COLORADO PUBLIC RADIO NEWS HIRES DC-BASED REPORTER • SEE THE IMPORTANCE OF BASEBALL ON RADIO LISTENING

Caitlyn Kim

As you probably have heard, Colorado Public Radio News (CPR News) has been making great leaps forward in recent months. 

Not only is CPR News building new digs in downtown Denver, the organization keeps adding great reporters and producers to the team.

This is certainly true of CPR News’ most recent hire: Award-winning journalist and policy expert Caitlyn Kim. 

She joins CPR this month to provide news and perspective from Washington, DC. 

Her addition to the CPR newsroom is another example of NPR news stations broadening their scope and depth.

Add to that, CPR News’ flagship station in Denver, KCFR, had a stellar performance in the Nielsen Audio PPM ratings for April. (Scroll down to see the ratings.)

Kim’s position advances CPR’s plans to expand its coverage and become Colorado’s news of record – an important position of statewide leadership. As CPR’s resources become stronger, their impact on Colorado becomes more vital. This heightens the value of the brand and enhances CPR’s sustainability.

Spark News had the opportunity to do a brief e-interview with Kevin Dale, CPR News’ Executive Editor who leads CPR News,

Kevin Dale

SN: Is Caitlyn reporting only for CPR, or does her reporting appear elsewhere?

DALE: She is reporting only for CPR, but we always make our coverage available to other media in the state - and several use it on a regular basis. We share content with other public radio stations in Colorado, such as KDNK in Carbondale and KBUT in Crested Butte, among others. We also share our content with newspapers in the state and often see our material in Grand Junction, Durango and The Denver Post. 

SN: What are the most important Colorado stories with a DC connection?

DALE: There is almost no part of the federal government that doesn't touch Coloradans in some way. We have millions of acres of public lands, several military bases, critical agriculture and energy industries. And then there's our House and Senate delegation, which is active and worth hearing from.

SN: We saw that Caitlyn worked at the Department of Defense in DC.  Will CPR by be doing more reporting on the military beat? 

DALE:  We had already enhanced our military reporting with by hiring Dan Boyce as our Southern Colorado reporter. He is based in Colorado Springs and spends a significant portion of his time on military reporting. We have also joined the American Homefront military story collaborative. Caitlyn will allow CPR to deepen our reporting.

PROOF THAT BASEBALL & RADIO HAVE SIMILAR DNA

One of the most positive things we learned from our recent Reader Survey is our reader's love of learning.

Today we have real world proof of how much baseball coverage draws listeners to radio stations.  They say content creates audience and now you can see it for yourself.

On May 3^rd [link], in a story about the March PPM ratings, we looked at two commercial stations that compete with NPR News/Talk stations to see how big the baseball bump is for stations. We were talking about the impact of major league baseball on KOA in Denver and WCCO in Minneapolis.

In Denver, broadcasts of The Rockies added over 100,000 estimated weekly listeners for KOA, a 30% increase. KOA's AQH share rose 0.5.

In Minneapolis-St. Paul broadcasts of the Minnesota Twins increased WCCO’s AQH share by 1.5. The Twins boosted WCCO's weekly cume by 150,000, an increase of 39%.

In Denver KCFR had one of theirtheir best monthly ratings ever. 

NPR News/Talk KCFR increased their AQH share by almost a full point. 

KCFR’s 6.5% AQH share led all stations in the Mile High City, including popular music stations.

Also in Denver-Boulder, outside-of-the-metro KUNC also had its best PPM performance ever inside-the-metro. 

That is an awesome performance.

Also in Denver, two closely-watched music stations did well. AAA KBCO had a 4.9 AQH share and 571,700 weekly listeners. 

Alt Rock KTCL had a 4.7 AQH share and 609,700 estimated weekly listeners.

In the Twin Cities, NPR News/Talk KNOW is still the top radio news source in both AQH and cume.

The biggest mover in the market was CCM KTIS-fm. They increased their weekly listeners by over 20%.   

You could call KTIS “almost public radio.” During their Share-a-thons (a/k/a pledge drives) you might think they were an MPR station.