Tuesday, February 5, 2019

FINANCIAL ISSUES AT WCBE LEAD TO REMOVAL OF GM • IPR NEWS NEEDS HELP IN CEDAR RAPIDS


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?

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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