Pubradio aims for "next level" of service
NPR leads new push for signal expansion
Three hundred new member stations. Five million new listeners.
These goals might sound lofty, but NPR and member stations hope to achieve them by 2010 through a new campaign to expand public radio's reach.
Responsibility for adding signals to the field still falls to individual stations, which ultimately finance the purchases or negotiate the local management agreements (LMAs) that fuel growth. But station leaders want to collaborate on expansion and are asking NPR for leadership. In response, the network has unveiled Project ACORN, an umbrella for endeavors such as pinpointing areas underserved by public radio and preparing stations for acquiring new signals.
"We're trying to do what we're uniquely qualified to do," says Dana Davis Rehm, NPR's v.p. for member and program services.
NPR launched ACORN last summer following its first A-Reps meeting, held in May. A-Reps, the "authorized representatives" who lead NPR member stations, ranked signal expansion as their top priority. Meeting again earlier this month, they once more emphasized expansion, ranking it behind only digital broadcasting in importance.
The benefits of multiple signals hardly need to be explained to managers. Prevailing wisdom suggests that stations focus their formats to boost appeal to listeners. The more signals you have, the more formats you can mount--and there's ample programming on the market to support a range of formats.
Such strategies have proven successful for multistream networks such as Colorado Public Radio, Oregon's Jefferson Public Radio and Idaho's Boise State Radio, all of which gained listeners by expanding aggressively.
But in today's crowded radio market, increasing the number of NPR stations by half can seem far out of reach. Most large and medium markets lack room for new frequencies. Licensees such as state universities have no money to buy frequencies anyway. Some turn to LMAs to acquire signals, but the experience can frustrate. Caryn Mathes, g.m. of Detroit's WDET-FM, has tried to negotiate an LMA with a Port Huron station for many months but encountered hang-ups seeking an inexpensive way to route the signal.
"I feel like I spend an awful lot of my time doing funding projections and scenarios," says Mathes, who served on a signal expansion "theme team" for this month's A-Reps meeting. "It's just a very tedious thing."
Mathes and colleagues are anxious for new strategies to boost system growth. NPR's goal to add 5 million listeners would represent a 25 percent increase. "We've been at this business of professionalizing what we do for some decades now, and we're still seeing ourselves kind of capped out," she says. "We still reach barely 10 percent of the U.S. population. People feel that it's time to go to the next level."
First coverage study since 1988
Broadcasters also want to be ready when the FCC lifts its six-year freeze on applications for new full-power stations, which observers expect could happen this year. They're concerned about competition from religious broadcasters, whose growth outpaced public radio's in recent years. Public radio stations grew by 46 percent from 1992 to 2000, while religious stations grew by 123 percent, according to NPR.
There are already signs that, even without help from NPR, public radio has become more adept at the growth game. "One of the differences we see is stations being much more aware of the work they need to do locally," says Marc Hand, managing director of Public Radio Capital, a nonprofit spinoff of Station Resource Group that helps stations acquire new signals.
Project ACORN--which at acronym-happy NPR stands for "Acquire, Convert, Organizational Readiness and do it Now"--will increase assistance at the local level while also taking a wide-angle snapshot of the system's opportunities for growth.
It includes plans for an acquisition and expansion guidebook to help stations gauge their prospects. To be posted at nprstations.org, it would guide them as they assess risks, benefits, return on investment and potential gains in audience and income. The site will also present case studies of expansion successes and failures.
Another component of ACORN is a nationwide survey of public radio's signal coverage, the first of its kind since a 1988 study conducted by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Mike Starling, NPR's v.p. of engineering, expects the $150,000, state-by-state survey to begin next month and wrap up within a year. The network failed to find foundation support for the study but will proceed regardless in hopes of beating the end of the FCC freeze.
"We suspect that things will leap off of the page as we compile those results, and that they will inform us of where there are both needs and opportunities we can pursue," Starling says.
Preliminary research tells Starling that public radio underserves many U.S. metro areas. Nearly half of the top 50 markets, including Chicago, Dallas and Houston, have only one city-of-license NPR station. Public radio's cumulative audiences in these markets fall short of the cumes in markets with multiple outlets.
One of these big markets, Union-Somerset-Middlesex in central New Jersey, has no locally licensed NPR member station. Together, these markets cover 48 million radio listeners, according to Starling, who concludes that public radio underserves "many of America's major cities."
ACORN also aims to defend the system's 600-plus translators, which help many stations expand coverage, particularly in rural areas. Religious broadcasters have erected full-power signals that have quashed nearby translators, which under FCC rules have no claim to the airwaves. A silenced translator in Lake Charles, La., last year angered local public radio listeners and prompted coverage of the conflict in the New York Times.
When the FCC lifts its filing freeze, NPR will contract an engineering firm to monitor applications and notify stations when a full-power signal might threaten a translator. The network last ran a similar service in the early '90s.
Tackling the hows of expansion
If public radio manages to acquire new signals, what should it do with them?
Producers crank out much more programming than a single channel can convey, but that doesn't mean the material easily sorts into streamlined, successful formats. Expansion demands further thought about the direction of program development.
"We tend to immediately ask in public radio, 'What format shall we do?' That's not the question," says Jon Schwartz, g.m. of KUWR-FM in Laramie, Wyo., and a member of the signal expansion theme team. "The question is, who do you want to serve? Then you might want to talk to those people and find out what you don't know about them, and what they feel."
Planners are also trying to anticipate how stations should act when two pubcasters pursue the same opportunities. Such a challenge was highlighted last month when San Francisco's KQED bought a Sacramento signal also sought by the hometown NPR affiliate, Capital Public Radio. KQED's new station will duplicate programming already airing on a Capital channel. Managers of the stations disagree on whether that duplication is good for the listeners.
A-Reps wrote a set of guiding principles addressing this gray area that urges stations to collaborate on acquisitions when possible and supports unique programming services in multiple-station markets. But NPR has no power to intervene in such cases.
Mathes acknowledges navigating the waters won't be easy. "It's going to take a great deal of maturity," she says. "I don't think the 'play nice' scenario is always in effect."
And if NPR takes the lead in plotting growth, what will come of non-NPR stations? Carol Pierson, president of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, says she's had "cordial discussions" with Starling and Rehm about NFCB involvement in ACORN.
The issue is of equal concern to community stations, says Pierson, who notes that many are having record-breaking fund drives. Unlike NPR affiliates, most community stations are independent of the state-funded institutions facing budget crunches--possibly putting them in an even better position to fund growth.
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