CAPITAL PUBLIC RADIO & NORTH STATE PUBLIC RADIO CONSIDER A PARTNERSHIP TO EXPAND LOCAL NEWS CONTENT • NIELSEN RATINGS FOR AKRON, ALBUQUERQUE & SPOKANE

NSPR turns 50 in 2019

Two well-established northern California public radio broadcasters are exploring ways to work together to expand local journalism and tell more  Northern California stories.

Capital Public Radio (CapRadio) and North State Public Radio (NSPR) in Chico have hired Public Media Company to explore ways the two shops can save money and increase news content.

The partners seek to  share the cost of programming, engineering, management and other services. 

If the partners like what they are seeing, a Public Service Operating Agreement (PSOA) will formalize the plan.

Phil Wilke

Though both stations will be sharing resources, Phillip Wilke, General Manager of NSPR said the PSOA is not merger of the two organizations.   

Wilke told Spark News in an e-interview:

“We will not -- repeat NOT -- be a CapRadio simulcast. Part of the PSOA negotiations is that we will be keep autonomy in programming decisions. I don't anticipate changes to our programming, except that we plan to ADD journalists for more robust news coverage.” 

CapRadio [link] and NSPR [link] have a number of things in common. Both operate their own mini-networks. Both licensees are part of the California State University system. Chico is about an hour north of Sacramento.

However, the two shops have some differences.

CapRadio operates two full-time programming channels – NPR News/Talk KXJZ and Classical music KXPR. 

CapRadio’s annual budget is more than $13 million. 

Approximately 2.5 million people live in CapRadio’s service area.

KXJZ’s newsroom has more than a dozen full-time staffers. The station produces Insight With Beth Ruyak, a daily one-hour news and talk program.

NSPR operates a single program stream, a dual format of NPR News and Classical music. NSPR’s annual budget is around $1.6 million. Roughly 500,000 people live in Chico and Redding, the two major cities in NSPR’s service area.

NSPR has around half a dozen  people creating news programming including full and part timers.

WILL KHSU BE PART OF THE PARTNERSHIP?

According to Wilke, KHSU in Arcata was included in early discussions but there are too many unresolved issues for them to commit at this time. You may recall that KHSU was in the news this spring when the university fired the entire staff on April 11, 2019 (see our coverage here).

The President of Humboldt State University (HSU) left shortly after the mass termination and left future decisions to the next President. A new President of HSU has been hired. He is Tom Jackson, the former President of Black Hills State University. It will take time for Jackson to establish HSU’s new leadership team and deal with the future of KHSU.

Wilke confirmed that KCHO has occasionally provided its on-air programming KHSU. Wilkie described the situation:

"North State State Public Radio is providing our simulcast stream [to KHSU] only in a pinch. Since mid-April, CapRadio engineers have set up a protocol to broadcast only syndicated national programming with no local content, except legal IDs. We've provided our simulcast when that dedicated stream has had technical problems or, as was the case in early July, was hit by a ransomware attack."

Arcata is over 150 miles from Chico and even farther from Sacramento, complication their participation in the partnership.

NIELSEN AUDIO SPRING 2019 RATINGS FOR AKRON, ALBUQUERQUE & SPOKANE

WKSU remains the top noncommercial news station in the Akron-Kent area just south of Cleveland. They also have a considerable number of listeners in the Cleveland metro.

One noncom station that is not listed is Alt Rock/AAA hybrid WAPS, a really fine station led by our pal Brad Savage.

As we have written before about Albuquerque, there are two part-time NPR News stations serving the market. 

In a perfect world, either KANW and KUNM would shift to all News/Talk and own the market.   

But this hasn’t happened because both stations have unusual local concerns that prevent them making a logical move.

This is likely Classical KHFM’s first appearance as a noncommercial station. It was a commercial Classical station for many years. The owner,  Rogers Brandon, the CEO of American General Media, created a non profit organization to keep Classical music on the air in Albuquerque. Bravo!

Would someone please tell us what is going on at Spokane Public Radio. There three local stations – KPBX, KSFC and KPBZ, all seem to be having problems.