General Manager's Report 2009-09-08

2009: RISING TO THE CHALLENGE

SUMMARY

Governance: Board Membership Drive Roles

Personnel: Training for DJs

Fundraising: Membership Drive Moved Up to Oct. 2nd

Programming: Sound Living Goes Weekly

Governance

Two big fundraising events lie ahead for the station, and both are absolutely critical to the station’s financial health. Both will also need Board help in order to meet our targets.

Pledge Drive
In the past, we have asked Board members for help raising money for our Challenge Fund, but as Board members will be busy bringing in sponsors for the Nov.7th Gala, staff will handle the task of raising challenge money this Fall. However, we will need Board help during our Membership Drive, especially evenings and weekends. We will have sign-up sheets at the station, and I will be contacting each of you individually to work out with you how you can best assist with the Membership Drive.

Voices of Our Community Gala
As you have heard, the Gala is scheduled for Saturday, November 7th with John Hockenberry as our special guest. As the Resource Development Committee will brief you, it is vital that each Board member reach their sponsorship goals in order to meet our income targets for the event.

Personnel

DJ Workshops
This month I will be holding mandatory workshops for music hosts, training volunteers to use our playlist software, and how to update their individual blogs. Last month, a final settlement was reached in the long-running negotiations on web-streaming royalties. The industry representative, Sound Exchange, and the CPB (negotiating on behalf of public radio stations, including NFCB stations not affiliated with CPB) reached an agreement on how much public radio stations must pay for their webcasts of music.
The agreement has many details and restrictions, but the most important are several reporting requirements that mean periodically we must electronically track every play of every song heard on the station! Failure to report can (and very likely will) lead to steep fines. We must either be in full compliance or we must stop webcasting during shows whose hosts are not able or willing to enter their playlists electronically.
I will be working with each volunteer music host to learn how to use our software, as well as how to update information on their personal webpage on our website. Complying with these new requirements will add significant administrative tasks to both the duties of our hosts, and myself. Unfortunately, these are the costs of broadcasting in the new Internet era.

Fundraising

Fall Membership Drive
We have moved up the dates of our Fall Membership Drive which now runs Friday, October 2nd through Saturday, Oct. 10th. We discovered that 3 of our biggest competitors (KUOW, KLPU, and KBCS) will all start their drive earlier than previously announced. Given that listeners have tightened their belts this year, we cannot afford to let other stations to get the jump on us.

We will have more details about our Fall Drive in the coming weeks.

Programming

Sound Living
We have begun weekly broadcasts of our exciting new local call-in show, Sound Living, one month ahead of schedule. The show continues to receive much positive feedback, and we look forward to continuing to build new audience for the program. In the next couple months we will be putting together the production team who will eventually expand the show to daily broadcast. Please check out the program Friday’s at 3:00pm or check out the archived programs on our website. Just type “Sound Living” in the search box (updates to our online audio archive are in the works to make finding the archives even simpler).