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| Dan Mushalko |
According
to a report in the Columbus Dispatch
newspaper [link], last Friday (2/1) WCBE General Manager Dan Mushalko was
removed from his job amid an internal investigation that school district officials
would not discuss. Mulshalko had been manager of WCBE since 2005. The Dispatch
said he could not be reached for comments.
In
the past few years WCBE [link] has had numerous financial problems. Relations
between the station and the licensee, Columbus City Schools, were contentious
for over and decade and seemed to sour even more because WCBE’s financial
problems.
Though
the internal investigation remains confidential, WCBE’s failure to pay its NPR
member dues may be a factor. The Columbus
Business Journal reported earlier this week [link] that WCBE owes as much
as $800,000 to NPR.
Concern
about WCBE financial solvency became a public issue in 2018 when Mushalko
initiated a “save WCBE” campaign including a 24/7 emergency pledge drive to attempt
to make up a $275,000 shortfall in that year’s spring fundraiser. Mushalko
described the budget problems at the time as “a monumental and serious
challenge.” The emergency drive raised only a portion needed dough.
In
earlier years the school district was more tolerant of over-runs. Mulshalko
said at the time that WCBE “typically
comes up short – it is almost WCBE tradition,” he joked. Apparently this
year the licensee took a more serious look when the budget hole was deeper.
WCBE
was the first public radio station in Columbus. It was a charter NPR member since 1973. You can see
an excellent video of the history of WCBE on Vimeo [link]. Ironically, Mushalko
is the host of the video.
WCBE’s
success in its early years was due, in part, to crosstown station WOSU’s
sleepiness. In the Fall 2000 Arbitron ratings WCBE had 83,000 estimated weekly
listeners and WOSU-AM had 52,600.
Then
in the mid-2000s WOSU woke up and moved NPR News/Talk programming to WOSU-FM.
By Fall 2014,WOSU-FM had an estimated 135,500 weekly listeners and WCBE had
79,500.
From
the outside, WCBE looks pretty solid financially. According to disclosure
information on the station website, in FY 2016 the station had annual revenue around $1.5
million. Members and underwriters provided $1.1 million, approximately 73% of
the revenue that year. These are healthy signs.
LISTENING TO NPR NEWS STATIONS DROPS IN CEDAR RAPIDS
We
were surprised (shocked actually) when we looked at the Fall 2018 Nielsen Audio ratings for Cedar
Rapids, Iowa and compared them to Fall 2016.
Both Iowa Public Radio (IPR)
stations that carry NPR News dropped by large amounts.
IPR’s
full-time News channel lost 58% of its estimated weekly listeners during the
two-year period. IPR News didn’t even post an AQH share in Fall 2018. Holy Hawkeyes!
Plus,
IPR’s leading channel, dual-format Studio
One, lost 46% of its weekly listeners in Fall 2018, compared to Fall 2016.
Studio One in Cedar Rapids also lost a
third of its AQH share.
Were
these drops caused by Diary placement problems or encoding issues by Nielsen?
Did people in Iowa all of a sudden loose interest in public radio news? Or, did
IPR’s content quality take a turn for the worse?
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| See This Movie! |
We
are going to check the ratings for the three other markets that IPR serves and see if the “Cedar Rapids slide” has occurred elsewhere.
IPR
has a third programming channel, IPR Classical, and it held steady. So, IPR must have been on-the-air during the
Fall 2018 survey.
We
originally decided to look at Cedar Rapids to see how Jazz KCCK did. They did fine. Cedar
Rapids is one of the smallest size markets that has a full-time Jazz music
station. The folks who operate KCCK have a passionate love for the music and it
is contagious with listeners.
The
leader in the market is CCM KNWS, part of the University of Northwestern
network based in St. Paul.
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