Community Advisory Board Meeting Thursday, January 19, 2017 – 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: Emily Walton, Chair Shelby Zepeda, Vice Chair Kristin Mathews Cornelia Sprung Mark Wheeler Board Members Not in Attendance: Corey Cook Vicki Lawson Staff in Attendance: Tom Michael, General Manager
Maria Trebby Dede Ryan Leta Neustaedter Kay Alspaugh Dave Fotsch
David Lombardi Paul Ries (via phone) Marilyn Shuler (via phone)
Shikhar Sarin
Stacy Madsen
Katie John, Recorder
Rick Strack, Chief Engineer
***************** Call to Order – Emily Walton Chair, Emily Walton, called the Boise State Public Radio (BSPR) Community Advisory Board (CAB) meeting to order at 6:00 p.m. Approval of October 2016 Meeting Minutes – Emily Walton Dede Ryan made a motion to approve the minutes; seconded by Dave Fotsch. The motion was passed unanimously. M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust Grant Update – Rick Strack Rick gave an overview of the 3 phases of the technology replacement project that will take place over the next 3 years. This project will cost approximately $500,000, with $240,000 being granted from the Murdock Charitable Trust and the remainder matched with funds from company reserves. The main items in this first phase are a new transmitter for KBSU, new processors and remote controls, and power backups at the main studios. These upgrades are aimed at both cutting long-term costs and improving overall sound quality of our services. Tom reminded the group that funding for infrastructure improvements is hard to find, so receiving this grant is invaluable. We also discussed how an unusually high amount of snow this season has affected our network of transmitters. General Manager Update – Tom Michael • The preliminary numbers are in from the fall ratings book, and overall, our KBSX 91.5 FM is #2 in news/talk behind KBOI, but KBSX leads during the critical morning and afternoon drive-times. • Also in programming, the investigative show Reveal has been added to the weekend lineup and on KBSU 90.3, top-of-the-hour newscasts have been dropped after market research showed a majority of classical listeners want to hear music uninterrupted. Host Joshua Johnson with 1A replaced the retiring Diane Rehm in mornings. 1|Page
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The newsroom internship program has begun, with students receiving course credit. Two students are interning now, with one more lined up for the summer. The station currently has three vacancies: Business Manager (interviews starting the week of 01/23/17), as well as News Director and Senior Broadcast Engineer, both of which are posted. The University has granted BSPR’s request for seed money to fund the daily local show that has been proposed. This will include 2 new positions: a show host and producer. Tom and Paul Stribling are modeling the framework after other successful public radio programs. The BSPR daily show will launch midway through the year. In membership donations, calendar year 2016 was successful. Broadcast Society (annual major donors of $1,000 and up) giving increased nearly 32%. Additionally, we are half way through fiscal year 2017 and membership is on track to reach its stretch goal, which is 9% higher than previous year actuals. A speculative article was published in “The Hill” just today indicating the new presidential administration could eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and other arts and humanities organizations. There are many routes the CAB can take if this becomes a real threat, including contacting our elected representatives, joining and supporting “Protect My Public Media” (a grassroots organization), and joining with Idaho Public Television. Upcoming events include endorsing the Tiny Desk concert for NPR Music, hosting a late March event at the Ketchum Library, inviting a public media personality to speak at Treefort/Storyfort, and holding the spring membership drive on March 8-16. The CAB was dissatisfied the Event Calendar wasn’t further built out. Our proposal for a new Regional Journalism Center is still pending before the CPB.
During Tom’s discussion, a few interesting ideas were mentioned by board members that have been noted below: • In the past, there was a KBSU programming like Mountain Stage held at Redfish Lake near Stanley, ID. Will that return? Staff has followed up to learn this is a seasonal broadcast that’s just returned to the airwaves. • Can we use the membership database to geographically target areas currently lacking board representation and invite donors from specific locations to be part of the CAB? Staff has followed up with Membership and this is a possibility. Katie will also draft a board matrix. In addition to geography, the board supports a diversity of age, race, and political affiliation. • Do we need new parking passes for the noontime meeting held in April? • David suggested approaching long-time underwriters and inviting some to be CAB members. Staff will follow up on this with Larry Newton of Corporate Support to see how we can make this happen. Meeting Times & Dates – Katie John and Emily Walton •
After a thorough discussion, the board agreed to try a lunch time meeting to see if that could help improve overall board member attendance. The next meeting has been set for Tuesday, April 11 at Noon. The meeting will be in the same location and will last no longer than 90 minutes. Plus, subsequent meetings in July and October.
Board Expansion – Review of Candidate Resumes • Emily stated that the Nominations Committee (Shelby, Kristin, Kay, Maria) will review the resumes of Laurie Ahern and Mitzi Jensen, and will also take nominations of other potential new members until February 10, 2017. The nominating form will be sent out by Katie John, so anyone interested in nominating will have access to it. Lastly, it was mentioned that the Board should also have at least one student member, so if anyone knows a student to nominate that would be very helpful. (Tom mentioned this could perhaps be one of the newsroom interns.)
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Good of the Order – Emily Walton • No items were specifically mentioned, but Tom concluded with a brief list of follow-up items that he would address in an email. (Email sent at 8 pm on 01/19/2017.) This included Vida Smith’s contact information in Membership for anyone wanting to help make calls to donors, a link to Protect My Public Media, the article from “The Hill”, and an article from Current magazine that mentioned the station. Adjourn Dave moved to dismiss the meeting at 7:15 pm, David provided the second, and the motion passed unanimously.
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