Community Advisory Board Meeting Thursday, June 6, 2013 – 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Ron and Linda Yanke Family Research Park 220 Parkside Boulevard, Room 510 Board Members in Attendance: Susan Giannettino, Chair Erin Duran David Lombardi Randi McDermott Bob Youde Staff in Attendance: John Hess, General Manager Kelly Palmer, Development Director Ryan White, Intern Project Manager
Mary Reiman Emily Walton Dave Fotsch Maria Trebby Michael Zuzel
Dede Ryan Shelby Zepeda Camille Oldenburg Kristin Mathews
Paul Stribling, Program Director Tara Cooper, Recorder
***************** Call to Order – Susan Giannettino Chair, Susan Giannettino, called the Boise State Public Radio Community Advisory Board (CAB) meeting to order at 6:03 p.m. Ryan White was introduced; he is working as an Intern Project Manager for the station over the summer. He is an MBA student at Boise State and his helping in marketing, membership, and development. Approval of April 2013 Meeting Minutes – Susan Giannettino No discussion on the minutes as submitted. Motion: Dede Ryan made a motion to approve the minutes; seconded by Maria Trebby. The motion was passed unanimously. Task Force Reports – Susan Giannettino Nominations (Mary Reiman): The first official meeting of the nominations committee will take place on June 20. We currently have 16 active members. According to our bylaws, we will need to recruit between 4 and 14 more individuals. Everyone on the board will get a request from the committee for nominations; criteria will be included when that request goes out. Mary will keep everyone posted on progress. Susan encouraged each member to evaluate the people you know and meet at every place you go to see if they would be a good candidate for a CAB member. 1|Page
Marketing (Camille/Shelby/Ryan): (Camille) – This group has met a couple of times since forming about a month ago. The initial focus was on the marketing process and what the plan should encompass. Then the group looked at strategies and met with key staff. Staff will focus on specific goals. The CAB Marketing Committee will provide resources, feedback, etc. (Shelby) The marketing plan will focus on three main goals: (1) increase listenership, (2) convert non-member listeners to members, and (3) elevate BSPR’s public profile within the Treasure Valley and beyond. The metrics we’ve determined thus far are: For KBSX – increase listenership from 56K to 60K cume. Increase P1 listeners (5 or more hours/week) to 40K consistently. For KBSU – stay level at 40k cume. Increase underwriting by 8%. 550K increase for fundraising – 5.45%. Raise 100-150K more for the capital campaign, this calendar year. We only buying the Arbitron book for Treasure Valley, but we’d like to build audience across the entire network. (Ryan) Our plan going forward is to split the next fiscal year into quarters and assigned phases. Q1 – Planning phase. We will be gathering ideas internally, creating projects off of ideas and actionable items with timelines associated with those, deciding which metrics to use, and assigning ownership. Q2 – Implementation. This will include training with new project management software and utilizing this software to implement and manage new projects. Q3 – Review, revision, and analysis. We will look at the metrics and determine whether we should continue, make changes, or drop. Q4 – We will continue through the revision process and use what we’ve learned to plan for next fiscal year. As a note, the Radio Research Consortium (RRC) defines cume as “The estimated number of different listeners that tune in during a day part in an average week, sometimes called "reach" or "circulation." There is an internal budget of $40K for marketing; we do a lot of this via trade (IPTV/Boise Weekly). There will be a plan put down on paper by the end of first quarter; this will be presented at the October meeting. The CAB Marketing Committee will be there to provide overarching guidance to the internal staff marketing committee. The CAB Marketing Committee will meet quarterly with key staff and be available to bounce ideas off of. Once the plan is developed, we’ll see if we need more members on the committee. The committee suggested the push-email concept; this is being looked and developed. Advocacy (Emily Walton): John recently received an email from Mike Rickson, the VP of Policy and Rep. for NPR regarding the sequester. We are looking at up to a 22% reduction ($80-90K). This can change quickly. We need to start thinking about what we would do as a station if/when that happens. If this happened immediately we would definitely lose some journalism and some rural stations. TO DO items: John will talk to other stations that service rural areas. There is a meeting schedule in July to speak with rural community leaders; we need to know what the service means to them and what we should do to let the community know about the problems we are facing. Emily has list of events happen in those communities and will send that to John. Micah is also sending information out to groups he knows. We have 149 people total that are donors in those smaller areas. We need to let them know about what is happening and ask for help. John to find out the exact sequester costs, the costs to provide service in those areas, and how much money is raised in those areas. Everyone needs to work together as we could lose up to $500k in five years. The group discussed setting a goal that we be fiscally independent of federal funds within five years, making us more proactive rather than reactive. Right now the public isn’t really worried; discretionary programs have the potential to be hit very hard. The group discussed an Adopt-a-Tower program. John cautioned this approach as we don’t want folks to give solely to a tower fund instead of something that goes to support the whole system. Emily noted that currently our strategic plan notes that rural communities continue to be served; the CAB feels very strongly about maintaining these. But when push comes to shove, we have to put our 2|Page
money where our listenership is. The Treasure valley supports the entire system. Ninety percent of our listeners and funding dollars come from here. We have to make the case to the rural communities that they need to step up. The group then discussed whether we are required to serve a specific or various specific areas. The stations are licensed to BSU, but we don’t have any requirements to serve any particular area. There is no mandate to service; if we are in an area, we are there. We are considered a department of the university; thru the radio station. We receive funding of 4.5 FTE equivalent, facilities, and electricity from BSU. We pay for electricity to all the other areas. The seven translator stations (Stanley, Lower Stanley, Challis, Salmon, Burley, Cascade, and New Meadows) are the stations in danger. Maria noted that Internet service in those areas is not very viable. Programming (Kristin Mathews): The committee met earlier this week and discussed the Public Interest Network. Paul Stribling joined the committee to discuss what else committee members can do. We plan to use community events to network. The committee will also be helping with the community engagement events and other station activities. StoryCorps is here, if there is something the group can help with to take some burden off staff, please let Kristin know. The group talked about upcoming programming changes and how we can help raise awareness about what changes are coming (Talk of the Nation for example). The Board can help to get the word out and build excitement for new programming. Erin also asked if anyone could help at the Central Bench Neighborhood Festival; which will be a good opportunity to network. Maria volunteered to help; Erin will send out more information. The board asked if committee chairs could use the weekly wrap up document that is sent out on Fridays as a means of sharing committee information and/or actions so the board does not have to wait until the next meeting to find out what is going on with a committee. This way committee information can be shared quickly. Shelby will share this document with all committee leaders so they may add necessary information on a weekly basis. Sustainability (Kelly Palmer): This group has not met recently; Kelly will be reigniting the crew. We have $780K that we need to raise still for the capital campaign. We have approximately $320K we are asking for on a one-on-one basis to our most avid supporters, which includes the CAB. Kelly reiterated that the staff is always on hand to accept gifts you are able to make. We are working to raise as much of the funds as possible before it is built. Our next step is an accelerated silent phase. We are gathering core groups for events. There will be an event held on July 31 for past and current CAB members. The committee will help call everyone and encourage attendance. We are shooting for 100% participation. We will be doing a few of these to start; each event will have an individual who offers a testimonial. John will also speak. Ryan is working with Kelly to create materials for these events. We are thinking outside the box to convey the message and impart the impact the new facility will have. It isn’t possible without help from folks who go above and beyond regular support. This is a huge paradigm shift. Those that have supported us have really gone above and beyond. This last stage will not be easy, but we are aiming high and making the asks. John and Kelly are meeting one-on-one with people. We currently have approximately $160K in proposals under consideration. Our goal is to get $150K-200K in cash and commitments by end of year (2013); to ensure we have at least 50% before going public. The CAB requested talking points to CAB members to use when talking to other individuals. Station Report – John Hess Strategic Plan Update: We have determined some of the metrics for our FY14-16 Strategic Plan, but we are not entirely finished yet. 3|Page
Our goal for KBSX is to increase cumes to 60K weekly and maintain 40K on average on KBSU. Flat in classical, is really the new up. We are very lucky to have that within our network; however this may be a future strategic problem. KBSX is seeing the most growth; over the last 8 years we’ve grown 60 percent in Boise alone and 44 percent in the Treasure Valley. We would like to increase our P1 listeners (5+ hours/daily) to 40k weekly on KBSX, as these people are more likely to be members. We are going to focus on more in-depth news coverage. Our plan is to go to a beat system with a focus on politics, the environment, education, healthcare, and art/culture. We are going provide more training to staff and hire a Digital Content Coordinator and a senior-level radio producer. We are not just a radio station anymore. We now produce media that is used on radio, the web, podcasts, Facebook, and Twitter. Our goals are to increase friends, likes, and shares on Facebook and similarly on Twitter by increasing followers and re-tweets. Everyone at the station will learn how to use Twitter, as social media is about engaging with folks. We can provide a tutorial for the CAB as well. The new broadcast center will bring with it a lot more production capacity. We would like to harden our transmission sites. We are also facing the loss of federal funding and we don’t have an equipment replacement fund. Transmitters in Salmon, Challis, Stanley, Lower Stanley, New Meadows, Burley, and Cascade are all aging and will require major repairs or replacements soon. We’ve asked the university for a $20K increase annually over 5 years for stop-gap coverage. We did learn that we cannot use NPR in our nameplate. We can say “Idaho’s NPR News Source”. We are now looking at KBSX News 91.5 and KBSU Classical 90.3. We are going to do more research around this; we need to be sure we have a name with the most leverage. Our goals are: $1,470,000 – Membership: 4% above where we were last year current; we keep hitting new highs $550K – Underwriting $200K – Capital Campaign It is important for all of us to become more donor-centered. Everyone needs to keep it in mind. Need CAB members to be advocates and keep spreading the message. Looking at putting on a signature event around local beers/microbrewers; the focus would be more on education rather than drinking. Possibly pick a certain type of beer with a food pairing – sampling event. Right now we are still the research phase. We want to increase our presence in the Wood River Valley. Our short term goal is facility based. Longterm we’d like to look at local origination programming that benefits the entire system. We will maintain the status quo for the classical service. Our Saturday programming is doing really well. We do have a new Saturday morning host as Marla Leggette moved to Colorado. Summer Event Sign-Up: Shelby will be sending out notices for summer events; please sign-up per your availability.
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Other Items: We have a new Eastern Chief Engineer starting June 17. His name is Richard Strack and he was formally the chief engineer at Channel 7 and he has also worked for Idaho Public Television. He worked as a contract engineer during the station’s previous studio move as well. We are working on the details for a breakfast event in the Wood River Valley later this summer; more details will be sent out as they are finalized. Our news team has won the most awards this year than we ever have in the past. We won six Edward R. Murrow awards, two Public Radio News Directors Inc. awards, and seventeen local Idaho awards. The Public Information Network (PIN) sign-up cards are available to all CAB members to hand out. They will also be out at all of our events. Adjourn – Susan Giannettino This is the last meeting that Susan will be acting as chair; Mary Reiman will take over at the October meeting. The next Community Advisory Board meeting will take place on October 3, 2013. Susan thanked everyone for their impressive work throughout the year. The group also thanked Bob Youde for his service over his two terms. Motion: Maria made a motion to adjourn the meeting; seconded by Emily Walton. There was no discussion and the motion was passed unanimously. The meeting was adjourned at 7:37 p.m.
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