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.

Related posts:

1. The decade’s most important radio trends #11: Cash-strapped schools turn their backs on college radio
2. College Radio DJ Archetypes
3. College Station KVTI Hands Control over to Public Radio Group

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.”

Utah Senate seat contender Tim Bridgewater fit the reactionary description perfectly (he lost the nomination to his rival Mike Lee). Bridgewater’s issues page called for what I think would be the effective dismantling of Social Security and Medicare. Bridgewater is clever; he’s willing to keep both programs around for folks 55 and older, perhaps hoping that younger voters will be dumb enough to think that privatization will actually work.

But I’m left wondering what’s “conservative” about these positions? Medicare has been around for almost half a century; Social Security for three quarters. These are long established, decade old institutions. Why on earth is turning the security of Americans over to the same financial operations that give us sub-prime loans and derivative swaps a “conservative” stance? What’s being “conserved”?

Nothing, I think. Tim Bridgewater is really a reactionary—someone who wants to go back to the Las Vegas economic policies of long past times, like around 1928, or 1907, or 1893.

The truth is that it’s the “ultra-liberals” today who are really the conservatives, who want to conserve the welfare state concepts developed over the last fifty to 75 years.

So maybe NPR should start calling guys like Bridgewater “reactionaries,” and Congressional reps like Barbara Lee “conservatives.”

If that ever happens, I’ll start calling myself the Queen of England.

No related posts.

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.

Related posts:

1. The decade’s most important radio trends #11: Cash-strapped schools turn their backs on college radio
2. Chicago Public Radio’s Fundraising Antics
3. College Radio DJ Archetypes

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.

Out of control

And please, don’t tell me that these numbers only represent a small portion of Pacifica expenses. We’re talking about $2.4 million to an organization that lost over $4 million in revenue last year. We’re talking about a network that suffers from something far more severe than “financial stresses” and “structural operating deficits.”

I refer you to the comments of Pacifica’s financial auditor, offering his perspective to the Pacifica National Board’s audit committee via teleconference on March 22 of this year. Forward to the middle of the clip and note the tone of alarm in his voice:

“Quite frankly, we believe that your internal controls are atrocious. And I’m not mincing my words. You’ve got stations that act completely on their own,” he warned the PNB. “This organization is out of control.”

Stations don’t properly collect pledges, he noted. They don’t even keep adequate records of their subscribers. They don’t know how to use the organization’s computerized accounting programs. They don’t know how to keep track of station inventory, such as computers and pledge reward items. “You don’t count the inventory. You don’t control it. You don’t count it.”

Your subscriber pledge cards at WBAI, he lamented, “they’re kept in boxes. They’re kept around the place. They’re not maintained by program or by the time the pledges were made. . . . ” Personnel are allowed too much access to pledge cards. “Once a pledge card is made out . . . it should be locked up. This is an asset. It represents somebody’s name, telephone, address, credit card number. Those need to be controlled. That’s just like cash.” The fulfilled pledges aren’t even inputted into the network’s financial database system.

Feel free to listen to the rest of the horror show at your leisure. By the way, in 1999, prior to the democratization of Pacifica, the audit didn’t even have a “national board” category. It listed “conferences and meetings” at a little over $77,000, and the dissidents who constantly complained about Pacifica’s “corporatized” bureaucracy and finances called that a bloated figure.

Sorry

‘Whose fault is this?’ the auditor was eventually asked. “The finger has to be pointed at the Board of Directors,” he replied. “The Board of Directors need to make its employees accountable.”

Now I know what’s coming next. You’re all going to post comments blaming different factions for the mess. It’s all Justice and Unity’s fault. It’s all ListProg’s fault. It’s all Independents for Community Radio’s fault. It’s all People’s Radio’s fault. It’s all Concerned Listeners fault (sorry if I left your slate out; I can’t keep track of them any more).

You know what—just say it’s all Matthew Lasar’s fault, ok? I take full responsibility for everything bad that has happened so far. And I apologize. I’m truly sorry. In fact, I’m doing the Airplane Position as you read this post. Happy now?

But here’s the bottom line. How can a board system that has spent over a million bucks on itself just since 2007 (in an organization that collected a little over $12 million in revenue last year) possibly make anybody accountable for anything? Of course it can’t. There’s no chance that these elections are going to bring in a critical mass of people who can save this network from slipping down the drain.

That’s why, as a listener subscriber to KPFA in Berkeley, I’m not going to endorse any slate or even vote this year. There’s an old saying from the 1960s: “Don’t vote. It only encourages them.” In this case, I’m afraid that’s true. Pacifica urgently needs a board with the skills to can handle this mess. And it’s not going to get it through this process.

Voices of reason, resources, and influence beyond the organization, where are you? Speak now, before all is lost.

Related posts:

1. The decade’s most important radio trends: #14 Pacifica radio democratizes itself
2. Do community advisory boards protect public radio stations?
3. Radio Survivor’s Top Radio Shows – Matthew’s #3: Democracy Now!

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.

Related posts:

1. New study says “little or no local news” at most radio stations
2. DIY Radio hits Motown for Allied Media Conference
3. Freelance Reporter Explains How Radio Is Made

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.

Related posts:

1. Do community advisory boards protect public radio stations?
2. Turning “public radio” into “public media”
3. Wrapping up the decade in radio and looking forward to the decade ahead

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.”

Part of the Free Press cure for this problem is restructuring the CPB—curtailing the President’s power to just make appointments out of his (and hopefully someday her) hat. Here’s another section, concerning governance at community or school/college public radio stations:

“These stations often lack a community advisory board. Of course, even at the community-licensed stations where these boards are required by law, they can be largely symbolic and have little power to weigh in on programming or station decision-making. Though community advisory boards should serve as a mechanism to increase community oversight and public participation in public broadcasting, this is unfortunately not always the case. The legal framework that established the boards is vague and lacks specific definitions for the precise role and responsibility for them. This means that while some boards are very active, others meet rarely. The successful examples could serve as a model for stations to be more engaged in their communities.”

My concern with this complaint is that it assumes that there is an almost Rousseauean entity out there called “the public” or “the community” that, when consulted, will always serve up selfless suggestions about how to make a community or public radio station better.

Admittedly, my experiences around this issue stem from my involvement with the Pacifica radio stations, but I don’t think I’m alone in my skepticism. Lots of people who attend public media board meetings go there for self-interested reasons. They want some portion of the stations resources. They want a show on the station. Or they want access to the station’s air time. Or they’re a programmer who has some dispute with station management. Or they’re friends or allies with that programmer. Or they’re partisans in some local political dispute, and want to pressure the station to change its coverage of that issue.

I agree with Kathy Merritt that

“At their best, community advisory boards can play an invaluable role for stations by acting as a conduit for information, bringing it from corners of the community staff members don’t normally access and taking it back to a network of friends, colleagues and co-workers who might not hear about public radio otherwise. By providing input on programming, CABs can enhance stations’ efforts to connect with listeners.”

But pumping up the programming-related authority of CABs also comes with risks. These sort of boards can pressure stations to disconnect from their listeners by capitulating to small factions who have little interest in anything besides their own narrow agenda.

Free Press’s recommendation assumes that unhealthy “heat” can only come from top down. But it can also come from the bottom up. Let’s keep that in mind as we ponder giving community boards the “power to weigh in on programming or station decision-making.” How much power and weigh-in are we talking about here?

Related posts:

1. Lizards and Satellites: Community Public Radio Hybrid KZYX’s Station in the Woods
2. Turning “public radio” into “public media”
3. Democratized Pacifica radio has spent over $2.4 million on its boards

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.”

Lots of stuff for thought here. Through the 1980s and 1990s, the CPB tethered both public and community radio funding to Arbitron ratings. As public radio becomes public media, that policy is obviously challenged.

Publicly supported radio has always struggled to find a system of accountability that avoided two pitfalls. The first pitfall is a system that links the public radio project solely to a metric of market success. Such a formula will invariably filter out concerns and themes that don’t fit into the market, but whose associated voices we need to hear.

The second pitfall are methods of accountability that are self-fulfilling. They identify the participants of the project and the project itself as worthy, and so conclude the results must be worthy too. Their advocates are often afraid to conclude anything else. These sort of systems have always spawned and perpetuated mediocrity.

I wonder whether public broadcasting has ever solved this problem, or ever will. Anyway, Spreading the Zing is a good start.

Related posts:

1. Do community advisory boards protect public radio stations?
2. Lizards and Satellites: Community Public Radio Hybrid KZYX’s Station in the Woods
3. The decade’s most important radio trends: #14 Pacifica radio democratizes itself

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.

No related posts.

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).

Related posts:

1. Noncommercial Leaps Past Commercial with Public Radio Player 2.0
2. A letter from Radio France