Originally published in Current, March 31, 1997
By Steve Behrens
Two public radio stations in Seattle/Tacoma expect to meet their goal of $300,000 joint sales of underwriting in the first year of their Public Radio Partnership.
Twelve North Carolina radio stations also are selling jointly, and two in Portland, Ore., announced this month that they will do so, in addition to the statewide Florida collaboration involving more than 20 TV and radio outlets.
The arrangement in Seattle/Tacoma, between two usually competitive, strong stations, may lead to a much more extensive collaboration, says Dana Rehm, assistant g.m. of Seattle's KUOW-FM. With help from a CPB grant, KUOW and Tacoma's KPLU-FM are examining the idea of combining all of their operations without losing licensee relationships with two separate universities.
Mel Baer, development and marketing director at KPLU, hopes the joint operations will go forward. "Duplicating programming as much as we do," he says, "is not the way to maximize and enhance public radio service."
The underwriting partnership, announced two years ago, has attracted larger grants from health care and utilities companies, the symphony and opera than the two stations previously received, says Rehm. Indeed, the stations established a $25,000 minimum for joint sales so that they would be separated from normal single-station buys.
Now KUOW and KPLU are considering changing the ground rules to allow smaller deals, according to Rehm. Stations that want to collaborate shouldn't expect to create a pact that will last forever without changes, she advises. "You have to be willing to make changes, through time, so the collaboration can remain vital."
Joint sales allow KUOW/KPLU to boast a combined audience size among the top three in Sea/Tac, says Baer. Though their underwriting often costs more per listener than the ad rates of commercial stations, the pubradio audience has more attractive demographics.
The joint sales add significantly to normal underwriting revenues. KUOW will be splitting the $300,000 joint sales, while it separately sells $425,000 in underwriting, according to Rehm.
North Carolina Public Radio Association established a 12-station underwriting network about a year ago, but it is not ready to brag about sales levels, says Catherine A. Little, corporate development director at the lead station, WFAE-FM in Charlotte.
Little expects WFAE to meet the goal for its share of the project next year--$120,000--but this year it's selling at two-thirds of that pace. The standard credit is 12-15 seconds maximum, 25 words or less. Among the buyers are high-tech companies, mail-order merchants, trade associations and investment firms.
Two stations in Portland, Ore., are the latest to follow Seattle's lead. KBPS, a classical station licensed to the Portland school board, and KMHD, a jazz station owned by a community college, founded the KBPS/KMHD Public Radio Advantage this month.
Two other Portland stations remained outside the pact. They didn't invite Oregon Public Broadcasting's KOPB, the area's major NPR News outlet, to join them because they're trying to distinguish themselves from OPB, says Don Nasca, coordinator of corporate sponsorship at KBPS. And they didn't try to bring in KBOO, the progressive community station, because it "takes a much more rigid view of acceptable underwriting."
As the Seattle partners did, the Portland stations set a contract minimum--$12,000 in their case--to distinguish joint buys from single-station buys, says Nasca.
Current Briefing on pubcasting's search for new nonfederal revenues.
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