Community Advisory Board Meeting Thursday, April 24, 2014 – 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Ron and Linda Yanke Family Research Park 220 E. Parkcenter Boulevard, Room 700 Board Members in Attendance: Mary Reiman, Chair Emily Walton David Lombardi April Raine Vicki Lawson Susan Giannettino Staff in Attendance: John Hess, General Manager Kelly Palmer, Development Director Tara Cooper, Recorder
Maria Trebby Leta Neustaedter Dave Fotsch Camille Oldenburg Marilyn Shuler Tony Shallat
Shelby Zepeda Shikhar Sarin Christine Collins Cornelia Sprung Randi McDermott Erin Duran
Tom Lowther, Director of Engineering Paul Stribling, Programming Director
***************** Call to Order – Mary Reiman Chair, Mary Reiman, called the Boise State Public Radio Community Advisory Board (CAB) meeting to order at 6:02 p.m. Approval of April 2014 Meeting Minutes – Mary Reiman No discussion on the minutes as submitted. Motion: Dave Fotsch made a motion to approve the minutes; seconded by Maria Trebby. The motion was passed unanimously. Sub Committee Reports – Mary Reiman Advocacy (Emily Walton): A date has been set for the elected official’s event, the date will be Wednesday, May 21 at 6 p.m at the new Yanke Broadcast Center. This event will include a tour and refreshments and we will ask for their support. Committee members have been communicating with the Community Voices Initiative to get best advice regarding the event. City and county elected officials will be invited. If it is in our best interest at a later date, we will invite legislators to attend a separate event. Emily spoke to committee members today and will be sending a follow up email regarding the event. Committee members have been put in charge of personally inviting assigned elected officials. All CAB members are welcome and invited to attend.
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A letter will be drafted for the officials to review and sign. We will set up one-on-one discussions to follow up. The invite list is mostly Ada and Canyon County officials. We make look at additional events in the Wood River Valley, Twin Falls, etc. It was suggested that a raffle be put together as an additional draw. Emily also wanted to encourage everyone again to go on to protectmypublicmedia.org and sign up. Programming (Paul Stribling): We are looking at hosting a trivia night event of some kind and weaving in public radio trivia; this would be an event open to the public and more on the fun side. Everyone has thought this would be a good idea. New Hampshire Public Radio has been hosting a similar event for several years and it has developed into a big fundraising event. They sell tables at the event and sell out every year. We could look at making this a fundraiser and mix programming into it. Paul will get Krisitin in touch with folks in New Hampshire to get more information on their event. There has also been discussion about developing other wings of community engagement. We don’t want to get into the advocacy role in any way, but we want to get feedback on programming from the community to find out what folks might like us to do regarding news stories. We may create a small group that is invitation only to attend brainstorming sessions. We want to connect with more of the community and have more transparency to make sure we are doing what people want. John showed the group the link to Curious City that was created by WBEZ. It is an interactive website curated by the station for listeners to go to and ask questions and suggest stories. They do offer this to other stations for a fee. The committee will look at all the ideas and options first before further assistance from the larger group is needed. Sustainability (Kelly Palmer): The final campaign fundraiser has been completed and we are now in the process of following up with those individuals that attended. We are working to get a few folks from the prior fundraiser in to have a deeper conversation with them. Cornelia has been helping with foundation submissions. We did not receive the Idaho Women’s Charitable Foundation grant that we applied for. These awards are highly competitive; we will be able to use that proposal for further submissions. Kelly met with University Advancement to discuss submission of letters of inquiry to national foundations. Kelly will continue to work with the folks in operations to ensure that what we are submitting is truly indicative of what we need. Marilyn and Kay are members of the Idaho Women’s Charitable Foundation; they volunteered to provide some guidance on our future submissions. Maria has been helping with stewardship work and other as needed activities. She has also helped to identify an individual who may be able to give a $10K gift. Marketing (John Hess): The CAB committee will be with the internal staff committee in mid-June to review and discuss the FY15 plan. BSPR Engineering Overview Report – Tom Lowther The Yanke center is the origination point for our entire network of stations. Of the six studios we have available here, four of them are built out to use currently. We are still working through some glitches, but it is getting better daily and weekly.
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We spend almost $250K annually to maintain and repair our network of transmitters. It is one of the most expensive networks to maintain. This is due to our mountainous region which requires many transmitters to get the signal to various coverage areas. We now have a new signal north of Ketchum to help cover that area better, it is at 100.3. CAB Comments: The group discussed another tower between Boise and Twin Falls. John and Tom mentioned that the Hagerman Translator Council as space in their building that they are willing to provide us for free; unfortunately there are no available translator signals in that area through the FCC. Vicki mentioned that it would be nice to be able to change the programming in Stanley to be a mix of news and music. Tom noted that a crystal oscillator is required to make this happen; which we do not have. Shikhar suggested looking into fuel cell batteries that are designed as off-grid power supplies. Several members suggested doing an insider story about our network and the remoteness of our system; kind of a “Day in the Life” type of story. Station Report – John Hess Our April Fund Drive raised over $180K from over 1500 members. We have a great fundraising team and the reason these always go well is because our team is always planning for our next one. Our Yanke studio build-out is now complete and our first broadcast took place on March 20, 2014. We recently won six of the thirteen awards given at the regional Edward R. Murrow awards. T hose winning entries are now in competition at the national level. Scott Graf has taken over duties as our News Director; we will now begin our search for a new Morning Edition host. Our next Community Conversation will take place on May 12, 2014 at 6 p.m. The discussion will be around the Idaho Primary Elections. Adjourn – Mary Reiman Michael Zuzel has moved to Oregon and will no longer be on the board. Marilyn Shuler will be receiving an honorary doctorate degree at May commencement. There was no further discussion. The next meeting will take place on June 12, 2014 from 6:00-7:30 p.m. at 220 E. Parkcenter Boulevard, Room 700. Motion: Maria Trebby made a motion to adjourn the meeting; seconded by David Lombardi. There was no discussion and the motion was passed unanimously. The meeting was adjourned at 7:25 p.m.
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