Best option for WMUB:
regional pubradio alliance
WMUB-FM in Oxford, Ohio, has initiated talks with two nearby pubradio stations about creating a partnership to serve the Miami Valley region of southwestern Ohio.
The talks, now at “a way early stage,” according to one participant, anticipated recommendations from a 10-month study of WMUB by licensee Miami University.
The final report by the university’s Committee to Review the Future of WMUB, released Oct. 26 [2007], suggested joining its news/jazz station in a public media partnership with WYSO, a hybrid news/Triple A station in Yellow Springs, and Dayton’s all-classical WDPR. The other two outlets already collaborate on underwriting sales, and WMUB could bring both its sales and award-winning news staff to the partnership.
The study of WMUB, initiated in January by Miami University President David Hodge, examined four options to reduce the station’s reliance on university funding, including selling the station. The committee found that the likely proceeds from selling WMUB, estimated at up to $2 million, wouldn’t match the public and community relations value of the station.
The three-station partnership, envisioned as “Miami Valley Public Media” by the committee, could serve as a regional news network with online services complementing all three broadcast channels. It could boost revenue through online advertising, the committee reported. The study also recommended that WMUB expand its training program for Miami journalism students and explore partnerships with regional newspapers.
Two of the three potential partner stations have recently lost some aid from their licensees. WYSO had started working to become self-supporting this year as private Antioch University announced plans to shut down its undergraduate college in Yellow Springs. WMUB began grappling with funding cuts when state-owned Miami University began reducing its subsidies two years ago.
In 2006, Miami University provided more than $1 million in cash and in-kind support of WMUB, or 61 percent of its revenue. “It’s pretty generous for a university station,” said Cleve Callison, g.m. But with the school facing reduced state aid, the station was looking for a “glide path to zero.” When the university proposed a 2007 budget with deeper reductions for WMUB, Callison requested a study examining options for the station’s future.
“This is not something that was imposed on this station—we actually went to the president a year ago and said, ‘We need this,’” Callison said. A study was risky, because the committee could have recommended selling the station, but Callison believed that if they “looked at it objectively, they could see there’s great value to the university.”
“Overall, I think we’re quite relieved,” said Callison, describing reactions within the station to the committee’s report. “It’s been a year of real uncertainty here.” After being in a holding pattern for so long, “we can go back to being a normal station and begin moving forward.”
Talks with the Dayton and Yellow Springs stations began six months ago, Callison said, and have been “extremely encouraging.” Public Radio Capital, which advised the committee on options for WMUB, also laid groundwork for three-station negotiations, which to date have been preliminary.
“None of us is a huge station, and we all have certain realities we struggle with,” Callison said. “If we cooperate, we could work together in ways that would benefit the region.”
Best hope: look north
WMUB’s primary service area is a rural region of southwest Ohio, but its signal reaches south into Cincinnati and northeast toward Dayton, more than an hour’s drive away, where most WMUB members reside.
The station’s location between two bigger markets makes it difficult to sell underwriting and to afford the in-depth local reporting favored by public radio listeners, according to the committee’s report.
Six pubradio stations serve southwest Ohio, “and almost everyone can pick up two to four stations,” Callison said. Cincinnati has WGUC and WVXU, classical and news stations that merged in 2005, and WNKU, a Triple A/news hybrid across the Ohio River in Highland Heights, Ky.
WMUB’s best shot, the committee concluded, is to make alliances to the north, where WYSO and WDPR are open to the idea of expanding their existing partnership. WYSO is seeking ways to reduce its reliance on licensee Antioch University, according to Paul Maassen, g.m. He emphasizes that the larger, multi-city university, not ailing Antioch College, holds WYSO’s license.
“All public broadcasters are in situations where their funding is being reduced or cut, and we’re all finding it hard to make ends meet,” Maassen said. Collaborations provide ways to increase service while reducing costs, he said. “We’re trying to create that synergy that will result in better service.”
Decisions about WMUB’s future rest with Miami University’s president, who has indicated that he’ll look seriously at the committee’s proposal for a public-media partnership, according to Richard Campbell, committee chair and head of Miami’s journalism program. The president also supports a two-year time frame for WMUB to work through the process, he said.
“I think it will take that long — this is complicated,” Campbell said. If WMUB is proceeding well toward self-sufficiency by the end of two years, “they may be able to buy more time.”
The committee presented two additional options in its report. It concluded that continuing to operate WMUB independently wasn’t advisable because the station wouldn’t be able to raise enough additional money to replace the lost university funding even if it ramped up development efforts. The station could cut costs substantially by going all-music, but the change would be disruptive and jeopardize WMUB’s audience revenues, the report said.
Miami’s second-best option, the committee said, would be to operate the station through a local management agreement with another nonprofit. That would reduce the university’s costs but could also lead to disruptive staff and audience losses, especially if the contract involved a format change, the committee warned.
Web page posted Feb. 3, 2009
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