READER QUESTIONS & COMMENTS

Thank you for the excellent feedback.  I love covering the noncom media beat. 

• REGARDING MY POST ABOUT STATIONS RUNNING FREE PROMO FOR THIS AMERICAN LIFE POSCASTS [LINK]

From a recently retired Program Director of a combo operation with an NPR News FM and a PBS TV station:

Re the Ira Glass thing....some of us way back when discussed the need for CPB to write their Childrens Television Workshop contracts (and other similar grants) to reflect that a share of the entrepreneurial returns on those investments come back to the stations. Can you imagine what a piece of the Big Bird or Elmo franchises might be worth after 50 years?!?! 

KEN: I wish I had the dough between Elmo’s toes. I have seen contracts that contain clauses stipulating revenue sharing for ancillary projects. These aren’t unusual in the commercial media biz.

Ira is certainly NOT required by stations to share the loot.  My purpose in bringing it up is to demonstrate that stations have leverage also.  I know Ira’s aim is true and I love his success.  Just remember who brought you to this party.

• REGARDING MY POST ABOUT LORENZO MILAM’S GHOST LIVING AT KUSP [LINK]

From John Herald:

JohnHerald is a handle. For various reasons - one of which is I'm still on our board fighting the good fit - I must remain anonymous.

Laws in many states protect association-based nonprofits from wanton takeovers and rogue boards. KUSP's situation may be the downside of this, but the upside is that licenses that were acquired with the sweat and blood of community members (volunteers) to serve certain purposes are protected from those with other agendas.

I've always felt that one of the great things about America is that people can get together in their living rooms and start a Little League, a fund drive or in our case, a community radio station. One of not so great things is that when grassroots efforts yield success, the corporate wolves show up at the door and want the keys claiming they can make the resource more effective and more profitable.

Don't mock Milam. He may not have had all the right prescriptions, but ultimately he was right.

[UNABRIDGED VERSION AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST]

KEN: Nicely written. Thank you for being in touch.  I have a question for you: What was Milam right about?  

WHEN LORENZO MILAM WAS RIGHT

• He foresaw a nationwide movement of citizens taking control of a little bit of the public airwaves.  He instigated the building of hundreds of noncommercial, independent community radio stations.

• He underscored the need for community stations to have a firm firewall that keeps programming free from pay-to-play.

• He made it possible for oodles of volunteers, many unsung hometown folks, to step forward with remarkable specialty programs.

ON THE OTHER HAND

From a practical standpoint, Milam was naïve and practically worthless.  His advice on programming was to air harps, kazoos and Tibetan bells. He thought stations should and could be operated like a commune. He thought almost all money was tainted except for the money he made.

Lorenzo Milam is an artifact from another era.  Wasn’t he one of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers?

Community radio needs to move beyond the commune days and streamline its governance and programming. Then maybe it can be a REAL factor in improving society.

• REGARDING MY POST ABOUT NIELSEN AUDIO WINTER 2015 RESULTS FOR SYRACUSE [LINK]

From engineering wizard Aaron Reed:

WRVO has always embodied the idea of the scrappy underdog who works hard to earn every listener. I haven't always agreed with their programming decisions, and they certainly were a competitor to us at WEOS so I'm a little biased, but you can't ever argue that they didn't hustle.

WAER always seemed to be on top of the ivory tower. But they did their thing and the rest of us in the region weren't sorry they did. After all, the jazz they played WAS pretty good jazz, and it meant more NPR news listeners for the us! :)

I think the idea of them being a sports station, but in a public radio vein, is an interesting idea but the devil would be in the details. [For example] …the politics of WAER stomping on WJPZ, the 100 watt student station at Syracuse which has a long and storied tradition of being the starting place of many very famous broadcasters.

[UNABRIDGED VERSION AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST]

KEN: Good point. Back when I did sports play-by-play I worked with a couple of grads from that program.  They were terrific journalists and sportscasters.

I do believe that sports programming is a future growth area community stations. Deb Benedict is showing the way for stations like WTIP, Grand Marais, Minnesota [LINK].  They air high school football games. People love it and support it. It is a COMMUNITY EXPERIENCE.

COMPLETE COMMENTS:

JohnHerald

Add to contacts

5/18/15

To: publicradio@hotmail.com

Laws in many states protect association-based nonprofits from wanton takeovers and rogue boards. KUSP's situation may be the downside of this, but the upside is that licenses that were acquired with the sweat and blood of community members (volunteers) to serve certain purposes are protected from those with other agendas.

I helped found a community station that had "Swiss democracy" bylaws, and once we obtained our license, I convinced our membership that the best way to protect the license was to turn over the station's management to the board. Unfortunately, the board changed from founders (not a rag tag group by any means) to include so-called community leaders. Within nine years of our going on the air, the board was ready to turn over the station to the local PBS affiliate. As it turned out, our association's bylaws retained enough rights for our members that we were able to take the board to court and stop the takeover. One local newspaper ran this headline: Merger Dead, Bullies Flee.

I've always felt that one of the great things about America is that people can get together in their living rooms and start a Little League, a fund drive or in our case, a community radio station. One of not so great things is that when grassroots efforts yield success, the corporate wolves show up at the door and want the keys claiming they can make the resource more effective and more profitable. What they really want is the power and control to re-purpose the enterprise to suit their definition of success.

Don't mock Milam. He may not have had all the right prescriptions, but ultimately he was right.

P.S. JohnHerald is a handle. For various reasons - one of which is I'm still on our board fighting the good fit - I must remain anonymous. Laws in many states protect association-based nonprofits from wanton takeovers and rogue boards. KUSP's situation may be the downside of this, but the upside is that licenses that were acquired with the sweat and blood of community members (volunteers) to serve certain purposes are protected from those with other agendas.

Aaron Read has left a new comment on your post "NEW RATINGS DATA: WINTER 2015 NIELSEN AUDIO DIARY ...":

Ahhh, WAER. Now here's a situation I actually can comment semi-intelligently on! :)

WRVO has always embodied the idea of the scrappy underdog who works hard to earn every listener. I haven't always agreed with their programming decisions, and they certainly were a competitor to us at WEOS so I'm a little biased, but you can't ever argue that they didn't hustle.

WAER always seemed to be on top of the ivory tower. But they did their thing and the rest of us in the region weren't sorry they did. After all, the jazz they played WAS pretty good jazz, and it meant more NPR news listeners for the us! :)

I think the idea of them being a sports station, but in a public radio vein, is an interesting idea but the devil would be in the details. First off is that while Syracuse sports is very popular in the region, it's not what regional listeners turn to public radio for. It would take an awful lot of time, money and effort (marketing) to change that perception.

Second is that it would put WAER into direct competition with several major commercial outlets. That's problematic enough, but it would also mean wresting away the rights to the games...not a trivial task as these aren't directly controlled by Syracuse University; they're controlled by whomever buys the rights for all D1 sports coverage (ESPN, I think) from the NCAA. This would be most important for basketball, but it's also true for football.

Third is also the politics of WAER stomping on WJPZ, the 100 watt student station at Syracuse which has a long and storied tradition of being the starting place of many very famous broadcasters. They are a formatted Top 40 station (or at least they were) but they also cover a lot of the "lesser" SU sports that WAER would have to claim in order to be "the SU sports station." That wouldn't be impossible, but it would likely raise some hackles amongst faculty and staff.

There's another factor to consider here: at WEOS we aired a lot (100+ games/yr) of HWS sports. Now unlike SU sports that have regional appeal, HWS sports are just not that popular outside of alumni and parents. Invariably we'd get complaints from NPR News fans about our football & lacrosse game coverage, and the webcast stats indicated that the biggest draw (by a wide margin) was when Hobart played Syracuse lacrosse because our webcast was the only one that wasn't PPV and all the SU fans flocked to it. :)

This is not quite analogous to the idea of WAER becoming all-sports/talk, but it still would give me pause: public radio listeners don't look to public radio for sports/talk. And judging from the qualities of the callers to my local sports station, I'd say an awful lot of sports/talk listeners aren't interested in public radio; the quieter, reasoned analysis that's a hallmark of public radio is the antithesis of what I typically hear on my local sports/talk stations. As I said, it would take an awful lot of effort to change that perception on either side.