Western States Public Radio (WSPR) President’s Report on Washington DC Activities – Week of May 1-5, 2006

Submitted by Ron Kramer , WSPR President

New Realities Retreat:  A number of WSPR members attended the New Realities retreat but, for those who did not, I thought it might be useful to offer my own summary.

The format, while different than the previous regional sessions, was very “open” and highly participatory.  The retreat was well attended and attendees were high complementary of the facilitators.  The synthesis of thinking from something like 45+ breakout conversations created a long list of items including technical, structural, programming, online and philosophical topics.  It was a huge, highly diverse list.  I believe the New Realities participants found the experience to be positive.  The group gave itself a huge, heartfelt round of applause at conclusion of the last session.   More on New Realities in the NPR Board Report (below).

a-Reps:  For the fourth year in a row, there was no quorum so no business could be transacted.  Apart from reports from the Chairman, President and Treasurer, the remaining business largely consisted of acknowledgements for three retiring colleagues:  Martin Neeb , Lamar Marchese, Marvin Granger and Joe Gwathmey.  My own sense is that NPR had believed that the New Realities structure this year gave them the best chance (of recent years) of fielding a quorum.    Again, my own observation:  the “best” a-Reps sessions which have been held (this being the fourth), were the first and fourth – because they were highly participatory.  One of the things which I think made this year’s a-Reps “conference” (i.e, the New Realities retreat) successful was that it was open to a broader group than just a-Reps (as the PRC had been).  Just what NPR might look to doing with a-Reps in 2007 is an intriguing question.

Capital Hill Day:  Public radio seems to have fielded a larger contingent to lobby this year than last.  Surprising to some, the reports on appropriations which came back were much more positive than might have been anticipated.  We are, however, hardly out of the woods and retaining our current funding level will continue to require effort on all our parts.  (Side note:  The “Tell Them Public Matters” website campaign is working well, where deployed, and I would strongly encourage your station to participate if you haven’t already.)

PRRO Award:  I separately wrote you last week to report that Public Radio’s Regional Organizations had conferred the annual PRRO Award upon our colleague, Dennis Haarsager , of Northwest Public Radio.  The award was presented at the opening of the NPR Board Meeting on Friday, May 5 and the text of the presentation is on the WSPR website.

NPR Board:  The Board’s normal operating structure would have had all day Thursday, May 4, devoted to committee meetings with the full Board’s public session on Friday, May 5.  Given the full week’s activities, the New Realities Retreat discussion dominated the NPR Board’s own meeting and most of the Thursday committee meetings were dramatically shortened to allow the Board to meet, in Executive Session, to discuss New Realities.  Since none of the public members had been able to attend the May 1-2 Retreat, I suspect that those Board members who had attended spent a good deal of their time trying to explain what was, essentially, a “happening.”  (If you weren’t there, it’s hard to explain.)  The Board then met, as a Committee of the Whole, in public session devoted to New Realities and had considerable discussion about “where to go next.”  The Board then invited comment from the regional presidents on what had transpired.  Because these observations came from “outsiders” (ie., not members of the NPR Board), I believe they added useful dimension to what the Board had heard and both Tim, Kevin and Dana commented that those perspectives had “helped.”

Also on Thursday, in dramatically abbreviated Committee meetings:

• the Governance Committee heard a report on the status of the Board election (ballots due July 8); received, and discussed, extensive material regarding Conflict of Interest Policy related to the Investment Committee’s role; discussed and approved a proposed charter for the Membership Committee
• the Membership Committee met, for only its second meeting, discussed its role on receiving, and expressing its approval of, the Committee’s charter as forwarded by the Governance Committee and briefly discussed the New Realities Retreat
• the Distribution/Interconnection Committee received and approved a request to transfer previous in-kind support previously provided to Airos to a new entity, the Native Distribution Network (NDN), which will now be handling distribution of Native Network programming, and heard a report on ContentDepot deployment (which they heard is running well and on-time)
• The Audit Committee and Finance/Administration Committees also met but, because they were concurrent with the above committee meetings, I didn’t get to attend them.

At the Full Board meeting on Friday, May 5, Chair Tim Eby and President Kevin Klose both expressed their pleasure over the tremendous investment of consultation energy made by a-Reps during the entire course of the New Realities effort.  Tim noted that “our old way of doing business simply cannot succeed in the future.”  Kevin expressed the hope that the New Realities effort would be seen as a key indicator by those who have, in the past, expressed concern over potential “bypass” issues.

The Board then considered a “next steps” resolution of “where to go next” with New Realities.  The resolution‘s key points were that the NPR Board believed it had implicitly been granted authority from the members to try take the New Realities discussion to the next level, charged staff with bringing forward the outlines of an “action plan” by June 5, and expressed its willingness to commit new resources in support of such action steps.

In other business the Board heard a report on Legislative activities/Capitol Hill Day, Podcasting update from Maria Thomas (the partners have agreed to extend the current arrangement for another six months), saluted retiring managers Neeb, Marchese, Granger and Gwathmey and received reports from work of the committees the previous day.

By the end of the week, I believe people felt it had been a good week – and a lot of work – and folks were entirely ready to “head for home.”

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