	Stations from the two biggest cities nearby got go-aheads to put repeaters in the beach town where Weston manages Public Radio Delmarva. (Assemblage: Current.)

Market exclusives: sound business or a ‘huge mess?’

Originally published in Current, Dec. 3, 2007
By Mike Janssen

Ocean City, Md., attracts millions of visitors a year, but two particular out-of-towners moving to the area have Gerry Weston on the defense.

A newcomer himself, Weston started work in July as g.m. of Public Radio Delmarva, which broadcasts in Ocean City and in Salisbury, Md., on the state’s Eastern Shore. But since then, Baltimore’s WYPR-FM bought a commercial frequency in Ocean City, and Weston learned that WAMU in Washington, D.C., won FCC approval in April for a new 50,000-watt signal in the beach town.

With these news outlets opening shop near Public Radio Delmarva’s WSDL, Ocean City’s 7,000 year-round residents and many thousands of summer visitors could soon hear the NPR newsmagazines and other public radio shows on three separately owned stations, possibly at the same times of day.

The prospect of such heated competition for a relatively small audience nine months out of the year has Weston incensed.

He’s not moved by WYPR’s vision of becoming a statewide network, especially with Ocean City as its eastern transmitter site.

“My point is, why should someone’s vision compromise what we’ve been doing in the market for 20 years?” Weston asks. “I just don’t think that’s right.”

Speaking before the NPR Board Nov. 8, Weston called the situation a “Wild West business model.”

“It also should be a wake-up call for all small- and medium-market stations,” he added. “This is not just a big-city problem anymore.”

Big cities such as Seattle, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City have had the NPR newsmags airing simultaneously on more than one station for years. And competition among overlapping stations could accelerate in coming years as the FCC awards new noncommercial licenses stemming from the application window it opened in October.

Weston urged the NPR Board to address the growing competition by looking into market exclusivity — that is, offering its programs to only one station in a market, barring others from airing them.

“Where is the loyalty from NPR to local stations who have invested in NPR programs, invested in news staff to augment those programs, invested in staff and resources to locally market NPR programs?” he asked.

Exclusivity is practiced in commercial media — Weston pointed to the example of sports broadcasts licensed to just one outlet per market. But it is less common in public radio. Public Radio International offers only one show, Whad’Ya Know?, as a market exclusive, though it does allow time-slot exclusivity for its other shows.

Stations that air American Public Media’s A Prairie Home Companion get exclusivity for the show in their primary coverage areas. The arrangement dates back to its early days when exclusivity was extended as an incentive for stations to affiliate with its original distributor, PRI (then known as American Public Radio), says Chris Kohtz, APM’s director of distribution and research.

But NPR does not offer such deals. The issue rarely comes up, says Dana Davis Rehm, senior v.p. of strategy and partnerships, who lists several reasons why NPR’s policy is unlikely to change.

“We have an operating assumption that it would be inappropriate for NPR to tell stations exactly what they should do and what they should air,” she says, “and also inappropriate to choose among a group of stations which would be the winner of the newsmagazine franchise.”

Because station signals rarely overlap precisely, exclusivity deals would potentially reduce audience for NPR shows, Rehm says. And by offering different content amid the newsmags and throughout the day, stations can attract distinct audiences even when they duplicate some broadcasts, she says.

Some station leaders see no downside to such competition. Capital Public Radio in Sacramento, Calif., encountered head-on duplication of its newsmags in 2003 when KQED bought a station in its market. But CPR’s audience has since grown, says Carl Watanabe, station manager.

After Weston’s remarks to the NPR Board, no board members moved to put exclusivity on the agenda, says Dennis Haarsager, the board’s newly elected chair. But station execs will have a chance to speak up on the matter during upcoming consultations with the board about NPR’s financial relationship to its members, he says.

Haarsager doesn’t sound keen on the issue, either. Exclusive agreements could create a “huge mess,” he says, forcing NPR to determine which stations could keep the newsmags and which would give them up.

“I’m not sure that’s necessarily in the interest of NPR or stations as a whole,” he says.