Western States Public Radio (WSPR) President’s report on the Washington Meetings of the Regional Representatives (November 11, 2005)
To WSPR Stations,
The regionals all met in Washington this week to attend various meetings at NPR, CPB and the FCC. WSPR member Jon Schwartz, who is also a PRIMA Board member, substituted for PRIMA president Patty Wente (who was not able to be in Washington this week). Frank Lanzone, president of California Public Radio, (who is also a WSPR Member) represented CPR. Southern Public Radio was represented by its president, Dave Spizale, and Eastern Public Radio by its executive director, Georgette Bronfman. The regional representatives have a strong, effective working relationship and the following is a summary of the various meetings, which we all jointly attended, and which I believe well-reflect the results of that relationship.
CPB
Met with senior CPB officials, including Pat Harrison. Kenneth Tomlinson’s resignation much on people’s minds. It seems clear that the CPB Board statement accompanying Tomlinson’s resignation was a “negotiated” statement which helped secure his resignation. Inspector General’s report will be released to Congress on Monday, Nov. 14. Seems likely to be far more critical, and strict, about Tomlinson’s actions than the CPB Board statement might have suggested. Harrison seemed legally constrained about answering certain questions until after the report was released. CPB’s goals is to “get through this and get past this.” They are working hard to maintain current activities and programs, avoid budget reductions, and have long-term interest in broadly publicly articulating the vision that this is “everybody’s public broadcasting” to get past suggestions that public broadcasting is elite, politically tilted, etc. Conversations were quite positive.NPR
The NPR Board and its associated committees met for two days. Among its actions were seating newly elected Board members including WSPR’s own Dennis Haarsager.
Highlights:
Governance: Meeting opened with public member Howard Stevenson raising the status of the Membership Committee and strongly advocating its continuation. Ellen Rocco eloquently and forcefully concurred as did Judith Winston and most other members present. Membership Committee’s status had been unclear, with its formal elimination identified for possible Board action at this meeting. No members have been appointed to the committee in the past year and committee has not functioned during the period. At the full NPR Board meeting the next day Chairman Tim Eby announced that he had appointed Joanne Urofsky to chair a subcommittee to draft a charter for the Membership Committee. (All other Board committees have a statement of mission and goals but the vacant Membership committee didn’t. It was clear that this step meant that the Membership Committee would be retained and subsequently staffed. In public comment I congratulated the Governance Committee for its discussion and thanked Chairman Eby for taking this step. The other regionals separately made concurring congratulatory statements.
Corollary discussion on desirability of creating Strategic Planning and/or Technology Committees will continue.
Since the regionals had, at the July 2005 Board meeting, all expressed concern over the amount of NPR Board business being conducted in Executive Session, I was pleased when Mark Vogelzang questioned why the scheduled discussion of the Board’s Self-Assessment should be held in Executive Session. Rocco then strongly concurred. Most committee members followed by saying that taking the matter up in closed session seemed unnecessary. For structural reasons associated with the written materials, Committee agreed to go into Executive Session for a portion of the Self-Assessment but then hold the bulk of the discussion publicly at the next Board meeting.
Distribution/Interconnection: ContentDepot is now confidently anticipated to begin operation in the Spring, around April 1. NPR anticipates double-streaming the old and new systems for a longer period, perhaps for the entire balance of 2006, than originally anticipated. Some concern that the original ContentDepot training sessions occurred so long ago that they might be “stale” led to some discussion about some “refresher courses” being held.
Audit: NPR budgeted staffing level is 799 FT positions. In actuality, NPR has about 738 currently.
Finance: NPR’s finances, and financial picture, remain strong.
NPR Board Meeting:
Chairman Eby’s report included a summary of NPR’s anticipated Round Robin membership consultation meetings this Winter. Dana Davis Rehm further elaborated. A consultant, Rob Patterson, will facilitate those meetings. (I visited extensively with him and think he’s a good choice for the assignment.) A preliminary “system leaders” session will occur in mid-December. Succeeding Round Robins will occur around Jan. 9, Jan. 22 and Feb. 13. The scope of the discussion appears to be broad and NPR’s commitment to the process seems quite deep.
VP for Government Relations, Mike Riksen, reported:
Board member, and WSPR member, John Stark reported on the Local News Initiative presentation at Eastern Public Radio earlier this month and the upcoming WSPR presentation of same. Dana elaborated and also reported upon NPR’s proposal to create an “Academy” for training journalists with some allied training for managers. Some funding has been received, other grant applications are being filed and there seems to be considerable interest in seeing this program develop.
FCC:
With the other regionals WSPR participated in a joint FCC filing concerning the Notice of Inquiry over possible changes in the prioritization, and other aspects, of the FM Translator/LFPM Station relationship. As a follow-up to that filing, this week the regionals all participated in a series of personal conversations at the FCC. Met with key policy staff for Commissioners Copps, Adelstein and Chairman Martin as well as with Donna Gregg, Acting Chief of the Media Bureau, and Peter Doyle, Media Bureau Audio Division Chief. Discussions focused upon the key role translators play in delivering public radio service, the major investments made to date by government and citizens in constructing those facilities, the dislocation to listening which would occur if Rules changes further destabilized translators, our desire to find a “win-win” with LPFM forces on these topics, the need to weed out speculative “mass filers” for translator frequencies, and the importance of lifting freezes which have put many public radio service extension plans into decade-long holding patterns. The conversations were all quite cordial and reflected genuine appreciation of public radio’s role. It doesn’t appear that the FCC has yet come to any conclusions about the matters we raised and that the field of choices remains open.