Community Advisory Board Meeting Thursday, February 13, 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 Kay Alspaugh Susan Giannettino Staff in Attendance: John Hess, General Manager Kelly Palmer, Development Director
Dede Ryan Paula Brown Sinclair Dave Fotsch Azam Houle Vicki Lawson
Maria Trebby Kristin Mathews Christine Collins Camille Oldenburg Marilyn Shuler
Tom Lowther, Director of Engineering Tara Cooper, Recorder *****************
Call to Order – Mary Reiman Chair, Mary Reiman, called the Boise State Public Radio Community Advisory Board (CAB) meeting to order at 6:03 p.m. A group contact list was passed out to everyone. Please review what is noted and let Tara know if you have any changes to your information. She will be sending everyone an electronic version as well. Tom Lowther, Director of Engineering, was introduced to the group. Approval of December 2013 Meeting Minutes – Mary Reiman No discussion on the minutes as submitted. Motion: Dede Ryan made a motion to approve the minutes; seconded by Kay Alspaugh. The motion was passed unanimously. Sub Committee Reports – Mary Reiman Advocacy (Emily Walton): The group met last month and talked about what everyone would like to do for advocacy and came up with a plan. Individuals have been paired up with key cities to reach out to city officials regarding the April reception (not included legislators right now). Once a date and time has been determined for the reception, John will let the group know and individuals will reach out individually to those officials encouraging them to come see the station. We want to talk to them about what the station does, how important it is, and that we need their support. 1|Page
Programming (Kristin Mathews): Kristin and Erin met with John and Paul in December to determine the best way for this group to help the station. John and Paul are still working on areas but two key areas right now will be Community Engagement events and the Public Insight Network (PIN). PIN is going well and we now have a usable database. John noted that we are also looking into a program called Curious City. It is a place where folks from within the community can go to suggest story topics and ideas to the news staff. This helps to inform the newsroom of things they may not be aware of in the community. John is still looking into this, as there is a cost associated with it. A few comments were noted regarding programming: Maria Trebby noted that phone calls within news stories are often very hard to hear and require a significant volume adjustment to hear. John let the group know that part of the move includes a new Telos machine that helps phone lines sound better on air. Susan also noted that she has heard some complaints from folks in her acquaintance regarding repeat stories (i.e. Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me). John noted that the Wood River Valley does get two repeats due to what we broadcast in that area. This is done to allow those individuals unable to hear the earlier broadcast an opportunity to hear it, but it is also done to allow the station to get the most out of several programs that have a high cost to them. Susan noted that these individuals are folks that would be listening all day to our programming; hence hearing the original broadcasts. Sustainability (Kelly Palmer): The focus recently has been on developing relationships with new people who have an affinity for the station and meeting more people. Cornelia has been assisting with some grant writing. We have been invited to submit a full proposal to the Idaho Women’s Charitable Foundation. Our proposal will focus on funding for environmental reporting. We do have a volunteer individual who will be helping us with a larger grant opportunity. The station doesn’t need help with finding grant opportunities, but does need help with grant writing. Dede Ryan and Kristin Mathews both offered to assist with further grant writing. This committee isn’t necessarily a project based committee. Kelly works with each person on the committee individually to get specified help in various areas. Camille suggested that a finite list of needs be put together and shared with the group so that folks can respond to items they can specifically help with. Sub Committee Membership – Group A committee listing was passed out to the group. If you are on a group you don’t belong on or which to be on a different group, please let Tara know and the lead for that group. Tara will be sending out an electronic copy to everyone. Camille asked John whether the Marketing Committee continued to be necessary and valuable to the station. John would like to continue to have a committee that meets with him yearly. The station is creating a calendar of all station events for the coming year and John would like some input as to budget and what we need in terms of funding to accomplish the goals the station has.
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Station Report – John Hess We received our Fall programming numbers and we received our best combined weekly cumes (# of people listening) for both stations (KBSX & KBSU) at 109,800 listeners! This is an all-time high for the station! Our total coverage area has about 800,000 people, so that is a significant amount. This increase is attributed to population increase, other sources of media not being available and great programming they can’t get anywhere else. Sadie Babits will be leaving the station as of February 14. She is moving on to Colorado Public Radio as their News Director. Scot Graf will be our Interim News Director as we search for her replacement. John wanted to take a moment and thank Sadie for her work and dedication to BSPR for a significant portion of her professional career. Sadie’s contribution to the station will leave a lasting legacy. Recently we received a Boise City Arts Commission grant to cover the burgeoning art scene in Boise. These stories will debut in May and we will cap them off with an engagement event that will include a performance event and gallery. Paula mentioned that we should connect with Twin Falls Art and & Soul that is part of the Magic Valley Artists Alliance. Our website has become a big part of our news gathering. Emilie’s Idaho Bucket List story generated over 322K page views, with 202K separate visits. We’ve doubled our page views within the last six months. We’ve beefed up our streaming capacity considerably and generated more web traffic through Facebook and Twitter. December was our best ever for Development. We raised $250K compared to $200K last year. We’ve raised $740K so far this year, which is a ten percent increase over FY13; so we are well on our way of meeting our goal this year. Our Broadcast Society has increase 28 percent in membership and 33 percent in dollars. Kelly attributes this to being able to devote more of her time to cultivation. We are an industry leader in our peer group in terms of how many people we have as sustainers; 35 percent of our membership is sustaining members. We’ve done a strategic shift in our Capital Campaign after getting some outside counsel. Currently we have raised a little over $400K and the project is nearly complete. We are paying for half the project from our reserves and the other half we’ve taken a loan from the university for. Our goal is to raise enough to be able to pay back the loan amount and then consider the campaign a success given the time frame we’ve been working in. Per our outside counsel, the prospect of raising money for something that is already complete is not likely. This way we can declare success and put our future efforts toward repackaging our funding needs to specific initiatives. We are also working on a PR strategy for communicating information about the center. The station also raises money through Corporate Support (Underwriting). We’ve added another individual to our staff this year to help increase this. Currently we are at 65 percent of our goal for the year and we anticipate making our $550K goal by year end. We will continue to coordinate Station Experiences for members. Our last one that will take place in the old studios will take place on February 25. This will be our final push for capital campaign fundraising. The grand opening events for our new space will take place in the Fall, as the summer isn’t great for participation. The staff is working on a yearly events calendar with all department events included. This is going to help us with integrating events more cohesively and looking at possible themes.
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Our move to the new studios is set for the week of March 10 with staff moving the week after that. Cable has been pulled to all the studios and one of the production studios will move next week followed by the rest. The FCC has granted our construction permit for the Bellevue translator (100.3) and it should be going live very shortly. This will provide a greater service area to Warm Springs, Ketchum and up to Galina Lodge. The CPB budget resolution has been taken care of and funding has been approved through FY17, we don’t anticipate funding problems this year. John met with Jeff Fox, the new President at CSI. He is a former Jazzworks producer and knows our service. John spoke with him about beefing up our CSI facility as our equipment is really old. CSI no longer has a TV station and there is no empty studio space that may be available in the future. They also spoke about possible future funding through CSI to help improve our facilities there and help to provide better local service to the Eastern region, as it all flow through that site. The group requested that a new staff member come to each of the meetings and introduce themselves and what they do at the station. John was asked how many volunteers the station has; we don’t have an exact number. The station mostly has volunteers help at event tables (a lot during the summer months). We are going to be looking more at our special events and determining more specifically what we are trying to accomplish and how to make the events more worth the time and effort involved. We’ve discussed becoming more of a lead sponsor at fewer events to provide more visibility. The group discussed this and a few ideas were presented: further training with volunteers (the do currently have an orientation); give away free memberships; provide BSPR volunteer t-shirts; actually emcee events. Hosting the Fettuccini Forum was specifically brought up and April Raine said she would help to try to coordinate this; as part of her job she organizes these events. The group also requested that this be discussed further at our next meeting that Adrienne and Larry possibly attended to take part in the discussion. Adjourn – Mary Reiman There was no further discussion. The next meeting will take place on April 24, 2014 from 6:00-7:30 p.m. at 220 E. Parkcenter Boulevard, Room 700. Motion: Dave Fotsch 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 7:24 p.m.
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