to see the Knight Foundation recognize the fruitful potentials in the merger of this old media with new.

KZYX Signage. Photo by Jennifer Waits

Back in January when Matthew, Paul and I were listing off our favorite radio shows of all time, I pronounced my love for “Trading Time,” a locally-produced call-in swap show on community radio station KZYX out of Philo, California.

I’ve always found this show to be riveting since it provides a glimpse of everyday life in a small town. Callers to the show list off the items that they are hoping to sell or give away, and the hosts read additional items and services from lists emailed or faxed in to the station. One day a caller might be getting rid of some old tires, another day there could be chicken eggs for sale or the announcement of a ride needed to Ft. Bragg.

So, when I had another trip planned to Mendocino County, I relished the opportunity to get a glimpse of KZYX. Although there’s a sign for the station on Highway 128, the station is hidden from the road in a house on the edge of the woods near vineyards and a saw mill.

KZYX is interesting in that it is both a community radio station and a public radio station, airing programming created by local residents as well as syndicated shows from NPR and others. The day that I visited two weeks back, a local DJ was doing a world music show in which she was playing selections from Asia, but I also tuned in to the station when they were airing well-known public radio shows.

I’m always curious how stations such as KZYX figure out how to balance their programming schedules to satisfy a range of listeners, as I know that with expensive public radio programming, comes the pressure to both increase the number of listeners and the money collected during pledge drives in order to pay for the programs.

When I talked to KZYX General Manager John Coate, he said that national programming can be “polarizing” for listeners, pointing out that “a lot of people don’t want to hear music at all.” He said that if you look at the broad picture of radio, talk radio “outperforms” community radio, with community radio the “worst performing segment.” Yet with that said, said he was happy with the balance that his station provides (about half local programming, half syndicated) and pointed out that they truly see themselves as a resource for the local community, which didn’t have local radio before the station came along in 1989. John said, “We have to serve everybody, sort of like a partyline.” So, in addition to syndicated shows like “Fresh Air” and “All Things Considered,” local DJs curate their own music shows and host public affairs programming, including extensive coverage of the upcoming local elections in Mendocino County.

To read more about my trip to KZYX (with tales of encroaching helicopters, lizards, satellites, and cabooses), take a look at my post on Spinning Indie.

Free Press has a provocative new report on the state of public media and how to more adequately fund it. Many of the reform group’s proposals involve siphoning income from commercial station advertising revenue or Federal Communications Commission spectrum auctions. I’ve got an overview of the document up on Ars Technica, which has generated quite a few comments. They largely focus on the question of whether the government should get more involved in media—always a subject for heated debate.

I’m not inclined to hash that out here, but do wonder about one of the report’s smaller recommendations. A section of the piece titled “Restoring Public Media’s Heat Shield” focuses on the very legitimate concern that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting fails to protect public media from external political pressure.

“The current appointment process for leadership at the CPB is overly politicized. Presidential appointments govern the entire process — into which neither the public nor the core constituency of public media producers have any input. It also often leads to appointments as rewards for political support, rather than simple calls to service for qualified people, including those who have broadcasting or media experience.”

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Seattle, 23rd/Union area resident Jenny Barnes; photo by Inye Wokoma; source: KUOW-FM

An interesting new report on an interesting public radio experiment has just been released. The document is rather elaborately dubbed Spreading the Zing: Reimagining Public Media Through the Makers of Quest 2.0. Once you get past the title, it’s definitely worth a read.

The gist of the survey is a review of eight Corporation for Public Broadcasting funded radio/multimedia projects that have flourished at various public radio stations around the county. They were designed and administered by the Association of Independents in Radio as the Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0 competition.

These include Jenny Asarnow of KUOW-FM’s The Corner: 23rd and Union. “An installation across a city block located at the epicenter of Seattle’s historically African-American community that inspires citizen storytelling and engagement. Cell phone, radio, and Web technology combine to document, broadcast, capture, and archive the contemporary history of this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.”

The Corner is quite something, a collection of sounds, text, pictures, audio memories. Visiting the project made me nostalgic for a place I’ve never been to, and worried about its future. Spreading the Zing asks a really difficult question. How do we evaluate the success of this site? The study concludes:

“A new methodology must be developed for assessing multiplatform public media projects that combine television, radio, online and social media, mobile and other emerging platforms. This methodology should be distinguished from commercial impact assessment schemes in that it prioritizes assessment of public media’s core function—providing content, platforms, and trusted contexts that move users to act as engaged citizens.”

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My pal John Anderson at DIYmedia.net alerts us to a new group blog written by some fellow radio survivors who intend to hold public radio’s feet to the fire, called Keeping the Public in Public Radio (KTPIPR). Featuring the contributions of public radio supporters, authors and broadcasters, the site is covering the changing landscape of public radio which often mirrors commercial radio in emphasizing national programming and ratings over local service.

The site’s bloggers hailing from Boston and Austin are focusing on changes happening at the public stations in those cities, WGBH and KUT, respectively. Concerns over KUT, owned by the University of Texas, stem from July 2009 changes in which three long-time DJs had their roles reduced while the station’s playlist became more “structured.” More recently the site has been critically following plans for the station to take over the university’s on campus bar and music venue, the Cactus Café.

For WGBH complaints arise from the station’s December, 2009 decision to go all-talk, canceling long-running folk and blues programs. A growing priority on news and information programming has been happening at public radio stations nationwide for well over a decade, with many long-running local music programs coming to an end. Even back in 1997 when I attended the CPB’s Public Radio Program Directors conference the emphasis was on research indicating that moneyed listeners valued keystone syndicated programs like All Things Considered more than local programming, especially music. Since then the trend has only grown.

KTPIPR isn’t only focusing on Boston and Austin, it’s got at least four other stations on its radar for regular coverage, along with keeping a wide angle lens on the national scene. The site also takes aim at NPR for the network’s support of HD Radio, calling it the “Huge Debacle.”

KTPIPR has been going strong for about a month and a half. I’m always supportive of informed and critical coverage of radio issues, so I’m hoping the site’s authors can keep it up.

Broken Social Scene (source: NPR.org)

National Public Radio Music released on-demand streams for a couple of indie band’s new albums on Monday morning: Broken Social Scene’s Forgiveness Rock Record and The Hold Steady’s Heaven Is Whenever. The streams are available on NPR’s “Exclusive First Listen” series.

As I write this I’m listening to NPR’s stream of Broken Social Scene, a Canadian ensemble that went on hiatus for a while. I’m also wondering what made this band appeal to NPR’s music staff. My guess is that Broken reminds them of the Talking Heads just a bit. Certainly the band photo screams Talking Heads, as do some of the songs. But while Broken isn’t as original as the Heads, they’re certainly better musicians.

Meanwhile Hold Steady’s Heaven has a nice crossover sound, a hybrid of the later Beatles, Elvis Costello, and X.

NPR says that next Monday (April 26) it will stream three more album previews: a bunch of unreleased Kris Kristofferson songs, a new Josh Ritter album, and “the latest from indie-pop supergroup The New Pornographers”—the last no doubt part of NPR’s ongoing effort to stay edgy and risqué (or at least give it a try).