Western States Public Radio (WSPR) President’s report on the NPR Board Meeting in Washington (February 19-20, 2004)
NPR Board
Meeting Summary
Membership – NPR ramping up its pursuit of major gifts and has hired consultant John Bittrock to help fuel the effort. ● The NPR Foundation is interested in learning more about, and associating more closely with, member stations. ● The Board adopted a resolution directing management to develop an “underwriting compliance program” to deal with instances in which stations are deleting NPR announcements. A draft document is being developed. ● An advisory group, chaired by Stewart Vanderwilt of KUT, Austin, is developing a draft Underwriting Guidelines policy statement to help articulate NPR’s underwriting copy acceptance standards. ● The 3nvironment for federal funding is “tough.” The “split’ between radio and TV funding for digital conversion, however, could move slightly in radio’s favor though that’s uncertain. ● The Board is following progress of NPR Partnership Compact draft paper with interest as it attempts to capture in writing, by the time of A-Reps, NPR’s “aspirations and goals” relative to member stations. “Partnership between NPR and stations is the central issue; the total interdependence of NPR and the stations requires that we strengthen our ability to act together.” The regionals spoke in favor of Partnership Compact. ● WSPR and EPR asked for consideration of changes in the Underwriting Compliance approach. ● The Board took several steps to implement a policy simplification process seeking to codify, condense and simplify a number of existing membership policies. This is a reorganization of material rather than any change in its substance.
Distribution/Interconnection – The Committee accepted Jim Russell’s resignation with regret and is interviewing new candidates. ● November 15 is the target migration date for the new Content Depot portions of which were demo’d to the Committee. The Content Depot will be “double-streamed” with existing the existing distribution system during a “transition period” so stations don’t have to be “on” the new system on November 15. There is concern that many stations haven’t followed developments on the Content Depot and NPR is planning series of regional workshops to help get operations people up to speed. (Note that we will probably have a full day Content Depot training session adjacent to WSPR’s Fall Meeting in November – precise dates still to be announced.) ● D/I’s budget should “look the same” with under the Content Depot although NPR is still working out pricing models for the services provided to producers. ●Gave guidance to NPR’s Investment Committee on the liquidity needed in Distribution’s reserve funds in terms of contemplated future capital needs.
HD Technology: NPR predicts that HD radios will reach double-digit market penetration in 2006. One thing not helping in stimulating support for the Second Audio Channel (SAC) is that more than 50% of the stations in seed markets don’t know what they would do with such a channel if it was available.
Governance: The
Board welcomed two new public members, Lyle Logan
(Senior Vice President at The Northern Trust Company, Chicago) and Howard
H. Stevenson (Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration at
Programming: In a brief report Jay summarized by saying that this was “not a year of change in programming.” Rather, NPR’s efforts largely focus upon refining and strengthening existing programming efforts.