Protecting Your College Radio Station from a Sale

The past 18 months have not been kind to college radio. Their budgets battered by the Great Recession, we've seen colleges and universities experiencing a sea change in their attitudes towards their radio licenses.  Instead of being viewed as something that would never be sold, some are electing to sell with little to no public warning to the students or station staff, and sometimes even when a station was in good fiscal health and was a source of prestige for the college.

As of this writing, we've seen:  KUSF (University of San Francisco), KTRU (Rice University), WRVU (Vanderbilt Student Communications, at Vanderbilt University), WNAZ (Trevecca Nazarene University), WDUQ (Duquesne University), WLIU (Long Island University), and KCMP (St. Olaf College) just to name a few.   And that doesn't include several colleges who LMA'd (Local Management Agreement) their college station to another entity, effectively removing students or local involvement from the station in the process.

For years, many colleges have long looked at their student radio stations as, generally, something they'd simply rather not deal with: out of sight, out of mind.  That's understandable; it costs a lot to have a station, and it benefits a relatively small (if not tiny) percentage of the student body.  Compared to other student activities, college radio tends to be fiendishly expensive.  And unlike most other activities, a licensed station has the potential to incur substantial fiscal penalty (i.e. FCC fines) and the ability to potentially embarrass the college on a very public stage.

Regardless, for decades, most colleges kept their radio stations.  Now they're selling them.  What's changed?

The Power of FM over AM

Wow. This article from the Boston Globe really brings it home.

We've all known for a few years now that AM Radio, as a medium, was slipping badly. Traditional cornerstones of AM formats...sports and talk...were losing market share, and several major AM signals were electing to simulcast on an FM station and seeing positive results. At the same time, we're also seeing a lot of traditional AM formats bypassing AM altogether and starting on FM, also with positive results.

One place near and dear to my heart where this has been playing out is Boston, where many, many years of market dominance by WEEI 850AM (sports) and WBZ 1030AM (news) are radically shifting. WBZ still has a killer signal; one of the best AM signals in the USA, actually...famous for being heard in 38 states...and able to hurl almost 100,000 watts across an AM-friendly saltwater path right into Boston. Even so, WBZ has seen increasing competition from local (and national) NPR powerhouse WBUR and, more recently, WGBH's flip to mostly-NPR-news, too.

But it's WEEI that's the most eye-opening. After two years of losing substantial market share to upstart SportsHub 98.5 (aka WBZ-FM) despite WEEI having the Red Sox games...Entercom finally killed off Mike 93.7FM and simulcast WEEI on the 93.7 signal.

Little Things - Showing Appreciation for Your Staff

One of the trophies

It's amazing how much the littlest things can have such a big impact on student volunteers. Two years now at WHWS I've given our student volunteers...the ones who have done more than "just" been an on-air DJ...little trophies. I've meant to get around to holding real "superlative" contests where all the students can vote on fake titles for each trophy, but never really did. Still, I just make up silly titles, run them past a few folks for input, and order up the trophies from an online custom trophy maker. I won't name it because you can Google it and find a dozen that'll work.

The trophies aren't terribly fancy; they just have a little plastic microphone or a clear plastic "star" with a mic logo. They cost about $3 or $4 each, and the name plate is fully customized. You can use real titles but I thought "Ambulance Chaser (Newscaster)" and "Master of All She Surveys (Program Director)" added the appropriate level of cheekiness and so far all the recipients have agreed.

What's really remarkable is the impact they have. To a one, all the recipients (and there's about 15 to 20 each year) have LOVED the trophies and thanked us profusely. Perhaps they're just all really good actors, but I prefer to believe that little gestures of appreciation can go a long way.

One of the trophies, as
modeled by WHWS PD
Vienna Farlow

It also helps a great deal because, at a volunteer radio station, the primary driving factor for most of your station's volunteers is ego. They're feeding their ego by "ruling the airwaves", and little recognitions of that feed it even more. This is a good thing! It confirms that they should remain involved and sets an example for others.

It doesn't have to be big, although big is certainly good...going for an MTV "Woodie" award is something that your station and its volunteers can be proud of, but it's also a nice line on a resume for your graduating seniors, too! But even little things like trophies, certificates of recognition, custom t-shirts/hats, and like, are all good...and can be done quickly and cheaply!

Scott Adams TwoFold Test for Public Radio

Okay, Adams isn't really talking about public radio in his excellent blog post today. But the lessons from it can certainly be applied to public radio. Granted, public radio is often far more generous (than commercial media) in "giving time" to shows to let them find an audience and succeed. But I also think that a lot of pubradio shows use that as an excuse to continue bad practices. Think about Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me's wild success today. A lot of people forget that for years the show was entirely produced in the studio, and usually the panelists were scattered across the country. Despite the smart concept, clever writing, and generally excellent staffing choices...the show kinda sucked. The structure worked against having humor, instead of for it. But add that live audience and make so the panelists/comedians can play off the audience, and each other, and you have the hit show WWDTM is today.

On the other hand, execution is important. Fair Game with Faith Salie passed the "Two-Fold Test" brilliantly: it was The Daily Show for public radio. You say that, and immediately people start wondering exactly how that idea would work, so they ask questions. Bingo, you're golden. Unfortunately, I don't think Fair Game ever came close to matching TDS at having rapier-sharp wit while still being incredibly funny. To be fair, it's tough to match some of the best comedy writers in the country...but I think Fair Game also tried too hard to be "a public radio show" in that there wasn't a live audience, and they mixed in too much music and banter to fill up an hour.

Still, I'm willing to wager that a major reason Fair Game got greenlit and got at least some affiliates was precisely because it passed the "Two-Fold Test" so well. That's important, because another crucial aspect here, in part because pubradio is more generous in "giving time", is that there's precious little room on most stations' broadcast schedules for any new programming...so your show needs to succeed at the "Two-Fold Test" if you're ever going to convince a Program Director to give you a shot. If you can't explain your show in one sentence and immediately pique his/her interest, you're doomed.

And yes, that might just mean that your show concept simply isn't going to work.

Below is the blog post in its entirety. If you want the comments, too, check out the permalink.

---

QUALITY FOLLOWS POPULARITY

Feb 13, 2009 General Nonsense | Notify

The common notion about entertainment is that the better the quality, the bigger the audience. There's some truth to that. But what I find more interesting is that it works the other way too: You need popularity before you have the luxury of developing quality.

There are plenty of examples of popularity creating quality. The first season of The Simpsons, for example, was awful in terms of quality. The writing and animation were primitive. The voice actors hadn't found their groove yet. But because it was so different - an adult cartoon with an edge - it gained an immediate huge audience, mostly from curiosity and buzz. This audience allowed them to stay on the air, develop their show through practice, and hire highly talented writers. Within a few seasons The Simpsons became arguably one of the best TV shows ever aired.

The TV show Friends had a similar path. The first few episodes were awful in terms of writing and acting. But because the actors had charisma, and the concept of young, single friends was appealing, the ratings were immediately high and the cast and creators had time and money to develop it into a phenomenon. Quality followed popularity.

Dilbert was a bit like that too. The first few years of Dilbert were so poorly drawn and written it seems a miracle it found a home in any newspapers at all. But there was something different about it, and people saw just enough potential that I was given the luxury of years to learn how to draw (better) and learn how to write for my audience.

You can see this phenomenon work the other way too. Lately I've been watching on Hulu.com a cancelled TV series called Firefly. The show is part science fiction, part western, part action, part comedy. That makes it nearly impossible to explain, and evidently harder to market. When it originally aired on TV, I never saw a commercial for it or a mention of it. Yet in my opinion it was one of the best TV shows aired, and that was its first season right out of the gate. Quality wasn't enough to find a mass audience. It needed the curiosity factor, or some other appeal to get an audience.

Entertainment gets a chance to find an audience only if the concept is so simple it can be understood in a few words. Examples:

Friends: It's about some young, single friends

The Simpsons: cartoon about a dysfunctional family

Dilbert: Comic about a nerd and his dog

Garfield: About a cat

When you find an exception to the simplicity rule, it often proves the point. For example, Seinfeld was famously "about nothing." That should have been a recipe for failure, and indeed it had poor ratings for the first few dozen shows. I forget the details, but somehow it ran below the radar at the network because it was financed or produced in a different division than usual. That difference allowed it to stay on the air and develop quality, and an audience, while other shows with low ratings came and went.

So here is the key learning. If you are planning to create some business or other form of entertainment, you will need quality at some point to succeed. But what is more important than quality in the beginning is some intangible element that makes your project inherently interesting before anyone has even sampled it. That initial audience will give you the luxury of time to create quality.

I have a twofold test for whether something can obtain instant popularity and thus have time to achieve quality:

1. You must be able to describe it in a few words.

2. When people hear about it, they ask questions.

I saw this at work with my restaurant. We recently started what we call after hours dancing. (See how easily explained it is?) And as soon as we started talking about the idea, everyone had lots of questions. Was it live music or a DJ? What kind of music? What time does it end? Is there a cover charge? And so on. Rarely did anyone say, "That's nice. Good luck with it." Something about the idea makes people curious. And sure enough, it has been a solid success with no advertising, just word of mouth. And this immediate audience has allowed us to improve on it every week. Quality followed popularity.

How to Produce a Show for Public Radio

A little while ago I had a rough draft of an article on "how to produce a show for public radio". This wasn't a guide to making good content; it's assumed that your content is interesting and compelling already. If it's not, you're kinda hosed no matter what.

Instead, this was a guide for dealing with common...and I mean very common...mistakes that a lot of public radio producers make on a regular basis. Things like:

• The three things every station's program director looks for when evaluating a show.
• Why station breaks are important, and how to structure them.
• How to market your show to different stations.
• Having the proper mindset for national vs. local
• ...and more!

A lot of the things I talk about are very little things. Things that are pretty obvious to anyone who's worked at a radio station on the production side of things. But, strangely, so many shows get them painfully wrong. Quite possibly because a lot of producers have never worked, or haven't worked in a long time, in radio production. And yes, that's another thing I recommend: try and sit in on a board-operator's shift and see what little things make their lives easier!

Anyways, I finally got around to cleaning up the article, tightening the prose a little, and sending it over to Transom.org. Hopefully they'll post it. But until then, here's the article in complete form. Enjoy!

---

NOW AND THEN, a producer will ask me the eternal question:

“How can I get more stations to air my show?”

I’ve asked that question of several stations’ Program Directors, myself, and now that I run a public radio station, it’s a question I have to ask of myself when judging a given show that wants to be added to our lineup on WEOS.

What's the answer? Well, there is no one answer. And there is no magic formula for success. There’s always bribery, I suppose, but that’s illegal (technically known as “payola”) so I wouldn’t recommend it. On the legal side of things, the best I can offer is a guideline based on both what I have heard, and what I myself use as criteria.

For the purposes of this essay, I'm going to assume that your show's actual content is interesting, compelling, and relevant. If your show doesn't have those qualities, nothing in this essay will help. But lots of shows have those qualities and still can't get on the air. Even shows that would help fill a niche that a station, or stations, should want to fill. In such cases, hopefully my essay will help.

Here are the three most common things I hear from Program Directors in what they're looking for when evaluating a show:

1. That the show has been on the air for at least 3 to 5 years. Preferably twice that.
2. That the show is already on several affiliate stations. Carriage in at least one or two Top 10 markets is an unspoken requirement, although most PD’s prefer to see at least half the Top 10 markets carrying your show.
3. That the show has a proven track record of garnering audience…and, by extension, fundraising donations…for the stations that air it.

Notice a theme? They’re all Catch 22’s! It’s very hard to stay on the air for more than a year or two without a lot of affiliates to begin with; affiliates that won’t touch you until you’ve been around for longer than that. It’s also damned hard to get into a Top 10 market’s station unless you’ve already got lots of affiliates to “prove your worthiness”. And how can you possibly demonstrate that you’ll get a particular station more audience unless you’re already a show carried across the station with universal appeal?

Why such impossible goals?

Well, it may seem unfair to the show producer, but to the program director it makes a lot of sense. First off, every PD out there is constantly getting offers from upstart show producers begging them to air their show. They need a system to quickly weed out any show that won't make the grade for any reason.

Second, most PD’s are incredibly risk-averse people. The slightest change to their lineup can cause howls of outrage from listeners, which can damage ratings, hurt fundraising, and lose underwriters. Yikes! Your show needs a huge potential reward to counterbalance those potential risks.

Start with the Fundamentals: Four Main Rules

With these Catch-22’s in mind, here are the four main rules to guide your efforts. Bear in mind that there is no way “around” these Catch-22’s, just ideas you can use to better keep your show going as you work you way past them.

• First and Foremost: Understand that Your Show is a BUSINESS. Plan to spend money on this. It used to cost over $100,000 to successfully launch a show and run it for one year. Today it can be done for a fraction of that, but that's still hundreds, if not a few thousand, dollars. It can be done cheaper, but it will reflect in the quality of the product; PD's don't want cheap. They want shows that demonstrate earning potential. You'll need to find a sponsor or two, and ideally a grant from a sympathetic foundation.
• Start Small: College & Community Radio. Volunteer for lousy airshifts and for grunt work around the station to work your way up. You'll have fewer listeners, but it's better than none, and you're likely to have a lot of freedom to fine-tune your show. Start in April or May, volunteer to take shifts in the summertime when there's no students and airshifts to fill.
• Act Big: Style, Website & Promotion. Not only is it written into the NPR Charter that their sound must be of the highest quality, but with today's cheap computers and digital recorders, you've got no excuse! Don't cut corners, don't settle for "good" – your show should sound "GREAT!" Anything less is giving PD's an excuse to ignore you. Also, your website is your first impression to most PD's, so it should look sharp and work perfectly. If you're not a professional web developer, pay to have one build your site. Get a professional URL like www.yourshowname.com (buy the .net and .org as well). Your e-mail should be yourname@yourshowname.com – not yourname521@gmail.com. Get a dedicated phone line for show business. Have a podcast and a show archive. Make sure it's very easy to hear the most recent shows. Have a collection of your five best episodes. Have a page devoted to what stations the show is on / where it can be heard. Have a bio page. If, and only if, you have the time to maintain and moderate it, have a blog where your listeners can interact with you and with each other.
• Talk is Cheap: Get Something Produced! It's easy to make a show proposal. It's much harder to actually produce a quality show every day/week for a year. PD's respect the latter, and not the former, so focus on actually producing something. I mentioned a podcast – this is the godsend to the new and struggling show. If you've got 100,000 subscribers, every PD will, at the least, give some serious thought to you.

You're Not Selling Out – You're Buying In

Again, your show is a business. That means you are a salesman, the product is your show, and the buyers are Program Directors. The fundamentals of salesmanship work just as well here. You need to research your buyer, network your way into personal connection, meet on terms where the buyer wants to buy, and then sell the product.

Lots of producers mail CD's with info packets to stations. This just doesn't work. There's no personal connection. Ditto for cold calling; the buyer's not in a place where he/she wants to buy.

Obviously a personal connection, like family, friends or colleagues, is ideal. But you can't count on that, so I recommend professional gatherings: public meetings of a station advisory board, a station-hosted/funded dinner or similar social gathering, or – most ideal – a professional conference like PRPD (Public Radio Program Directors: www.prpd.org). In all cases, remember, to sell your show, you don't "sell the show"…you have a conversation. You build a personal connection. If you think the PD has a bit of a teaching instinct in them, talk to them about what's the best way to run a radio station. Give them a chance to brag a little.

Another obvious tactic is to volunteer at the station, perhaps answering the phones during pledge week. It's a good learning experience, and you'll meet some good people to know. But this tactic is a little TOO obvious; don't push it too hard because every PD knows it and looks for it.

Budgeting for Success

I mentioned budget a moment ago. It used to be completely impossible to do a quality public radio show in your spare time. Today, it's still impossible, but it's easy to think that you can. Granted, the first few weeks or months, you probably can do it. But after that, you'll find you need at least a few dozen hours a week to find stories, book guests, prep interviews, conduct interviews, edit the interviews, and assemble a completed show. And that doesn't include time to manage your finances, solicit sponsors, write grants, and market the show to potential affiliates!

The obvious answer is to use the show to make money, but as you might imagine, this isn't easy. It is, however, essential…and not just for your sanity. One major gauge a PD will use in evaluating your show is whether or not you're making money off it. Or at least earning enough to support yourself. The logic is that a show that has earnings is a show that has demonstrable value, and that value will apply to any station that airs it.

There are two tracks you can take here:

• You get the ball rolling with a few months' worth of shows, and then approach a local station about hiring you to produce the show for them. This means you get a "home station" with facilities to produce the show in. Presumably, it also means a steady paycheck with benefits. Perhaps most importantly, it means you have someone to handle your show's finances (sponsors, grants, etc) while you worry about producing the show. The downside is that the station now owns the show, not you. That means you might have a lot of control over it, but not the final say. In fact, you'll want to be very careful in structuring a contract lest you find your show "taken away" from you and yourself replaced!
• You maintain total ownership. This means it's entirely up to you to produce the show, market the show and manage the show. You'll have to do all the work to solicit sponsors, and all the work to apply for (and manage) any grants you can get, and all the work trying to convince stations to carry your show! The upside is that you get final say on what goes into your show, what direction it takes, and how it's managed. You also enjoy all the profits, assuming there are some. The downside is that all the risk is on you, and you have much less stability.

No matter what route you take, it doesn't hurt to be knowledgeable about how to raise funds. Here's a couple of quick tips to get started:

• Grants.gov: Don't rely on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; they primarily fund existing programs. Instead, go to www.grants.gov – it's a very comprehensive listing of all the potential grant-givers out there. Be prepared to do a lot of research and fill out a lot of paperwork.
• Colleges/Universities: Lots of colleges like public radio projects, especially if they have a program/curriculum that naturally relates to your show. Be careful, though: don't pull an end-run around any radio station the college may own!
• Local Businesses: The ideal is a national company whose headquarters is local to you. Consider that many underwriters are looking for a "halo effect" by associating with public radio, so target industries with lots of money and a need for better public relations. Chemical companies, financial institutions, etc.

Plan for your show to take at least two, probably five, years before you have enough affiliates and listeners to be self-perpetuating. Budget accordingly, including a salary for yourself and – quite possibly – additional staff. The US Small Business Association (www.sba.gov) can be a very helpful tool to manage your growth. And invest in a good accountant – the rules for independent non-profits can be very complex. You don't want to waste tons of time fiddling with accounting that you need to put into making a better show.

All in all, remember that your successful show is ultimately a successful business – you'll want to treat it as such.

Square Pegs and Round Holes: Methods to the Producing Madness

So far I’ve outlined things you can do to get affiliates that are outside of the show itself. Now I’ll delve more into ways you can tailor your show to better improve your chances of convincing PD’s that you’re worth it.

As a producer, you no doubt have strong feelings about the content of your show. How it should sound. What tone you want to set. What details are important, nay – critical! These "little things" are what will make your show stand out. What'll make it irresistible! What will achieve the nirvana of the "driveway moment?"

To answer those questions, I have three words for you: GET OVER YOURSELF!

While having a strong "voice" is important, don't get so wrapped up in the details that you overlook some core values that any PD is going to be looking for in your show. Instead, recognize the "big things" that set the "ground rules" for your details. First and foremost is learning to think like a national show producer.

National vs. Local – Having the Proper Mindset

This is trickier than it sounds, but there are only two kinds of shows out there: a show for just one station, and a show for thousands of stations.

By this, I mean that when it’s just one station, you can espouse that "localism" that everybody says is the salvation of radio. You can mention local names, places, and foods. You can local points of interest or politics or people or businesses, upcoming events, local or regional news items, etc. And, of course, it's no problem to mention things like the call letters of your station, or its broadcast frequency, or to talk about what show is coming up next. It's all good, because it's all part of the "local service" of that one station.

But if you air on just ONE other station, somewhere else in the country? Guess what: you can't talk about ANY of that! If you're in Boston, talking about Boston issues…your sole other affiliate in Wichita is going to be high pissed. Because Wichitonians don't give a damn about Boston issues; they care about issues that matter to them! When you’re a national show, you have to stay national, while making the national local for everyone in the country. Not an easy task!

The biggest influence here is your show's topics. When it's just one station, you have the liberty of making your show’s topics about things that interest that station’s local interests. When you’re national, your show has to be about things that everyone in the whole country might be interested in hearing about. This is not necessarily bad, not even necessarily limiting, but it is something you have to be aware of and plan for.

And don't forget local community standards! You have to make sure that your show meets not just the local standard of interest for every local community across the country…it has to meet the local standard of decency, too. This is important in today’s obscenity- and indecency-crazed media landscape. Programming that wouldn’t cause New Yorkers to bat an eye might cause locals in some areas to storm the local affiliate with torches and pitchforks!

You MUST be time-neutral.

Your first station may air your show on Saturdays at 8pm. What if the next station airs it on Fridays at 12 midnight? Or the following Tuesday at 11am? If you record on Friday, and talk about a concert coming up on Saturday, it sounds really bad for the station that airs you on Sunday.

This is not difficult to deal with, but you must be aware of it. So each of your episodes has to have a "freshness date"; a limit to how timely the content can be.

Granted, you can often control…sometimes to a fairly strict degree…how long your affiliates have to air an episode after you release it. But don’t be too strict or affiliates won’t air you at all. A good rule of thumb is that you have to allow stations air an episode at least three days after you release it. The full week is preferable.

The bottom line is that making references to events occurring at specific dates and times is risky in general – don’t do it unless it’s already occurred or is happening at least a few weeks in the future.

This concept also extends to specific times during the day. For example, don’t say things like “It’s twenty-two minutes after five’o’clock.” Instead, you have to say instead like “It’s twenty-two minutes past the hour.” Don't say "Good morning" or "Good afternoon" if you can avoid it…and remember to remind your interview guests to not say it, either.

Manage your brand identity.

I was rather flippant about the "little details" in the beginning of this section, but they can and do matter in a certain way. They form the icing on the cake…if the cake is really good, then icing makes it perfect. If the cake is a cow pie, no amount of icing is going to cover that nasty taste!

First off, you'll want to have a distinct “sound"…so distinct that someone can tune to your show in the middle of a sentence and, within a few seconds, be pretty sure that they’re listening to your show. This can be any one of several things:

• A consistent accent, cadence or style of speech by your host.
• A set theme music to begin & end the show. Plus variations of it to play during/into breaks.
• Pay a musician friend to record something original for you that you own all the rights to. You really, really don't want to deal with trying to get the rights to someone else's music for your show's theme.
• A consistent "format". For example, Free Speech Radio News always begins exactly the same way. They have distinctive and consistent theme music, and within the first 20 seconds they always say "It's Free Speech Radio News for Monday, January 6^th. From KPFK in Los Angeles, I'm Aura Bogado. Today in the news…" Obviously they update the date, call letters, city and host as needed, but the format always remains the same.
• Consistent elements within the show. Every Friday, Marketplace has a roundup on the week's news with the same financial analyst. On Point frequently has Jack Beatty and he always fills the same role of "Senior News Analyst". This American Life always has several "Acts" that the show is broken into. Car Talk always has "The Puzzler" and ends every show with the list of goofy staff names. And the mother of all consistent show elements: Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me always has "Who's Carl This Time", "Not My Job", "Listener Limerick Challenge" and "Lightning Fill in the Blank", among others. These structures provide a framework that breeds familiarity and comfort with your listening audience.

Break transitions should be elegant, not rushed.

Have good transitions in and out of your breaks. It's surprising how many shows do this badly, despite the potential for the ultimate disaster: listener tune-out. Think about it, you're telling your listeners that they're going to be forced to listen to something they don't want to (a break, probably with underwriting spots) and hope they stick around. Guess what, lots of times they don't…not even for a lousy 60 seconds. Why? Because shows don't give them enough reason to stick around!

A good break starts roughly 30 seconds before the actual cutaway. It has a gentle transition out of whatever the actual conversation is, and then it has a bit of a forward promo to tease the listener with what's coming up after the break. As in: give them an incentive to stay! Also, there's usually an action item of some kind...for more info about tonight's topic, go to our website www.myamazingshow.com or something like that...and then a clean end with 0.5 to 1.0 seconds of silence for the cutaway.

After the break, it’s the same thing in reverse: a bit of silence for the cutaway, then say what the show is, who you are, who your guest is, what today's topic is, and any action item for listeners to get involved (adjust as needed for live or delayed shows).

Endings – the icing on the icing of the cake.

Similarly, have a good, smooth wrap-up at the end. It's astounding how many shows do this badly. They don't leave enough time at the end for everything they subsequently try and shove in way too much information. It sounds incredibly rushed – even incoherent – and leaves the listener feeling disoriented, like a car driving at highway speeds suddenly slamming on the brakes.

Naturally, the exact way to do an ending is going to depend on your show…but if you time most “good” shows, you’ll notice that the entire wrap-up lasts about 60 to 90 seconds. That includes:

1. Getting the guest to stop talking gracefully.
2. Back-announcing: thanking the guests and giving their names, job titles and – if they’re musicians or authors, the titles of their latest album or book.
3. Forward-promoting the next episode’s topic, sometimes with a short actuality/quote.
4. Credits / “Our staff includes…”
5. Any underwriting spots.
6. Final goodbye: “I’m Joe Schmo, thanks for listening to My Amazing Radio Show, we’ll see you tomorrow/next week.”
7. 3 to 5 seconds (at least) of the theme music playing in the clear as the show ends.

A lot of that total time depends on how much time you need to get a guest to stop talking, ideally without it sounding like you’re cutting them off. That can be difficult with some folks, like politicians who…as a rule…will keep talking pretty much until you make them stop. But besides politicians, if you budget for at least 10 to 20, or even 10 to 30 seconds to let a guest finish a thought, you’ll be in good shape to gracefully step in and start the process of ending the episode.

On that same note, here's a hint: don't ever say to a guest "We've only got 10 seconds left, but you get the last word!" No guest ever knows how to sum anything up in 10 seconds, and it almost always sounds lame or ends up with the host cutting off the guest mid-sentence.

How much time you need to get the guest to stop talking should be balanced against however much back-announce (names, job titles, etc) you can / want to put in there. Less guest talking means more back-announce and vice versa.

As for credits…well, I’m not a huge fan of employee credits. I'm not against showing the love for your peeps, mind you. It’s because these days, a show’s staff is so huge you can’t possibly get them all in. My suggestion is that if you can’t do it all within 15 seconds…and without sounding rushed…then don’t do any credits at all. If people really wanna know who works on your show, they’ll go to the website. And if you really feel like you need to reward your employees, then pay them more. J

What about underwriting? Well, Marketplace has arguably the most sophisticated method of weaving underwriting in so that it’s neither obnoxious, nor is it at the end where a listener has already “tuned out” (either figuratively or literally). But it’s not easy to achieve Marketplace’s extensive production values, so I’d just put it in somewhere near the credits if it’s only 10 – 20 seconds worth. If you have more underwriting than that (and that’s a good thing) then consider structuring the ending of the main show so that it comes 10-30 seconds early and then put in 10-30 seconds of underwriting to fill out the remainder of the clock. Most NPR shows follow this model, with Frank Tavares’ distinctively neutral voice doing all the national underwriting spots.

Techie Stuff…That's Not Too Techie

I haven't addressed the technical aspects of producing a show, because those are addressed in the companion article to this one. But I will touch on a few things:

Make it easy for stations to get your show!

If nothing else, have a podcast of your show in a broadcast-quality MP3 or MP2 audio file. 128kbps mono / 256kbps stereo, 44.1kHz sampling rate, 16 bits. Pay a few bucks and get a good, reliable podcast service…don't go cheap here, if your show isn't available when stations need it – they will drop you like a hot potato if you miss just one show.

Personally, I would recommend you also distribute via the Public Radio Exchange (www.prx.org) as it implies professionalism and is commonly used in the public radio world. Similarly, if you can afford, distribute through the ContentDepot satellite system…it makes life for PD's much easier, and that's a good thing! (www.prss.org)

Timing is Everything!

In today's age of computer-based audio editing (e.g. Protools, Adobe Audition, Audacity, etc) there is no excuse for not have precise timing in your show. Your show must always be the exact same length (I strongly recommend either 59:00 or 29:00 minutes, exactly) and your breaks should also be an exact length (either 30, 60 or 90 seconds). While technically not required, I also recommend you set your breaks to be a fixed times every week. (see the standard NPR clocks for shows like Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered or Living on Earth) "Floating breaks", that are a fixed length but can occur at varying times every week, are generally a pain in a Program Director's ass. Remember, you're trying to be as PD-friendly as possible!

When it comes to timing your segments and show, be as anal as possible. More than likely an unattended computer is going to be playing your show, and computers have little ability to correct for something being too long or too short…even being a half-second off can sound really bad if the computer cuts you off mid-word.

Make it easy for stations to automate your show!

A byproduct of the ContentDepot system that virtually all NPR affiliates use to get their programming is that it's very easy for a station to automate a feed. You can use this to your advantage, even if you don't distribute via ContentDepot.

Think of your entire show as sequential segments. Each segment is a specific length of time, that when taken as a whole, will add to either 59:00 or 29:00 in length. Depending on the "clock" you decide to emulate, he breakdown will be something like this:

1. 00:00 – 01:00 (01:00) Program Billboard
2. 01:00 – 06:00 (05:00) Newscast Hole
3. 06:00 – 06:30 (00:30) Newscast Break
4. 06:30 – 18:00 (12:30) Program A
5. 19:00 – 20:00 (01:00) Break 1
6. 20:00 – 38:30 (18:30) Program B
7. 38:30 – 40:00 (01:30) Break 2
8. 40:00 – 59:00 (19:00) Program C

So that's eight total segments. Accordingly, in your audio editing software, you'll want to create a total of NINE audio files. The eight individual segments, plus one file that is the entire show.

This way you have a very automation-friendly version of the show; stations that choose to automate will just load the Program Billboard, plus A, B and C. They'll substitute their own audio files (with promos, underwriting, and various other announcements) for the Break segments, and their files will be timed to match the length.

You also have the whole-show-in-one-file version, which is much friendlier to non- or lightly-automated stations that may not have a robust automation system. Or they may just have a live DJ playing the file manually.

Newscast "hole" – Programming or No Programming?

A constant dilemma is whether or not to put "real" programming in the newscast break. A lot of NPR stations will probably just ignore it and broadcast the top of the hour newscast from NPR. So you may just want a simple instrumental music clip (no vocals) that runs for exactly five minutes. But not every station will be an NPR station, so those stations will air a lame music bed every time they broadcast your show!

This is a personal question more than anything else. If you have the time and inclination to produce "disposable" content every week…a commentary or simple newscast of your own….then it's better than just doing music. But be prepared for a lot of stations to not air that part.

Audio File Formats

This one's easy: emulate ContentDepot by using the PRX MP2 encoder, part of the "Member Tools" available for free download here:

http://www.prx.org/tools-and-resources/prx-tools

It's free, dirt-simple, and spits out a pristine MP2 audio file that's exactly what every NPR station can use. Fortunately, most automation systems at non-NPR stations can also play MP2's, or easily convert them into a format they can handle.

Why MP2's instead of MP3's, AAC or WAV's or some other format? MP2's are far more resistant than MP3's or AAC to cascading algorithms, which means the final product tends to sound better on the air. WAV's sound great, but the filesize is prohibitively large. MP2 might be an older technology, but NPR has demonstrated that it's still the best balance of options.

Don't Operate in a Vacuum – Get Feedback from Stations!

Since there's no shortage of people telling you how you do your show…whether you want them to or not…you'd think getting feedback from affiliates is easy. But for some reason, it's not. In fact, it's like pulling teeth.

Don't wait for stations to tell you what they don't like about your show; usually they won't. Instead, they'll just drop you from their lineup with no warning. And there's little chance of ever getting back, so be proactive! Follow these steps:

1. First and foremost: listen to your show. Listen to different affiliates (via webcast) each week so you can hear how they're making use of your breaks, what underwriting they run near it, how they're promoting it, and how it sounds with their audio processing. Also, it helps make sure they're airing it when you think they are.

2. Subscribe to these listservs (Google them to get instructions on how) and make sure you post something relevant now and then so people know you're there. If you try something different (new break structure, new audio processing, new equipment) make sure to mention it and ask for feedback.
1. DUBnet, for announcements/feedback on satellite impairments.
2. PUBtech, public radio engineers. VERY useful community to be a part of. When there's a technical problem with a show, it's often discussed here.
3. NFCB, Nat'l Federation of Community Broadcasters (if you're a member).
4. AskCBI/College Broadcasters, Inc (if you have college affiliates).
5. PUBradio, public radio managers. Not quite as useful as PUBtech, but still very handy.
6. Radio-Info.com's local/regional discussion boards (not technically a listserv, but it's the same idea)

3. If you have a local affiliate station, ask to volunteer there in some fashion…ideally in a way that lets you interact with the production/operations staff. That way you have a direct connection to the people who are broadcasting your show.

4. Ask your affiliates what automation, if any, they use to broadcast you. Learn more about how those systems work from the manufacturer. Download demos, read support forums, etc.

Even with these steps, you often will have to ask repeatedly for feedback from affiliates. But at least this way, if they feel they have a problem, they'll have an avenue for letting you know long before it gets to the "drop the show" point. Plus, you're putting yourself in their shoes, which hopefully will help you recognize problems before the affiliate does!

National Affiliation with NPR, PRI, APM, etc

The goal for most shows is to get "picked up" by National Public Radio (NPR), Public Radio International (PRI), or American Public Media (APM)…the three big public radio content clearinghouses. Being a member of these organizations can mean a lot of things, but for the purposes of this essay, I'll advise you to just ignore them at the start. Very, very few shows will be considered for national distribution by NPR, PRI or APM until they've been on the air for at least three to five years…often twice that. So worry more about getting a few affiliates and perfecting your show before you worry about getting picked up by NPR!

Final Thoughts

As I said at the beginning, you can follow all these rules and still get nowhere with some, even many, stations. Many Program Directors use very different criteria that I propose, and there is no "guaranteed" path to success for a show. My hope is that you'll find these tips a good starting point to guide you as you improve your show in general, and as your show gets better, you're more likely to pick up affiliates. Good luck!

---

FOOTNOTES:

"Driveway Moment" - If you don't know what this means, you don't know public radio. Go Google it, Jane, you ignorant slut.

NPR Clocks - Not sure where to get these? Ask your local NPR affiliate station if they can print you a copy. They're freely available on the private site www.nprstations.org

Talk about a Tin Ear

Ed.Update Dec.2008: Quinnipiac has backed down.


How the heck did I miss this?

Apparently the administration at Quinnipiac University either has a real thing for smacking down student media, or they're not the swiftest taco in the value pack when managing them. Either way, it appears that it took national embarrassment heaped on them by the New York Times to get them to back down on a censorship crusade against the student newspaper journalists.

This is only a few years after Q-Pac waited until summer, when none of the students were around, to tear down the campus radio station's broadcast tower without any provisions or plan to replace it, or to allow the station to transmit from somewhere else. It took quite a lot of pressure and outrage to get the college to rebuild it...apparently they never bothered to learn that moving an FM radio station to a different location is always very expensive and often not legally possible thanks to a crowded radio dial.

Isn't Quinnipiac supposed to be known for having a good communications program? Yeesh, not anymore I guess.

I mean, granted, often you hear a story about an administration seemingly putting the smackdown on the poor little student newspaper/radio station/etc for "no reason". And then you dig a little deeper and you find a long and sordid history of the administration trying to work with a recalcitrant student group that refuses to be reasonable in the slightest. Or, at the very least, the story conveniently overlooks that the administration is actually not reducing total student involvement, they're just restructuring things to meet legal/practical realities that the students had neglected for years. I can name no fewer than three examples right off the top of my head of situations like those.

And there are cases where a college really had the best of intentions, but badly managed the execution and the subsequent negative press. The whole WUML debacle comes right to the forefront here...there were dozens of wasted opportunities in that fiasco - from BOTH sides - and while it was most definitely a war...ultimately nobody won it.

But even after factoring that in, this whole Quinnipiac deal smells really awful. When you have everyone (students, alumni, professional organizations, local news outlets) telling you that you're wrong and you need to back down, and you STILL don't do it until months later when - as I said - the New York Times fires the nuclear option (a scathing editorial) on you and it embarrasses your entire college on the national stage?

Ouch. That can't be good come the next fundraiser.

An Epiphany for the Weak Minded

It's late so I don't have time to really flesh this out properly, but I was reading the esteemed Dan Kennedy's MediaNation media-criticism blog, specifically a post about how the town of Nantucket in Massachusetts somewhat inexplicably wanted to suppress details about a severance package a court granted a terminated employee. I'd already commented over there and someone else responded as well, and I had an epiphany of sorts.

I don't think this is really an epiphany, though. I suspect media veterans have been grousing about this for at least five or ten years, probably more like twenty. But hey, I'm not a real journalist - I just play one at my job. :-)

So here it is: it used to be that the media was the fourth estate. Newspapers especially, but radio and TV, too. It was to be feared, and respected. You could use the media to your advantage, but you had to be deferential and you had to treat the media right, or it'd utterly destroy you. But anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention to this sort of thing knows that those days are long, long gone.

Why?

I mean, we've never lived in a more media-soaked landscape. Where anyone can bring a scandal to the limelight within minutes. We learned a right-wing Christian conservative governor was actually quite forgiving of unwed motherhood and premarital sex...solely because a hateful (and overall pretty stupid) rumor swept the series of tubes within hours of Palin being named McCain's Veep pick.

And yet, the press has never been more whipped and useless than during the eight years of the Bush administration. Used to be if a president stonewalled, lied and bullshitted the press as blatantly as Bush & company have...every newspaper in America would've turned on them so hard, there would've been impeachment hearings back in 2003. Obviously this isn't the case.

I have to think the obvious answer is that the press is so whipped precisely because we live in such a media-soaked landscape. When every yahoo and bonehead can have a blog and reach a national audience...like myself...then the meaning of "media" is diluted to virtually nothing. Can you imagine a President saying "If I've lost Cronkite" about anyone in the media anymore?

Couple that with the other side, that the "big media" have been so thoroughly bought and paid for. How can we truly expect anyone at the New York Times, the big three networks (CBS, ABC, NBC, or any radio news source...yes, even NPR...to keep the big & powerful honest? To do that, you must be willing to attack and destroy them. Assuming you even could destroy one of these mega-billion-dollar corporations (or the government) these days...in virtually every case, the big & powerful are the same people signing your paychecks. As a journalist, you can only get fired so many times before you stop biting the hand that feeds you.

I still consider NPR to be one of the most objective sources of news out there. That's part of the reason why I can manage an NPR station and sleep soundly at night. But it is rather dismaying how NPR so often steadfastly refuses to ever really smack around a news source. To insist on taking the high road at all costs. Nobody's really afraid of NPR...and with 20+ million listeners, if some corporate fatcat isn't afraid of NPR, then who? Who's going to keep them honest?

I'll end this with a call to action: I would like very much to see NPR get more commentators that aren't afraid to rip some jerk a new one. Who ask questions and expect a real answer because if they don't get one, they'll make you sorry you didn't give them one. Perhaps a Daniel Schorr for the modern age. I like Dan a lot, but he's just too genteel...give him some young, fiery interns who're out for blood and train them on how to sharpen their fangs.

Granted, thanks to the FCC making it next to impossible for non-commercial radio stations (as most NPR affiliates are) to endorse/detract against politicians, this task may not be easy. But I don't pay NPR fees because I want to be handed the low-hanging fruit. I pay them because I want them to give me the real story, even if it means it's speckled with a few drops of blood.

Scaling the Great Wall of Newsprint

Okay, okay, I know that this entire post is completely being unfair to Kinsey Wilson, the new SVP/GM of Digital Media of NPR. But dammit, this is something I've blogged about before (or commented about it...although I can't seem to find 'em at the moment) so I'll blog about it now.

I'm getting mighty annoyed with this vast influx of non-radio journalists into the radio business. Especially public radio. Just because you're a really good print or TV journalist does not mean you're a good radio journalist. And this further annoys me because I know a helluva lot of really good radio journalists who're struggling mightily to get ahead in the world.

In fairness, I think this is true of other positions within radio, like management and whatnot.

And there's a LOT of examples of it... (name: home / former print or TV home)

• Tom Ashbrook: WBUR / Boston Globe
• Jon Marcus: WBUR / Boston Globe
• Paul LaCamera: WBUR / WCVB-TV
  
• Rob Bradford & Michael Felger: WEEI / Boston Herald
• Sacha Pfeffier: WBUR / Boston Globe
• David Boeri: WBUR / WCVB-TV
• Wen Stephenson: WBUR / Boston Globe
• Michael Barnicle: WTKK / Boston Globe
  
• ...and now Kinsey Wilson: NPR / USA Today
  

Of course, I suppose I can't overlook that - in general - most of radio is crashing and burning hard, and has been for a decade. Not exactly a strong track record and quite possibly an argument for hiring "outside of the family" to bring in some fresh blood.

But I don't think that argument really flies when you're talking about public radio. In general, pubradio has done quite well over the past two decades. Admittedly, this begs the question: has part of that been due to hires from print and TV? Frankly, I have no idea. I don't think it has, but I have no evidence one way or the other really.

And admittedly, I've seen the reverse migration, too. Two good friends of mine worked with me at The Infinite Mind. One came from print (a national magazine) and went back to it...the other went to a local newspaper's web division. I don't think either of them is unhappy with the transitions. Although off the top of my head, I don't know too many high-end radio folks that have transitioned to print or TV.

On the other hand, I also want to point out that part of the reason why so many young folks aren't interested in a radio career is because the possibility for advancement is so blatantly slim. Hiring non-radio people for radio jobs certainly doesn't help that. And between print being a dying medium and TV careers being incredibly hard to break into to begin with, it's not like this radio people can realistically "work their way up" in another medium and then back into radio.

I want to point out that Wilson might well be the most qualified hire. And even if there were more qualified people, Wilson could easily end up doing the job the best. That sort of thing happens all the time.

But it's still a little disappointing that more radio people aren't getting these top jobs.

Convention Coverage on WEOS

All this week on WEOS is Democratic National Convention coverage, and next week is the Republican National Convention. It's meant a lot of changes...temporary changes...to our air schedule: most notably that we've pretty much blown out all music programming (World Cafe and Echoes) in favor of special NPR coverage at night, a little more BBC World Service, a big extra hour of Democracy Now, and we're airing On Point with Tom Ashbrook, a call-in talk show, which is doing a morning and afternoon special each day from the convention itself.

Good stuff, all. I think we're providing a good alternative in convention coverage...especially with Democracy Now and On Point, which nobody else around the Finger Lakes are airing. Well, I hear WRVO is adding On Point to an HD Radio multicast channel, but HD penetration in the Finger Lakes is pretty low; we're airing it on our main channel.

There's an oddity that popped up today, though...and it really perplexes me: we're actually getting calls from people wondering where World Cafe is. We're running tons of promos, had prominent announcements on our website, etc etc. And, ya know, it's the National Conventions. These are kind of big deal, aren't they? Can't we live without World Cafe for two lousy weeks? Especially in Ithaca since, as far as I know, WSKG is not airing extra Convention coverage on their Ithaca signal.

I suppose people are just worried that we'll drop World Cafe permanently, which we've said more than once that WEOS will not do. We do plan to add On Point and keep World Cafe once we get WITH 90.1FM on the air in Ithaca. But we're not about to drop World Cafe...it's quite popular in Ithaca and you better believe we know that. It just seems silly to me; to think we'd even consider it, I suppose.

INSTANT UPDATE: No sooner did I finish this that I realized I screwed up our automation system's programming. It was supposed to wait to switch to the BBC until I made the change myself. Instead, it acted on the backup programming that switched it to the BBC feed automatically at 11pm, right in the middle of Hillary's speech. Crap. The backup settings are there in case Hillary's speech ended early, which was unlikely but was always a possibility.

And since I thought I had it set correctly, I didn't notice the error until nearly the end of Hillary's speech. Crap crap crap. At least I got it fixed in time to catch the NPR analysis.

Being the Boss is Fun, Until You're the Boss

So I'm encountering some drama at my campus. It's elections season, include election of the student rep to the Board of Trustees at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, and the Hobart side of the vote has experienced some irregularities. I won't go into more details, they're not really necessary. But one of my student DJ's interviewed one of the student candidates on the air about it, and I never knew about it until another group of students got annoyed and wants copies of the airchecks.

I must say that of all the things that could concern me here...it concerns me the most that I got blindsided by this. I'm starting to understand that what the worst thing that any boss ever wants is to have some random person walk into their office saying something to the effect of "What the hell is going on here?!?"...and you have no idea exactly the what the hell really is going on because one of your employees said/did something "wrong" and you didn't know about it.

I'm not upset that one of my students did something that someone else thinks is "wrong", mind you. A measure of trust is required to run a station and it's inevitable that mistakes will be made. And for the record, I do think this student mildly screwed up...but nowhere near as badly as some other people think.

What I am upset about is that it feels like I'm not doing enough as a manager to keep an eye on these situations. To provide teaching and guidance for my students. And that I can't do that because there's just too much else going on that's demanding my attention.

I suspect I'm having "new manager jitters" here. After all, I have 25-30 students going on the air every week, unsupervised (recorded, but unsupervised) and at least 95% of the time they're either doing a good job, or at least they're not screwing up. That's a pretty good ratio, all things considered.

But still I feel like I need to be doing something more here. Hmph.

DOJ Approves XM/Sirius Merger - How this will Hurt Public Radio?

It's all over the news, but Current gets the link for having a collection of links themselves. :-)

So yesterday the Dep't of Justice approved the XM/Sirius satellite radio merger. It still has to be approved by the FCC but don't expect them to deny it, not with Kevin Martin in charge. And expect Martin to ramrod it through before the election and his almost certain ouster (it's just a hunch, but I doubt McCain or Clinton/Obama will keep him around).

People can wax and wane all day about how this will or will not be good for consumers, for radio, and for media in general. I have only two specific points to make:

First, I really hope that, should this go through, it means they'll have home TEAM announcers for all the MLB baseball games, instead of just the home FIELD announcers. I'm not paying $14/month to listen to those horrid Yankees announcers when my beloved Red Sox are playing in the Bronx.

Second, I see no way this is not bad news for public radio...and in a very specific way: program licensing fees. Both XM and Sirius pay tidy sums to NPR, APM, PRI and dozen or so independent shows each year for the right to air their shows on the satellite "public radio" channels, like XMPR and NPR Now (on XM and Sirius, respectively).

A major factor in those tidy sums was each satradio operator trying to outbid the other to get the programming they deemed compelling enough to lure listeners to satellite radio.

I won't say which, but I have it on good authority (as in, from the guy who writes the budget) that a Top 10 Arbitron market NPR affiliate (i.e. one of the big ones that produces a few national shows that many other stations carry) was getting more revenue for their station from XM/Sirius programming fees than they were from NPR programming fees.

I'll say that again...XM/Sirius were paying this station MORE for the NPR programming than NPR itself was. That's a stunning statement...and indicative of perhaps how out of control the spending has been at XM & Sirius.

Discussions on best practices in business and budgeting aside, I have no doubt that many of these stations - and the networks themselves - have gotten used to those tidy sums padding their budgets. And I can almost guarantee you that at the next contract renewal, those tidy sums will be a lot less tidy. Why shouldn't they be? XM/Sirius knows damn well they overpaid for most of their content and now there's no other satradio operator to sell your wares to if one refuses to pony up.

So there it is in a nutshell - this merger actually is "bad" for public radio in a very real and tangible way.

Catholic Church Scandals - the Gift that Keeps on Giving

By way of Current.org, I learned today that KMBH down in Brownsville, TX (the very southern tip, along the Mexican border and the Gulf) canceled one of their four annual fund drives after only receiving six pledge calls over three days.

D'oh!

So far they're eight months into their fiscal year and have only raised 15% of their annual budget.

D'OH!!!

If you believe the reports in the local newspaper, The Monitor, there is a serious governance problem at KMBH, with the local Catholic Monsignor Pedro Briseño effectively having total dictatorial control over the station. Which in and of itself is not unusual...lots of stations effectively are dictatorships...but apparently he's made some questionable decisions about dismissing more station trustees than is allowed, refusing to hand over public documents and the like. And he's given zero justification for any of it, referring all queries to his lawyer.

Again, I should point out this is all coming from one newspaper. Never underestimate the power of a newspaper with an ax to grind.

But assuming for a moment that the newspaper is being reasonably objective, I have to think the lack of transparency is being severely exacerbated because it's a Roman Catholic institution doing the stonewalling.

Has the Church learned nothing from the sins of the Boston Archdioceses? Stonewalling the public, giving no information at all, sweeping things under the rug, and having an antagonistic relationship with the press should be considered cardinal sins after the long, painful and , ultimately, obscenely expensive ordeals the Church put parishioners through with the priest sex abuse scandals...and that the public turned around and put the Church through in response more recently.

I'm from Boston, and Boston was undoubtedly "ground zero" for the priest sex abuse scandals...so maybe what's obvious to me isn't as obvious to a region 3000 miles away. But apparently it's clear to the listeners and viewers in south Texas, because they're voting with their wallets when it comes to the actions of KMBH management.

Figuring out the Secrets of the Universe (WBTN-AM's demise)

By way of this week's North East Radio Watch I learned that the Bennington Banner is reporting that Southern Vermont College is looking to get rid of WBTN 1370AM. Apparently the station has cost SVC $450,000 since it was donated to them in 2002 by Robert Howe, and the trustees voted last week to "end its losses" by the end of the Spring term. That probably will mean a sale, but technically it could mean anything that ends the cash outlay from the college.

FWIW, Howe is a trustee himself, and voted against the plan. Howe originally purchased the small AM station from Vermont Public Radio in mid-2000, VPR itself had bought it in early 2000 as part of a package deal that included the more valuable WBTN-FM signal on 94.3, also in Bennington, VT. This means it's unlikely that VPR could ride in on a white horse to "save" the AM station.

I also wonder a bit about just how doomed WBTN-AM was from the start, since Howe...a radio professional...tried running it himself as a commercial enterprise from mid-2000 until the donation to SVC in 2002. Then again, the economy was in the toliet around that time. And maybe he wasn't really all that into WBTN-AM (I get the impression he owns or has owned several stations). Who knows?

Anyways, the point here is that I feel there's a "you figure this out and you'll have figured the world out" lesson somewhere in here. SVC took on WBTN-AM with the intention of building a communications program around it. They ran it as a commercial radio outlet...albeit with a distinctly collegiate flavor, I'm sure...and even had the Boston Red Sox games on it (usually a gold mine for advertising).

And yet the station was losing over $75k per year. That strikes me as incongruous.

I mean, I can point to any one of a dozen possible reasons why the losses were so high. The signal isn't the greatest, for example...especially with only 85 watts at night. Although I suppose it covers Bennington and that's what matters.

Maybe they just never really tried to have a successful sales program...if you don't sell ads, you won't have much revenue - doesn't matter if you're non-commercial or not. Selling on a small town AM can be done and done well, but I won't deny it takes a dedicated and skilled salesman. Someone probably paid on commission. That may be something the colleges never wanted to deal with; I know many colleges often feel uncomfortable with the idea of commercial sales in any form, and they usually hate paying on commission.

But here's the thing: let's assume for a moment that they DID at least try to have a decent sales program. Something more than purely student-run. And let's assume they had a halfway-decent physical plant and there wasn't broken equipment everywhere. And we'll also assume that enough was set up with automation to provide for a 24/7/365 service even when students were on break or otherwise not around. These are all reasonable assumptions.

If that's the case, and they still lost that much money each year...what's the reason why? I mean, small-signal/small-town commercial AM's survive every day out there. Often just barely, but they don't lose money. What is it about college-run radio stations that seems to always encourage a deficit budget? I know very, very few college-run radio stations that are fiscally self-sufficient.

Note that I say "college-run", not "college-owned". I know several "college-owned" NPR outlets that are fiscally VERY healthy...but they're not really run by the college. I'm talking about "college-run" where regular college administrators have a regular say in how things operate, and students have an active role in the operation of the station and usually have regular airshifts.

Certainly my station isn't fiscally self-sufficient. While we do our best to raise funds via listener contributions and underwriting, we rely heavily on direct funding from the college to close our budget gap. This is something both my college and I are working to change, mind you...but it doesn't happen overnight. And it's kind of expected, and not just by HWS, that any student enterprise is going to always require subsidizing from the parent college. I know of no "college radio station" that is thought of differently.

OTOH, perhaps that "not happening overnight" is the problem; WBTN couldn't deliver the level of service the student and administrative body wanted and minimize costs until a listenership was developed to the point where enough funds came in. It's not easy to have enough startup funding to get the resources to build that listenership up...not when it can take five or ten years at several hundred thousand dollars per year. Not always that much, but it can be.

I suppose the $64,000 question is whether or not the non-commercial expectations of a how a college-run station should be is just incompatible with the unwritten laws of the marketplace that govern how much revenue you can make. For my own sake I have to think that they are not, but damned if anyone really knows the answer to that.

Steiner and WYPR...Deja Vu, All Over Again

I have no knowledge of the whole Steiner firing from WYPR beyond what I read in the papers, but I wanted to present two items as food for thought.

First, this is almost certainly tied with WYPR's efforts to secure a new 50,000 watt station out in the Delmarva region; a move like that reflects a certain philosophy and vision in management, and while it's entirely possible Steiner was 100% in favor of it, it's also entirely possible Steiner viewed it as a departure from a local focus on Baltimore, and thus was not in favor of it.

Second, a well-known and public talk show host has a row with management, management tries to buy him off, and host refuses to the point where he's fired. Station looks bad. Host looks bad. Listeners cry foul. Wow. Doesn't this all just sound incredibly familiar to WBUR listeners? Wish you the best of luck, Marc, but remember that things ultimately didn't turn out so great for Christopher Lydon. (well, okay, Chris is hardly begging for change but Open Source is a shadow of the force The Connection was when he was host)

On the other hand, I'd say Jane Christo didn't exactly come out a winner in that tussle, either.

Again, I don't really know any details so it's entirely possible that the analogy is completely false. But on the surface, the parallels are striking.

Is it still "going postal" when it's a radio DJ?

I've been following the latest KOOP fire on Current.org for a few days now. The most recent newsblog post has inspired me to post as well.

I want to begin by saying that I'm basing my opinions on what's been reported, and it's important to remember that there's a big difference between something being reported and something actually being true. (WMD's in Iraq, anyone?) Or at least there's a difference something being determined in a court of law. I don't want to condemn Paul Feinstein too much until he's had his say in court...so don't take this too much as an indictment of Feinstein, but rather an indictment of overly-passionate volunteer DJ's everywhere.

Okay, that said...if you haven't heard, it appears Feinstein set fire to the station (the third fire to strike KOOP in less than two years, although the first two appear accidental and external to KOOP itself). Allegedly he did so because he was pissed that someone changed the music he selected to play on the overnight internet-only version of KOOP (KOOP shares a broadcast frequency with KVRX in Austin, TX).

Andrew Dickens, president of KOOP, has been quoted as saying "We are kind of worried that people will look at us like a bunch of idiots....Who the hell would have thought somebody would have snapped?" (presumably meaning, "snapped over something so trivial")

KOOP was well known for having a lot of "fringe" (perhaps the "lunatic fringe") volunteering at their station, which is itself in a "fringe" city. (Austin's rallying cry? "Keep Austin Weird"). I personally have worked with a lot of "fringe" myself...between WMFO at Tufts University, WZBC at Boston College, Radio Free Allston, Allston-Brighton Free Radio, Radio LOG, Zumix Radio and many others...Boston has its fair share of people who firmly believe the ends justify any means. So actually I don't look at KOOP like they're a bunch of idiots per se, but I do wonder if they demonstrated poor judgment by allowing continued involvement by unstable volunteers.

Of course, that presupposes Feinstein was visibly "unstable"...initial reports seem to indicate that by and large he wasn't. But put Feinstein aside for a moment and accept that MANY of the stations in the same style of KOOP do indeed have visibly unstable people working/volunteering at them.

Snide comments of the stability of WEOS's current GM are understandable, but will be ignored. :-)

Now, bringing this home, I worry about this personally because I run a small community/college radio station myself. I don't think we're all that analogous to KOOP, but certainly we broadcast in a "weird" or "fringe" area: Ithaca is often half-jokingly referred to as "Ten square miles surrounded by reality". Most of our volunteers are passionate about their shows, sometimes a little excessively so but I actually like that; I'm of the opinion that radio spectrum is too precious to be wasted on people who don't give a damn.

But how passionate is too passionate? Never mind the obvious off-the-air issue...I don't want to imagine the sling my ass would be in if one of my volunteers or students set fire to the station. Fortunately this isn't something I have to worry about too much...but I can remember some other stations I've been involved in where it was a near-constant concern.

There's no easy answer here. You can "fire" anyone, even if they're a volunteer, but like any firing you can rest assured that feelings will be hurt. With someone you're worried is too extreme to begin with...that could easily boil over into revenge. Usually not in the sense of physical damage or harm, but said person could do a real number on your reputation by dragging your name, and your station's name, through the mud. Simply appeasing the person and hoping they don't blow up is the common approach but there's the obvious risks inherent to that...although if you're lucky, it's not all that uncommon for a truly unstable person to fizzle out and go away on their own.

If that's not an option...fortunately in today's internet world and easy-media world, you can set things up so said person may have limited or no access to your actual facilities but can still participate in the station. And in today's security-conscious world you have plenty of reasons (and often funding) to set up protective measures at your studio and transmitter anyways. Stroke a little ego and you might be all set.

In the interest of my continuing education as a manager, though, I'd love to hear other ideas that other folks might have.