Community Advisory Board Meeting Thursday, June 12, 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 Camille Oldenburg Paula Brown Sinclair
Maria Trebby Leta Neustaedter Dave Fotsch Vicki Lawson (phone) Azam Houle
Randi McDermott (phone) Cornelia Sprung Christine Collins Dede Ryan
Staff in Attendance: John Hess, General Manager Paul Stribling, Programming Director Larry Newton, Director of Corporate Support & Community Outreach Jennifer Florczyk, Recorder ***************** Call to Order – Mary Reiman Chair, Mary Reiman, called the Boise State Public Radio Community Advisory Board (CAB) meeting to order at 6:04 p.m. Everyone received the list of FY15 CAB meeting dates. Approval of April 2014 Meeting Minutes – Mary Reiman No discussion on the minutes as submitted. Motion: Maria Trebby made a motion to approve the minutes; seconded by Camille Oldenburg. The motion was passed unanimously. Sub Committee Reports – Mary Reiman Nominations (Emily Walton): Looking for committee members to look over current list of members and who is going off the CAB next year and figure where we need to fill in gaps of people with different strengths. Maria Trebby, Kay Alspaugh, Cornelia Sprung, and Randi McDermott (missing one) have volunteered to be on the nomination committee. Emily will send email to nomination committee members to set up meetings and timeline. Advocacy (Emily Walton): The elected official’s event scheduled for May 21st, 2014 was cancelled due to conflicting schedules. Emily is looking to reschedule the event after the grand opening here this fall. 1|Page
John sent an email from Mike Rickson, VP of policy for NPR regarding appropriation for federal funding for public broadcasting and it looks like the senate will be approving the $445 million dollar appropriation (2 yr) for FY15 & FY16. However, if the senate flips to a republican senate all bets are off. There may be other advocacy things that will be happening in the Fall to be aware of that we’ll need your help with. Programming (Kristin Mathews): do an event trivia night in the winter (around March 2015), models out there include some local; the Cabin, a group also in the Boise area did a trivia night. New Hampshire Public Radio has a model and we’ll reach out to them; St. Louis MO does huge trivia fundraisers through some of their non-profits and we’ll try to connect with them too. Committee to meet in Summer July or August for preplanning and Fall sit down to do planning. We have talked about tying some sort of fundraising to it, may want to pull in the development committee at some point. If you’re not on the marketing committee and you are interested let Kristin know. Sustainability (John Hess on behalf of Kelly Palmer): Thank you to Maria who continues to cultivate a relationship with a couple who are long time major donors to the station, we hope to present them with information on the capital campaign. Moving forward with mailings to broadcast society members for the capital campaign and Marilyn Shuler has agreed to co-sign the letter with us and is adding a personal endorsement for the Capital campaign we are hoping to close out by September 15th, 2014. Cornelia Sprung is still willing to help with Foundations and some local letters of inquiry, but is currently on hold until Programming/News have a firm handle on what they want/need in terms of major national foundation project support. It is still in the planning phase. The amount raised is almost at $550,000 level should be done by Sept 15th, 2014 (applause). Mary invited a very influential member and a business person of great means to our last community engagement event Road to Red (however, he was unable to attend); we encourage you all to engage in your networks in such a fashion. Marketing (Camille Oldenburg and Shelby Zepeda): Camille and Shelby met with the internal marketing committee and reviewed the overview plan for next year and the entire station. Our plan for the Fall 2014 is the entire CAB is going to have a presentation by Emilie Ritter Saunders, BSPR, the station’s social media person. Emilie will train CAB members in all the social media ways at the October 2014 CAB meeting. Brainstorm ideas to help BSPR in the Fall. Cornelia suggested broadening attendees to past CAB members to learn technology to promote BSPR on social media. The social media training to be done at the end of the October meeting; the group agreed to extend time of Oct. 9th meeting for this. Underwriting Department Overview – Larry Newton Work with business partners to accept donations and in return we acknowledge them on the air. We hired Christian Koppenhafer last September to help with acquiring underwriters. Underwriting works with programming to get messages out on the air. It is a marketing tool but also they know they are supporting the station. What we can and cannot do: Licensed by FCC, we must abide by guidelines (non-commercial). This year we had about 200 underwriters. Our annual budget; net revenue is up 17% over last year. Questions: Dave asked is there cross activity between underwriting and fundraising campaigns? We do not want to confuse fundraising (membership) with underwriting. Challenge grants… on the drawing board for longer fund drives. Kay – are there minimum underwriting requirements? Rates vary by time slot and broadcast. Mary asked how do you decide who gets what slot? Special deal for non-profits? Yes, special pricing. Leta asked for online pricing, it was taken down but will be revisited to putting back online. There are basic packages, but not many use it. Mary asked what % of underwriting makes up 2|Page
the budget for BSPR or is it combined with personal contributions? It’s separate we have a 3 million dollar revenue budget; Larry’s $550,000 (15%); $1,474,000 in memberships. Is there a cap on how much time is spent on underwriting announcements? No, but there is a balancing act to not sounding commercial. Also, programming time is dictated by NPR and we must run national underwriting announcements. Rules: cannot say something is free or affordable, cannot be of value, cannot say you’re the only person who does something, and cannot compare services to others (strict guidelines from FCC). If not done properly, we could be fined by the FCC. Station report – John Hess FY15 Work Plans: Programming – build listening 60K weekly audience for KBSX, 40K weekly audience for KBSU classical, higher weekly audience the higher the CORE members. News – Enhance quality of local content: assess staff capabilities, news team efficiency and communications, entry level general assignment reporter, take advantage of the “new and improved” NW news network. Jessica Robins to come down for 4 months to cover Idaho legislation. Community Conversations – deeper engagement. Growing the digital audience by develop online strategic plan, more original digital content, collaboration w/ news team, work on online buy-in station wide. Membership – How to tie membership to website. $1.5 million revenue, more sustainers, more new members, close out capital campaign / begin next phase of major giving. 30% to 35-37% sustained members. Underwriting – 210 underwriters generate $550,000 net revenue, identify news opportunities, continue to bring staff up to speed, develop and apply new metrics, how to Tier contract level. Engineering – complete build out of new broadcast center, hire broadcast engineer, build out transmitter/translator sites (21), develop “up-time” metrics system to measure reliability. Marketing – grow the audience elevate BSPR’s public profile, develop comprehensive on-air promotional schedule for programming, news, development, coordinate online promotion with on air promotions. Finance and Administration – compliance with CPB guidelines more transparency, financial, SBE info, CAB info, employee training, wellness, update JDQ, budget – review with all department managers, overhaul of university accounting procedures. Other Business Wellness: Dave would like to see BSPR become a bicycle friendly business; he is sending John a link to apply: League of American Bicyclists
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Adjourn - Mary Reiman There was no further discussion. The next meeting will take place on October 9, 2014 from 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. at 220 E. Parkcenter Boulevard, room 700. Social media training with Emilie Ritter Saunders will follow the regular October meeting agenda and may make that meeting longer than usual. Motion: David Lombardi made a motion to adjourn the meeting; seconded by Cornelia Sprung. There was no discussion and the motion was passed unanimously. The meeting was adjourned at 7:33 p.m.
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