CHARTOCK VS. SAVAGE: POINT, COUNTER POINT DISCUSSION OF NPR’S PROPOSED NEW FEE PLAN

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Since public broadcasting in the US began 50 years ago, there has been friction between large shops and smaller shops, particularly concerning membership and programming from NPR. This friction has recently grown larger.

NPR has been holding a series of regional meetings where the management of member stations has heard proposals from NPR to raise NPR fees on big stations and reduce the fees of smaller station. Though money is at the heart of the matter, the disagreements have brought up questions about NPR’s relationship with its member stations.

The dispute recently became public when Alan Chartock, President and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio published a blistering commentary on WAMC’s website [link].

Around the same time, Mike Savage, Director and GM of WEKU in Richmond, Kentucky [link] wrote an op-ed for the NPR member “a-rep” list that covered many of the same topics, but from a different point of view.  

UPDATE 5-1-19 2:00pm CT: The message Savage sent to the a-reps list has been added at the bottom of this post.

We decided to combine portions of the two messages to let others know more about the dispute between large and smaller NPR stations: 

CHARTOCK:

“There is some real tension between National Public Radio and its member stations. [NPR] makes demands of its member stations and the stations have no choice but to comply.”

“NPR is trying to work out a new fee structure and the already large bill promises to go up.”

“Basically, the larger stations with more listeners and more support are being asked to pay a lot more and the smaller stations (there are many more of them) will, in essence, be subsidized.”

SAVAGE:

“[Chartock’s] us vs. them mentality is one of the reasons NPR struggles at times to collaborate with stations.  In his view, WAMC wins and NPR loses or NPR wins and WAMC loses.  There is no in between.”

“Small stations have been paying a much larger percentage of their budget for NPR fees and dues for many years."  

"The proposed change in the fee structure addresses this long known inequity to help stations that need it the most.”

CHARTOCK:

“In my opinion, the decisions made by the NPR brass (and it keeps changing to the point that it has become a moving target) have had the effect of turning the little stations against the bigger ones. They argue that the bigger stations should support the smaller ones since they know that they will have the votes to heavily tax the bigger stations.” 

“The way that the NPR/station relationship is handled is that every station gets a single vote. Most of the member stations are small with small staffs but they have the same vote that the top stations have and those top stations raise, by far, most of the money that supports NPR.”

“The network is able to pay its staff much better than most of the member stations are."

SAVAGE:

“This is correct but missing context.  NPR must compete with other media outlets to recruit and keep talent.  The salaries are much higher than member stations because DC is much more expensive than many markets in the country and competition for talent is fierce.  So there is no ‘extra money’ to be spread around to member stations.”

SPARK NEWS: It is true that every NPR member station has a vote. However, the NPR Board makes policy, and the Board is overwhelmingly from some of systems largest stations.

The chart on the left shows the Total Station Revenue (TSR) for each of the 12 organizations that have a representative on the Board. 

The average TSR is $12,341,000. 

Only one station, WVIK in the Rock Island, Illinois has annual fiscal year TSR of less than $4-million.

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio’s most recent TSR is $8,516,000. WEKU’s most recent TSR is $1,823,000. Both stations have a NPR News/Talk format. According to Nielsen Audio both stations are the top noncommercial station in their markets.

LARGE STATIONS VERSUS SMALL STATIONS, IS IT CPB'S FAULT?

SAVAGE:

“The small versus large scenario has been going on for years and is not being manipulated by NPR to turn stations against each other – instead member stations have been putting pressure on the board and NPR to come up with solutions to ongoing inequity in the system due the reason that CPB has let down the smallest stations in the system by increasing CSG entry thresholds 7 years ago and their ongoing unbalanced support of the largest stations in the system.”

CHARTOCK:

“It’s always important to remember that the member stations, like WAMC, are not owned by the network. In fact, NPR belongs to the member stations who put it into business. Unfortunately, they think they are the bosses but in reality, they are not.” 

SAVAGE:

“NPR does not think it’s the boss.  I can tell you this from my time on the NPR Board.  The amount of empathy and sensitivity to the many different types and licensees of stations is evident by listening to a boardroom discussion on any given topic.”

CHARTOCK:

[NPR’S] arrogance knows no bounds as they say they know how to do it better. So far we’ve been able to keep them at bay but one can only believe that this is a very risky time. As you can tell, I am very worried.

SAVAGE:

“Fear can make people do foolish things.  By reaching out directly to [WAMC’s] audience…Chartock is making a dangerous choice to present NPR inaccurately in an attempt to generate public support for his position.

SPARK NEWS: We are sending preview copies of this post to both Chartock and Savage. We encourage them, and Spark News readers to continue this discussion.

UPDATE 5-1-19 2:00pm CT

Below is the message sent by Mike Savage to a-reps (and Spark News) on April 25, 2019. There were subsequent discussions about Alan Chartock’s comments to WAMC’s members. KM

Savage message:

This (efficiency/collaboration) is a very important discussion that comes at a crucial time. 

The compact process has put a lot of pressure on NPR and stations affected by potential fee changes. 

To think that NPR can take the current strawman and create a magic bullet to make all stations happy is not realistic. Coming up with major donor funding to support the entire system is aspirational at best and in my view not a realistic way forward to generate revenue/reduce fees for member stations. With that being said, as we near the end of the compact process and a decision has to be made,

I believe NPR is making a good faith effort to help the weakest stations in our system while trying to balance the needs of our larger counterparts. 

They deserve credit for working hard on this process and challenging all of us to come up with solutions to help create a better and more equitable fee structure for member stations.

As for station support, CPB and the CSG review group need to take an active role in funding news hubs to help cover news deserts which many small market stations are located in.

I would also encourage NPR to consider ways to help member stations with collaborations including regional hosting support, creating smaller news hubs in small markets where the need is greatest.

Each station can contribute to the collaborative process and benefit from efficiencies. By taking a more active role in regional collaborations each station can reduce duplication and increase efficiency.  In Indiana, I led a collaboration between WBAA in West Lafayette and WFYI in Indianapolis – a small and mid-sized station to share an ATC host that would help each station redirect resources for content creation over duplicative hosting.  It was and still is a great partnership.  I did reach out to CPB about creating a regional hosting template for other stations and to help our two stations get this project off the ground and received no response from them.  Stations are just going to have to work together to create collaborations that are meaningful that preserve local service a opposed to CPB’s consolidation and assimilation model.

There are examples of collaboration between varying licensees here in Kentucky.  My station, WEKU in Lexington, partners with Louisville Public Media, WKU Public Radio in Bowling Green and WKMS at Murray State on a statewide Underwriting sales rep who is now selling north of $200,000 and has created income streams for each station.  We also partner on shared statewide newscasts and reporters contribute stories to the KPR News for use by stations in the group.  This partnership includes a community licensee, 2 University licensees and a joint University licensee.

I should add that this is a coalition of the willing.  Not all Kentucky stations are involved in this collaborative project.  But that lack of complete inclusion in the collaboration does not disrupt nor affect the success of this project.  It just allows like-minded, willing stations to work together for mutual benefit.  This and other collaboration and efficiency projects should run parallel to NPR’s efforts to reshape the compact.  Stations should also exert pressure on CPB to step in, lead and do their part to protect our system of stations including the smallest members who have the greatest need.

Mike Savage

WEKU Director & General Manager              

859-622-1662 | www.weku.fm

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