Welcome to Western States Public Radio.
The 2008 Western States Public Radio Fall Conference:
November 5, 6 and 7, 2008 in Seattle, Washington.
Click here for agenda, registration and hotel information.
Message
from WSPR President Paul Stankavich
July 28, 2008
WSPR members:
A lot has been going on during our Board meetings this year, I hope the minutes we’ve sent out have kept you informed. We don’t get a lot of feedback but we would welcome your comments or participation, just let me or one of your board members know: Jon Schwartz, Beth Warren, John Hess or Karen Holp.
Earlier this year, we surveyed the members asking if we should file comments on behalf of our membership on the Localism proposals. We shared a copy of the filing from Dow Lohnes on your behalf, but if you didn’t catch it, let me know and I’ll send you a copy. The cost of that filing will be around $5,000. That will bring our treasury down to its lowest level in quite a few years (we try to keep a balance of approximately $10,000 more or less, to allow for these sorts of expenditures). Last years conference in Los Angelus was terrific, but for a variety of reasons, it did cost us more than the average year and we subsidized that cost from the treasury. This preamble would lead you to believe we are about to ask for a dues increase but happily, I’m here to tell you we aren’t going to do that. Looking at projections for next year, we should have sufficient funds (if everyone pays their dues of $300 per year) to operate and leave a reserve as we have in the past. We sincerely believe in keeping the dues as low as possible to encourage even those stations with limited budgets to participate.
However, in order to keep the dues low, we feel it is time to shift more of the burden of our annual conference to conference income. For all those who have attended you know our conference is a great value, where manager, program providers and system leaders can come together for discussion. If there is one conference you can go to this year, we believe ours will provide your best return on investment. We have benefited this past 2 ears form a sponsorship from Harris Corporation, and they have again generously committed to $5,000 in sponsorship for the upcoming conference. We estimate that the cost of meals (our largest expense by far) this year will be $17,000 and we will have additional miscellaneous costs of about $5,000. We are budgeting $23,000 for the conference. This is where we need to increase our fees to be sure that the WSPR treasury can manage a small subsidy of the conference but does not exceed the funds we have available. So, registration this year will be $200 for members and their guests and $250 for non-members and their guests. If we have our normal attendance and add in the sponsorship, we will have about $22,000 in direct conference income and the treasury can provide the balance. Look for a conference registration notice later this week.
Karen Holp will provide a complete budget report at the Annual Meeting in November, but our expenses are pretty straightforward. The conference is the major expense, travel to NPR Board meetings is our next largest expense (now approaching $1,000 per trip due to the increased cost of airfare – 4 trips per year), and miscellaneous corporate filing feels, our share of the PRRO Award and then any legal expenses we incur by direction of the membership. Various Board members donate services, including the cost of conference calling for meetings, time and research, survey support, account management and set-up, credit card fees, etc. So, our actual out of pocket expenses are kept to a minimum.
Thanks for being members and we hope you agree that you get good value for you membership in WSPR.
Paul Stankavich
President
Read
the WSPR filing to the FCC regarding Localism here.
2008 NPR Board Candidate Statements: The following candidates for the NPR Board of Directors have submitted answers to WSPR questions.
Steve
Bass
Cathy
Ives
Jon
McTaggart
Marita
Rivero
Wayne
Roth
Roger
Sarrow
Paul Stankavich
Max
Wycisk
NPR's
announcement: Pursuant to the NPR bylaws, additional candidates for these positions may be added to the ballot by petition signed by fifteen Authorized Representatives. The originals of the petitions must be personally received by the Acting General Counsel and Secretary of NPR, Mari Stanley Dennehy, at National Public Radio, Inc., 635 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20001, no later than midnight Eastern Time, Saturday, May 24, 2008.
Voting this year will again occur via Internet. The ballot will be posted on the voting Web site on Monday, June 9, 2008, after which votes may be cast by the Authorized Representatives of members through that site. Passwords and other information needed for casting those ballots will be mailed directly to Authorized Representatives in early June. All ballots must be cast by 5:00 p.m., Washington, DC time on Wednesday, July 9, 2008.
Public
Radio's Regional Organizations
California
Public Radio●Eastern Region Public Media●Public Radio in
Mid-America●Western States Public Radio
Presentation of 2008 PRRO Award
by Paul Stankavich, WSPR, on Behalf of PRRO
March 11, 2008 Chantilly, VA
Joanne
Church
President, Radio Research Consortium
The 2007 Conference:
Download of Bruce Theriault's lunch speech (PDF, 113KB) -- click here. (If you click "open" it will open in this space. Right click to "save target.")
Download of the BBC's Andrew Caspari's remarks (PDF, 2MB) -- click here.
Download of Alex Chadwick's remarks (TIFF, 234KB) -- click here.
Download of Murray Horwitz remarks (Word, 55KB) -- click here.
The Western State Public Radio Fall Conference 2007
WSPR’s Fall 07 Conference will be held on Sunday, October 7 through Tuesday, October 9.
See the entire conference announcement here!
May 2007:
NPR Board Elections -- Candidate Statements
The following candidates
for the NPR Board of Directors have submitted answers to WSPR questions.
(Please check back for updates!!)
Jose
Fajardo
Tom
Fowler
Rob
Gordon
Pat
Monteith
Paul
Stankavich
John
Stark
February
2007: WSPR Fall 2007 Conference Announced (Check the navigation on
the left for photos from the conference.)
WSPR members and guests will meet
October 8-9 in Los Angeles at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and at NPR West. More
information will be forthcoming, but if you are penciling plans, note that WSPR
is planning an evening event for Sunday, October 7th. The regular conference
will run from Monday morning through late afternoon Tuesday.
November 2006: Report
from WSPR President on Washington Meetings.
This was the Board’s Annual
Organization meeting involving the seating of new board members following the
summer voting by a-Reps. Dave
Edwards was seated to his newly-won full term and re-elected incumbents JoAnn
Urofsky and Ellen Rocco. The meeting
followed a two-day Board review and planning reviewing.
...read
more.
As promised, here are two
presentations from the Fall WSPR Conference:
The keynote
address by Lawrence Wilkinson of Wilkerson,
Heminge & Condell (1.8 Mb pdf file)
The presentation
by Mike Starling, Executive Director of NPR Labs, during the session, "Strategic
Business Planning for Tomorrow’s Radio
The
Tour of the Sea Life Museum in Seward and Resurrection Bay
Conference
Opening Reception
Conference
Opening Session Annual Welcome
Monday
Conference
Tuesday
Conference
Thanks,
Retirements and Memories
Minutes of the Annual Meeting 2005
WSPR's 2006
Conference, October 2 and 3 in Anchorage, Alaska!
2006 Fall
Annual Conference Agenda Information
Conference Registration, travel and site-seeing
information
June 16: WSPR President, Ron Kramer, has appointed a nominating committee for the Board elections (conducted at the Fall Conference) to fill the the Vice-President and Member-at-Large seats. Members of the committee are Wayne Roth, KUOW, John Stark, KNAU, and Paul Stankavich, KSKA/APRN.
May 2006: Report from WSPR President on Washington Meetings.
May 2006: Dennis Haarsager recognized with the 2006 PRRO Award.
November 18, 2005: WSPR's 2005 Fall Annual Conference in Denver: View the photos.
November 11, 2005: WSPR President’s report on the Washington Meetings of the Regional Representatives:
The regionals 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. Read the full report.
July 14, 2005: WSPR President's report on NPR Board Meetings in Los Angeles:
There are basically two parts to this report to our members on the NPR Board meeting last week in Los Angeles. First, a broad observation: a very great deal of the Board’s activity occurred in Executive Session. Read the full report.