For a PRC that works, NPR should let go of the reins

Commentary originally published in Current, July 22, 2002
By Ken Mills and Tom Livingston

)nce upon a time, not that long ago, the Public Radio Conference (PRC) was the major annual gathering of the public radio industry. Now a combination of factors has led many observers to believe that the PRC's days are numbered--that there is no need for this conference to continue.

We believe public radio shouldn't be so quick to throw away the PRC. It needs to be redefined not discarded. This is the time for NPR to show its leadership even if that means getting out of the way.

As free agents, the authors of this commentary are not the primary customers for the PRC. Our interest in the PRC is the benefit it can bring to the whole system. We feel it is important to ask now about the PRC's future because it appears the conference is in danger of fading away. (See boxed comments at right for our personal feelings about the conference.)

The solution we recommend is for NPR to get out of the conference business. The PRC will have the best chance of succeeding if it is turned over to an independent conference producer. The task should fall to an organization that is dedicated to both bottom-line viability and maximum value for attendees.

Factors in PRC's decline

NPR is in a no-win situation with the PRC. They are responsible for putting on a conference for all of the people in public radio. However, they have their own corporate agendas that may or may not meet the needs of attendees. The success or failure of the PRC, meanwhile, has financial implications for NPR and member stations.

In May, 673 people registered for the PRC, the lowest attendance in many years. Attendance was down, of course, because of post-9/11 fears and recession-tightened station budgets. But, the declining appeal of the PRC has to be considered.

"NPR should pull the plug," says Craig Beeby, g.m. of KOSU-FM in Stillwater, Okla., and past president of Public Radio in Mid America. "The system has evolved but the PRC hasn't. It is nice to go and see people but the conference has lost its focus."

Even NPR Chairman Jon Schwartz acknowledges this. "Because of the individual professional organization conferences, there is no clear purpose to the PRC," Schwartz says.

The PRC already has lost the support of at least one major public radio organization, Public Radio International (PRI).

PRI has a long history with the PRC. From 1985 to 1987, PRI (then American Public Radio) and NPR held separate conferences. In 1988 NPR invited APR to the conference planning table to create a unified all-industry conference. Year after year, PRI came away frustrated by what it regarded as NPR's heavy thumb in conference planning, as we know from personal familiarity with the situation. In the late 1990s, PRI decided it would no longer pour marketing money into the PRC. Each year PRI's profile has been lower.

PRI closed the door at this year's PRC. President Steve Salyer, in remarks during the opening session, said PRI would no longer hold its Affiliates Meeting at the PRC. "There are better ways to communicate with station people," he noted.

The Public Radio Program Directors Conference and the Public Radio Development/Marketing Conference have been the major beneficiaries of PRI's support. Observers feel the PRPD and the PRDMC have succeeded because they super-serve the needs programmers and development people. Both conferences are "neutral ground," putting station needs before partisan network agendas.

Recent conferences of the radio music directors, news directors and independent producers also have been very successful in serving their constituencies.

What some observers say may be the final blow to the financial health of the PRC happened when NPR moved its A-Reps meeting (authorized representatives from stations who attend the NPR members meeting) to late winter, away from next year's PRC. This could reduce PRC attendance by general managers and other station chief executives, who made up about one-fourth of the attendees in May. It is likely that the vast majority of these people were also A-Reps.

NPR employees and contractors made up 20 percent of the registrants. If you subtract the 139 NPR folks, there were 532 civilians at the conference. This means that almost a third of the non-NPR registrants at this year's PRC were senior station management people. It is doubtful that many of these managers will attend both the A-Reps meeting and the PRC.

So the question becomes, will enough people pay to attend the 2003 PRC to justify holding the conference? And if it is not held, who cares?

Why keep the PRC?

Doug Eichten, president of the Development Exchange (DEI), sees a role for the PRC, even though his organization runs one of the specialized conferences, the PRDMC. The PRC, he says, is "the only chance for the whole public radio family to gather. The PRC is an efficient way for a lot of people to meet," says Eichten. "It is important to have face-to-face meetings and the PRC is a great way for newcomers to learn about the public radio system."

Eichten adds: "The PRC should be a management conference not a manager's conference. If the PRC is discontinued, the public radio system will not have a systemwide meeting that could be focused exclusively on management issues and management skill development."

"Plus," Eichten observes, "if the PRC stops, it will be tough to restart it again."

Schwartz, the NPR chairman who is g.m. of Wyoming Public Radio, urges PRC planners to learn from the PRDMC. "Just a few years ago the DEI conference was small because it only seemed to best serve people new to public radio development--the veterans weren't being served so clearly. Now the DEI and the PRDMC have been recast with larger roles and the results are impressive."

Schwartz agrees that time is of the essence. "We all have budgets and schedules that need to be planned sooner than later! I honestly do not know whether [the PRC] should continue or not. The responsible entities should sit down and determine its future. There are reasonable people on both sides--the PRC loyalists and the increasing numbers of those who no longer see it as viable."

The view from NPR

NPR, too, has been hearing the questions about the future of the PRC. Dana Davis Rehm, v.p. for member and program services, says NPR's thinking about the PRC has evolved. "We want the PRC to have a stronger focus on the station management team and overall station strategy. We plan to concentrate on topics such as governance, including licensee relationships and building strong station boards and fundamentals, like long-term planning and making use of human resources."

While attendance at the PRC dropped this year, Rehm says, post-conference surveys indicated attendees were more satisfied than before. "Eighty-two percent of the responding attendees had a positive impression of this year's PRC. Forty-eight percent said they got more out of this PRC than previous conferences. Size is not the only measure of success."

Rehm says the future of the PRC is up to the stations. "The most important question is the value of the conference to the system. Is it a good use of our human and financial resources? NPR is willing to live with the answer."

Was this year's conference the last PRC? Rehm gives an emphatic "no." "We've signed the contract for the New Orleans hotel and we are committed to the 2003 PRC."

Focusing the agenda

NPR has many strengths, but conference promotion is not a core competency. Its staffers, particularly Alma Long, work extremely hard and effectively on the conference, but the conflict of interest in having our major program producers as our conference planner makes us believe NPR should phase out of the PRC. The conference should be turned over to an independent organization, accountable to the conference attendees.

We believe this discussion should begin immediately. Our concern is that a weak conference in New Orleans might lead to the end of the PRC. A new configuration might not have a large impact on that conference, but could infuse it with enough energy to carry the momentum into a new conference the following year. One possibility would be to ask a group that might include PRPD, DEI and PBMA to take over the conference.

Planners should focus the PRC agenda on the greatest needs of the system--for instance, on the growing performance gap between public radio and public TV, on local service strategies to remain competitive among proliferating radio channels, on ways to build ties with other community organizations, and on enhancing the system's educational roles. The conference should offer management training for all levels and types of managers.

Opening our thinking about the PRC is the first step in reinventing this venerable conference. The landscape around the PRC has changed. Now it is time for those responsible for the PRC to change, too.

Ken Mills, a longtime pubradio program exec, operates the Ken Mills Agency, Minneapolis, which develops, markets and assesses the performance of programming. Tom Livingston, former manager of WETA-FM in Washington, D.C., runs Livingston Associates, a personnel search firm and management consulting firm based in Fairfax, Va.

	To Current's home page
	Later news: NPR announces that the 2004 Public Radio Conference will be the last.
	Outside link: website of the conference.

Web page posted Feb. 11, 2003
Current
The newspaper about public television and radio
in the United States
A service of Current Publishing Committee, Takoma Park, Md.
E-mail: webcurrent.org
301-270-7240
Copyright 2003