PLEDGE: The Public Radio Fund Drive

By Don Merrill

Public radio knows its first responsibility is to create the kind of shows that keep people coming back, since without content, there is no loyalty and without loyalty, there is no audience.  But public broadcasting and especially public radio has been preoccupied with three even more primary tasks since it was brought to life by President

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Merrill
• Release date: Aug 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781732684621

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Donald E. Merrill

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2019

ISBN 978-1-7326846-0-7

ISBN 978-1-7326846-2-1 (e-book)

LCCN 2019906593

Don Merrill & Associates

16101 S. Leland Road, #82

Beavercreek, OR 97004

www.pledgethebook.com

Cover Illustration & Design by Karen Green

Book Design by Susan Bein

Editing by Kelly Luce

Indexing by Joanne Sprott

Author Photograph by Vanessa Menendez

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Basics

What is a Station?

Character and Ownership

Tuning the Dial

Chapter 2 - Major Players

NPR

MPR/APR

APM/PRI

PRX

Community Radio & LPFM

Chapter 3 - Is There a Problem?

Audience

Revenue

Funding Models

Our Canadian Cousin

Appropriated Funding in the U.S

Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Public Radio’s Basket

Direct Federal Grants

Corporate Underwriting

State Money

Foundations and Philanthropy

Individual Giving

Other

Sales & Investments

One Time Money

Crowdfunding

The Cable TV Model

Pledge Free Streaming

Spending

Programming & Carriage

Salaries

Fees

Facilities & Infrastructure

Projects

Chapter 4 - Whad’Ya Know

Time

Demographics

Diversity

In the House

In the Streets

Content

News

Music

Entertainment

Sports

Blogs

Platforms

Satellite

Internet

Terrestrial Radio

Conflicts

Station vs. Network

Station vs. Station

Station vs. Itself

Station vs. Anonymous

Chapter 5 - Big Pimpin’

The Public Radio Sound

Snob Factors

Engagement

Chapter 6 - Drives & Elements

The Long & Short of It

Breaks & Pitches

Goals

Language

Listener Comments

The Human Touch

Cheerleading

The Money Shot

Gifts, Premiums & Leverage

Challenges & Matches

Games

People Like You

New & Renew

Sustain & Upsell

Major Giving & Bequests

Keeping Track

Old Dogs

New Tricks

Freeriders & Moral Hazard

Interns, Volunteers & Temps

Conclusion

Appendix

Bibliography

Index

To my parents, Donald and Mamie Merrill

Acknowledgments

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

—E.L. Doctorow, The Paris Review Radio Interviews, George Plimpton, 1963

Thank you to the people and organizations who took the time to answer odd letters, emails, phone calls and tweets that fell on them from the sky.

First, to the more than 250 federal agencies that responded in wonderful detail to help me perfect my FOIA requests about money they may or may not have directly granted to public radio stations, groups or networks. Likewise, I am grateful to the state senators and representatives in 25 states who themselves responded, or tasked their aides to respond to my questions about state funding of college and university radio stations.

I am very grateful to all of the reporters, producers, program directors, station managers and development folks who agreed to return my survey, talk with me over the phone or correspond via email and social media. To focus group participants who let me lead them through their feelings about pledge drives, your opinions were invaluable. And I am very thankful to Bill Buzenberg, Bill Siemering and Bill Kling, who were there at the beginning and shared some of their history with me.

Locally, thanks to Becky Meiers, who was the development director at community radio station KBOO here in Portland when I started this project. She took the time to help me understand how pledge drives work. She has since moved on to bigger and better things because she represents the best in radio and that’s always in high demand. Also, thanks to my friend and former KBOO station manager Lynn Fitch whose stories from the trenches were excellent background for deeper dives into community, commercial and public radio.

The data I collected on 37 public radio station pledge drives during spring 2016 was compiled by sports statistician, Joe Meyer. His adeptness with the Python programming language took me far beyond the SPSS of my college days and revealed station behavior that helped me confirm things I’d suspected. Thank you to my editor, Kelly Luce. She complimented my writing even as she chopped it, which made for a more streamlined book. Indexer Joanne Sprott showed me the difference between a word list and the tool that an index is supposed to be. Karen Green, a superbly talented graphic artist designed, and then tweaked the cover to perfection. And since a book isn’t a book without someone who knows how to lay it out, a note of appreciation to InDesign expert Susan Bein. Like arranging living room furniture, I may know what I like but have no idea where it should go to make sense. Susan employed her typesetting feng shui and made this beast beautiful.

To my family; my cousin Julian, who’s always been as loving as he’s been lovable, gave financial help even as he faced a ridiculous tax bill. To my wife Robin who has been patient and loving though not always at the same time as I cloistered myself in my room for weeks and months on end while deep in the obsession of authorship.

And finally, to my parents, who both died in November 2018 before I could get the book to print. You worked hard your whole lives and blessed me with your ethic; a strong back, a sharp mind and a clear eyed relentlessness to finish what I start. Your gift helped me get Pledge over the finish line. I’d give anything for you to see it. Without you Mom and Dad, it would still be papers in a box under the bed. I love you and I miss you.

Introduction

I’ve had a come-to-Jesus moment if you want to call it that.

—Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford

In 2013, the late Mr. Ford was beginning a recovery from drug and alcohol use. He had embarrassed his party and was the target of calls to resign. But his constituency loved him because of his prompt responsiveness to their ordinary concerns, and because they sympathized with his struggles. Ford was an open book and people like open books. They don’t like feeling like outsiders. But journalism, not unlike politics, is full of insider attitudes, like those from Nicholas Quah. He founded and writes for the Nieman Labs blog HotPod. In 2016, Quah dismissed a Baltimore station manager’s concerns over a show he was canceling because he felt it no longer served his audience. Quah used a lot of insider-speak, ending the piece saying, To everyone reading this who isn’t really into the whole public radio thing: Sorry about that. When Public Radio International announced in September 2014 that it was ending The Bob Edwards Show, PRI senior VP Julie Yager said, We have communicated [that Sirius XM is halting production of new episodes] to stations and talked about it at the [PRPD] conference last week, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. But did it surprise listeners?

Attitudes like those, which have called non-public radio insiders civilians for instance, is one of the things this book examines. That’s why it’s not written for insiders. It is written for the tens of millions of regular listeners who love public radio, but hear stuff they don’t understand that doesn’t always to come with explanations. And it’s written for millions more who listen to AM Talk Radio. Compared to the soothing tones of NPR, talk radio is Smokey & the Bandit's Firebird to NPR’s Bentley. Many lovers of Hannity, O’Reilly and Limbaugh know public radio, in part, because they hate it and want to see it die for reasons they’d call more philosophical than mean. For instance, a taxpayer-supported NPR should toe the government line. That means no contradicting it and certainly, no confronting it. Others say if public radio is so good, it should give up taxpayer money and let the marketplace decide its value. And, many more don’t like paying taxes toward what they call liberal opinions they may not agree with. For nearly a century, these remain the key arguments against government support for public broadcasting by many conservatives. Since President Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, defunding calls have only grown.

This book tells listeners on the left of how soft spoken public radio has found itself in some street fights. But good news: it has learned how to hold a knife. Conservatives too get something for their years of public radio angst. Although it isn’t the hammer and nails for the industry’s coffin, it does finally acknowledge some of the right’s own suspicions about public radio. In writing this book, I’ve come to respect public radio more than I already did. But I’m not going to lie for it. And so I’ve focused on asking how honest it is with you? For years, charges that it compromises its legitimacy with manipulative pledge drive techniques had made some wonder where else is it being less than totally honest; with corporate underwriting, or double standards amongst its ranks or diversity?

Getting answers to those questions hasn’t been easy. Though public radio talks a lot, it’s careful what it’s talkative about. A listener may think they know what’s going on in public radio because public radio tells them what’s going on in the world. But the two aren’t synonymous. Listeners may complain that public radio keeps important information private, such as technical problems, employee issues or detailed financial information. Station sign-offs and programming changes can sucker-punch listeners who didn’t see them coming. NPR’s own Ombudsman has accused the organization of a lack of transparency. Former KPBS General Manager Doug Myrland confirmed that attitude in 2007 comments re-reported in 2012 by San Diego Reader reporter Matt Potter. Responding to questions about the public’s need for greater transparency after firing 12 staffers, shutting down popular local programs and collecting an $87,000 pension, Myrland said, This process doesn't need to be ‘transparent.’ We aren’t elected officials — every budget line item and every personnel decision and every bit of information we collect is not everybody else’s business. And he wasn't finished. Just because you give a contribution or pay taxes doesn't give give you the right to decide — or even influence — what goes on the air and what doesn’t. To make the point that it didn’t agree, the California legislature cut $200,000 from its appropriation to KPBS in 2012, prompting its next manager, Tom Karlo, to plead for help from the 89% of viewers who weren’t giving.

If a listener chooses to search for their own answers, good luck. As abundant as it is, information isn’t easy to sort or digest. And after a while, its sheer volume can start to make the search more cloudy than clear. A post on the NPR Extra blog began with, We want to raise the curtain and explain how we use an algorithm at NPR One. That there is a curtain to be raised implies that there are other curtains that will remain lowered. Government information is especially thick. The FCC maintains dozens of excellent databases if you have the time and patience to search them for ownership information, station infractions, antenna locations or broadcast power. Corporation for Public Broadcasting rules for stations that get federal funds are easy to read, but there are lots of them. Congressional hearings on problems and fixes in public radio’s back story can be found with the help of the Congressional Research Service and the Office of Management and Budget.

But other references are buried deep in the congressional record, which itself is submerged in the nearly infinite pages of the Federal Register.

Uncovering grant money not part of the congressional appropriation is doable with the help of websites like USASpending.gov, but tedious. The good news is the IRS 990 shows how stations get and spend their money. And websites like the Foundation Center or Guidestar help users make sense of this information. The bad news is that stations know details of who has given what, but they don’t have to say more than what’s already in the form. And you can only see one station’s financials at a time.

Newspapers, magazine and broadcast reporters do a good job covering public radio. But their stories are buried beneath clickbait. About a fourth of those about public radio made it to mainstream publications like Variety or the New York Times. The rest appeared in research, government, non-profit or trade publications, meaning most people never saw them. And stations can be slow to hold required Community Advisory Board meetings or provide a record of their behavior in the mandatory public file. They make no secret that the effort costs time and money they could be using converting listeners to members. Almost every public radio station has a Frequently Asked Questions page. But FAQs don’t always satisfy. Ombudsman emails almost always include the line, although we can’t answer every question. And listeners trying to pull tidbits about costs or internal goings-on from a pledge break flyover may turn away frustrated.

These issues are prompting hard questions. Is public radio honoring its philosophical purpose? Is it a service or a utility and how does the difference affect how it’s paid for? Do the voices in public media reflect the center of the nation as well as big cities on the coasts? Can reporters do objective work or voice personal opinions without losing their jobs? How does an industry that’s benefited from the way things have worked to this point adapt to rapid change without imploding? And how does it not just survive, but thrive?

Since the early 70s, the key to public radio’s survival has rested with the pledge drive. And for almost as long, at least half of listeners have said they detest these drives. Yet public radio continues to rely on the pledge drive even though 21st-century technology exists that could destroy it forever. Pubcasters say they keep stations connected with listeners and vice versa. But if people knew they could tune in to public radio without having to hear pledge drives, wouldn’t that bring more listeners? This book aims to answer these questions and raise better ones. I want to bring conversation about public radio out of the realm of think tanks, listservs and industry conferences and to its almost 40 million lovers and substantial pool of haters.

Do we want to live with the compromises stations make to give us what they think we want while drives change or even disappear as the industry evolves? And is that evolution putting public radio on the verge of its own come to Jesus moment?

Chapter 1 - Basics

National Public Radio will serve the individual: it will promote personal growth; it will regard the individual differences among men with respect and joy rather than derision and hate; it will celebrate the human experience as infinitely varied rather than vacuous and banal; it will encourage a sense of active constructive participation, rather than apathetic helplessness.

—From "National Public Radio Purposes,' 1970 by William Siemering, NPR’s first Director of Programming.

In the 1950s, the Carnegie, Ford, Heald and Rockefeller foundations started using contributor money to fund a non-commercial, public radio as an alternative to commercial radio with Wolfman Jack and Brylcreem commercials. In 1963, the stars aligned. In the White House was Lyndon Johnson, a political horse-trader and street fighter with substantial influence in Congress and a family with broadcast holdings in Texas. When President Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 and switched on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the entity that would be the progenitor of NPR blinked in the sunshine of Congressional funding for the first time.

The government had been convinced by big, non-profit voices that America needed to reclaim itself from the vast wasteland of mindless game shows and situation comedies. They convinced Johnson of the need for a venue that could reignite American passion for its educational and cultural heritage which was under existential threat by Nikita Khrushchev’s launch of Sputnik. Commercial radio, dominating the AM wavelengths, ceded FM, a new, experimental band to educational, religious and public radio. Ever since, there has been a debate as to what public radio is or should be. Music or news? Information or entertainment? Is it art interviews and author profiles, or radio verité in a war zone, bringing you crying children and exploding houses? Is it an NPR host speaking over the opening music of Morning Edition? Is it stories from The Moth or the fast-paced, financial reporting of Marketplace? Is it nation-stations like WNYC and wall of sound smashes like Radiolab? Is it podcasts like Serial or 99% Invisible? Or, is it local voices doing traffic and weather, encouraging you to be a sustainer and download the station’s app to your smartphone?

Public radio may be ubiquitous, but that doesn’t mean every listener shares the same radio reality. When Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Dave Miller interviewed NPR CEO Jarl Mohn in 2014, Mohn said Portland’s listeners had unusual engagement with OPB. Every market in the country should be like this market and this radio station: ‘dominating,’ said Mohn. Compare Portland with Highland Heights, Kentucky. State cutbacks and the market forced their folk music icon and NPR affiliate WNKU off the air in 2017. In 2002, the Public Radio Program Directors created a set of guidelines for understanding what it called Core Values of Local Programming. These guidelines stated that listeners don’t see any event in isolation and expect network and local news to help them connect the dots of the larger picture. So what should they infer about the state of public radio from stories like WNKU’s? Are listeners at individual public radio stations seeing that larger picture? Or do they assume that public radio is OK if their local station is OK?

Jefferson Public Radio listener K. Beck suggests, in her reply to a piece by JPR’s Valerie Ing, that would be a mistake. [The President and the Congress] need to be lobbied by every single person who listens to public broadcast radio and TV, said Beck in April 2017. Otherwise, they will do whatever they want, or are pressured into doing by people who do NOT have our best interests at heart.

But do listeners have their own best interests at heart? Minnesota Public Radio wrote on its website in 2015 that from 2012 to 2014, more than one in five dollars received by NPR were from corporate sponsorships, or underwriting. MPR said NPR leaned toward this money because stations (and by extension, listeners) do not provide enough financial support to enable NPR to do its job. Considering how public radio relies on euphemisms like We’re not quite there yet when missed pledge drive goals keep it from ending successfully, MPR’s directness is refreshing. Some in public radio say to get the audience more involved in the mission of public radio, such truths need to be spoken more openly and more often. But is that something the boards and staff overseeing public radio nationwide even want? Some, like philanthropist and former KPBS General Manager Stephanie Bergsma, say yes to having more grassroots voices at the decision table. Others, like Minnesota Public Radio founder Bill Kling, say absolutely not.

What is a Station?

If you operate a TV or radio station, you have to have a license. It has nothing to do with fundamental freedom. It has to do with protection of the average citizen against abuses.

—Robert Cailliau, original web browser creator for the Apple Macintosh, Forbes Global, Christopher Watts, Oct. 18, 1999

A terrestrial radio station is not complicated. On the supply side, it needs a transmitter, a frequency, an antenna, staff, a building, shows people want to hear and advertisers convinced they’ll buy their products. On the demand side, it needs listeners. Regulators have more rules, most notably, that a station needs a license. A license, as Cailliau says, makes a station behave in the public interest. Pirate broadcasters, like WSQT in the nation’s capital, ignore this licensing requirement WSQT Direct Action Radio currently broadcasts on 88.1 FM into randomly picked afternoon rush hours in Washington D.C., says the station on its website. We cover news, protest, and militant direct action both inside and outside the US. The FCC hunts WSQT and other mobile or offshore pirates with the same kind of vans the UK uses to catch cheaters of the BBC. Meanwhile, pirates turned activists, like the Prometheus Radio Project, fight the agency on behalf of small broadcasters and challenge it on everything from power requirements to what it considers regulatory bullying. For most listeners, though, a station isn’t a station and gets no private or corporate funding without a license. And a license to broadcast is almost worthless without someplace to broadcast from. About a third of public radio stations exist on university campuses thanks to in-kind agreements that let them contribute facilities instead of money. But in recent years, many institutions of higher learning have given up their stations for desperately needed cash. Stations run by communities or other entities may be in a slightly better position by entering into collaborative agreements for space. KCPW in Salt Lake City moved into the cozy Denker’s Broadcast Facility which was on a sweeping wing of the brand new main library, built in February 2003 and assisted in part by those in power at the Gothic city hall right across the street.

In some cases, an overseeing entity like a school board or a state government might build a home for its radio station. In others, an existing station might give up its space and opt for a totally online presence. Stations like Boston-based WFNX reap the benefits of such streamlining. These hybrids get their music from YouTube and deliver digital-quality sound over high speed Internet that rivals the best terrestrial broadcasts. But they have a limited audience. The problems that causes for advertisers, as well as lurking digital music rights disputes, can be costly. After losing its on-air frequency in 2012, WFNX went silent mere months later. Online-only is no substitute for over the air, at least not yet. The 2016 Pew State of the Media report says about 93% of people over the age of 12 still listen to at least two hours of broadcast radio every week compared with only 26% who get most of their radio online.

A big part of defining a station is defining the language that describes it since a station can have several designations. NPR’s bylaws require its member stations, i.e., licensees meet basic requirements. A licensee may be what the FCC defines as a full service station, meaning one with a staff, a building and a programming schedule that stretches into at least an 18-hour broadcast day. If licensees receive CPB money, they must also be non-commercially structured and educationally focused. Some of NPR’s licensees, in addition to being some of the biggest stations in the country, are also among the original 80 or so founding members of the network. In his 2002 book, Conflicting Communication Interests in America, Tom McCourt explains that NPR created station designations like auxiliary in 1985 to serve outlying communities. They tended be in rural areas, and because of that, said McCourt, got a break on the fees they paid to the network for programming. But auxiliary stations didn’t get exclusive rights to the best shows like their larger competitors with more listeners or bigger budgets. And in recent years, the auxiliary discount went away. In a 2016 spring pledge break, pitchers for Baltimore’s WEAA explained how they must now pay the same price for programming as the big boys. Another category, the associate member, said McCourt, consisted of stations that extend [or rebroadcast] the coverage of full-service stations. The FCC calls them satellites. But licensees may also operate satellites, which can also be known as affiliates. WCQS in Asheville, North Carolina and New Hampshire Public Radio both run networks of eight affiliates each. And those stations can be designated as either translators or repeaters. Translators are low-power transmitters that rebroadcast a station’s main signal to a different frequency. Their call sign heard at the top of the hour is full of numbers; W285AD or K220AA, for example. NPR does not count translators among the more than 1000 stations its licensees operate. Repeaters, which simulcast the main signal on the same frequency with the purpose of spreading it further and wider, are counted. They typically have their own traditional call sign, followed by FM.

Gemma Hooley, NPR’s VP of Member Partnerships, said in December 2017 that NPR had 260 licensees. That number has fluctuated between 263 and 269 since 2014 but it used to be even lower. In the mid-80s, thirteen markets were served by the CPB, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) concluded that the nation didn’t need any more full-service stations since the country could be adequately served by repeaters and translators. NPR disagreed. It wanted to add eighty more stations in larger markets. Because rural America had been adequately penetrated, an NPR researcher, according to McCourt, advised that, clearly ... if we are to serve more listeners better, we’ve got to fish where the fish are.

Associate stations (satellites), member organizations (full service licensees) and non-member stations air NPR programs. The Pew report showed that in 2016, 1,072 NPR stations consisted of 726 associates, 264 licensees and 82 non-members. NPR’s slightly different 2017 fact sheet showed 1,098 stations, with 838 associates, 260 licensees and 120 non-members. Non-member stations may air NPR programs. But like the bygone auxiliary stations, they may not get the best shows or the best rates.

The last time a list for all of NPR’s member stations appeared in its annual report was 2011. NPR created publicly available PDFs for some years, including 2013 which also listed all of its stations and didn’t distinguish between licensees, satellites or non-members. The 2014-2015 report was a rare consolidation. By then, the station list seemed to have disappeared. Around that time, the network switched to a dropdown menu that required users to know the station they were searching for. Though convenient for users wanting locally specific station information, the new dropdown menu prevents seeing all stations. NPR declined to produce an updated list although as of this writing, the 2013 PDF is still online, as are some of its older annual reports. The network also said it wouldn’t provide a list of its licensees. But, it kind-of did. On the inside front and back covers of its multi-authored book, "This is NPR: The First Forty Years," is a decorative motif of call signs. It is a listing of the network’s 263 licensees as of the book’s 2010 publication.

McCourt calls satellites ludicrous but admits, from his 1999 perspective, they may become more common as public radio increasingly emulates the practices of its commercial counterparts. By all indications, he was right. The number of NPR stations grew from 695 in 2001 to 1,098 in 2017. Only about one in four stations have staff, programming, and a building; Ms. Hooley referred to the rest of them as sticks in the ground. It’s a reasonable assumption that three-quarters of the network consists of satellite affiliates. So, the next time you hear an announcer reading a long list of call signs, remember most of those are boxes in the middle of nowhere connected to the main station by computer, telephone or microwave link. They make the network sound big, but at most of those places, there’s literally nobody home. Though the network sounds impressively large, it is surprisingly small.

In October 2017, the FCC was on track to make the number of local stations even smaller by eliminating the Main Station Rule. Currently stations must have a local presence, meaning the community has access to local staff and local facilities. The agency described eliminating the rule as a move that would help stations better allocate limited resources and the FCC’s three member Republican majority voted to scrap it. Activists feel the decision passes off non local programming from non local entities as local. The result, they say, may be even more satellite stations diluting the local flavor of radio. NPR and the National Association of Broadcasters supported the rule and others those activists feel were designed to cripple local and low power radio.

Other requirements a station must meet include being recognized by its resident Secretary of State as a native non-profit organization. Its games and contests may also be under the oversight of a state gaming commission or a consumer protection bureau. It must meet nightmarish tax requirements like the IRS’s Public Support Test. It must satisfy FCC technical requirements. Even networks like Public Radio International, can impose their own rules on potential members. Lastly and most important, to be a non-profit, a public radio station must have a plan for raising money. Most times, that means pledge drives which means, listeners becoming members. But commercial radio, which has gotten rich from the kind of advertising public radio can’t do, has started asking its listeners for voluntary contributions too. Seth Resler, writing for Jacobs Media in 2016, noted that commercial stations, mimicking public radio, are creating membership websites that give listeners access to premium content like past interviews and exclusive contests. In 2009, American Public Media’s financial program, Marketplace explored that trend. Needless to say, NPR spokesperson Dana Davis Rehm wasn’t happy about it. NPR isn’t pleased about the new competition. There’s plenty of opportunity for confusion, said Rehm. Reporter Scott Jagow said the network fears the audience may not discern the differences between public and for-profit operations.

Character and Ownership

It’s not written in the Constitution or anything else.... Congress, just out of the clear blue sky, said the airwaves belong to the people, which means, in essence, that it belongs to Congress.

—Adrian Cronauer, IWCE Conference, Jim Barthold, March 1, 2005

Workplace relationships between overseers and the overseen can be tricky. When those relationships sour, labor disputes are common. But public radio listeners probably don’t think about unions for public radio employees because public radio is so cerebral, reasonable, progressive and intelligent. Why would there be a need for anything as pedantic as labor agreements? Everybody is always moving in the same direction, right? A 2014 statement from the WYPR Organizing Committee in response to station efforts to kill a union vote suggests not. We are disheartened by management’s decision to spend significant station resources to undermine our democratic effort. We hope they will commit as fully to making measurable improvements to the workplace and supporting the production staff.

In These Times reporter Bruce Vail said the Baltimore station’s management broke up the vote with a notorious union buster. Employees worried that corporate interests were influencing programming standards and wanted stronger barriers between them. And, said a former WYPR executive, they complained about heavy-handed management techniques and substandard pay levels. Jonathan Rogers, Chair of the WYPR Board of Directors, told Vail that though the board hired the law firm Jackson Lewis, it wasn’t to break the union. We felt it was in the best interest of the station to ensure that the concerns of the organization were heard, said Rogers.

But unions blossomed elsewhere. KUOW Seattle employees embraced SAG-AFTRA in February 2018. WBEZ Chicago ratified its first union contract in July 2015. And the mothership itself, NPRHQ, came within hours of its DC newsdesk hitting the bricks in August 2017. They got their contract after flooding social media with #WeMakeNPR. An informal survey I conducted in 2017 found that nearly one in three public radio stations are not unionized. For listeners, that might be a surprise, which can lead to trouble. Development officers like their givers copacetic. Strikes tell them all is not well in public radio land. Labor unrest, stressing givers, can cause station morale to plummet and familiar voices to vanish, with both affecting station quality.

Many handle their issues well enough to keep their public volume low. That’s saying something, considering the rainbow coalition of entities that can own or operate public radio stations. Education has the biggest chunk of them. WRUC at Schenectady, New York’s Union College was among the first college radio stations on the air in 1920. Today, KCRW at Santa Monica Community College, KUT at the University of Texas at Austin or WAMU at Washington DC’s American University are among the best known stations. Also known as student radio, campus radio or college radio, they may be entirely programmed by students or serve as a training ground for students enrolled in a broadcasting curriculum.

If college and university stations air NPR, PRX, APM or PRI programming, it means they’re receiving Congressional appropriations that make them accountable to the CPB. But that doesn’t mean they have to be conventional. Their formats, like those of Astoria, Oregon’s KMUN, or the former KUSP in Santa Cruz, California, can range from staid to wildly eclectic. Many proudly call themselves independent public radio. But stations are expensive. And sometimes, colleges sell them to NPR affiliates or religious corporations for cash to do their main work of educating students. The problem was big enough to be a topic of discussion during the 2011 National Federation of Community Broadcaster’s conference. Some schools, however, are fighting the siren song of quick money. With new collaborations and facilities, Oregon’s Jefferson Public Radio, for example, is keeping its program alive by bringing students further into day-to-day radio works.

Religious schools also run public radio stations. Abilene Christian University in Texas operates KACU. Augustana Lutheran College in Rockford, Illinois, also known as Quad Cities NPR, runs WVIK. And Boston University, with its Methodist tradition, owns and operates WBUR. Many religious and non-religious, non-commercial stations began their broadcast lives on the AM band but moved to FM when the FCC began issuing low power Class D licenses in the 1960s. FM is much friendlier to radio signals than AM. Broadcast power can be much lower, meaning running stations can be cheaper. And because of how it behaves in the atmosphere, FM is cleaner with less interference and much higher quality. But its signal is line of sight, unlike AM, which can travel further because it bounces or skips off layers within the atmosphere. That means FM doesn’t have the range of AM without boosters. There are about 260 state universities, 27 community colleges and 25 private colleges in the U.S. that operate some form of radio station. Many, though not all of them, are NPR member stations or licensees.

School boards can also own and operate public radio stations. Georgia’s WABE is owned by the Atlanta Board of Education. And like campus radio, high school radio has been around for decades, and subject to the same pressures. The costs of running a high school station can force administrators to choose between keeping their stations or not. Schools and their coveted frequencies can be squeezed by commercial signals on either side. They may be tempted to give up their space by offers in the tens of thousands of dollars. Or surrender them due to FCC requirements to increase tower height, transmitter power or equipment specifications. As of 2013, about 22 school boards and boards of education own or operate radio stations in the United States. And as with colleges and universities, not all of them are NPR member stations or licensees.

Community, state and tribal governments hold licenses for most of the 150 or so remaining stations that aren’t educational but may have had their start on college campuses like Hawaii Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, Oregon Public Broadcasting and WHYY, Inc. These stations are licensed to their communities and as with colleges and school boards, not all of them have public radio affiliations. Without state or institutional support, they must rely more heavily on other money including underwriting, pledge drives, unrelated business income and direct federal grants. West Virginia, Nebraska, Alabama, South Carolina, South Dakota and Mississippi own all public broadcasting licenses in their states. And as of this writing, a handful of native American tribes, including KWRR of the Northern Arapaho (until 2013), KCIE of the Jicarilla Apache (until 2013) and the KUYI of the Hopi Indian Nation own and operate public radio stations in Wyoming, New Mexico and Arizona, respectively. It should be noted that these stations are especially susceptible to proposed changes by administrations hostile to CPB’s budget.

Tuning the Dial

In the '50s, listening to Elvis and others on the radio in Bombay-it didn’t feel alien. Noises made by a truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi, seemed relevant to a middle-class kid growing up on the other side of the world. That has always fascinated me.

—Salman Rushdie, CNN.com, April 15, 1999

It’s an iconic image from the 1950s and 1960s. A kid in bed is listening to faraway stations on a table radio as their bedroom walls glow yellowish-orange from glass amplifier tubes. The parade of various call signs may have sounded like incantations, spoken by strange static-filled tongues. Those paying closer attention might have noticed that U.S. stations west of the Mississippi River began with K while those east of it began with W. But call signs are far from being romantic mysteries of youth.

Call signs, like personality profiles, give clues to what new stations value most. The FCC lets a station pick its own as long as it’s not obscene, suggestive or already in use. KBOO in Portland, when it went on the air in 1967, was allegedly named after a strain of west coast weed. To this day, and true to form, KBOO continues to balance necessary professionalism and wild unorthodoxy. KRVS’s call letters have two meanings. One stands for the University of Southwestern Louisiana, which used to be called the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The call sign reflects its new identity as the Radio Voice of Southwestern. But KRVS, which joined NPR in the mid-70s, is also a mnemonic for the Cajun French word ecrivisse, meaning crawfish. Baltimore’s Morgan State University station WEAA stands for We Educate African Americans. Before 1933, WNKE, an early station of Northern Kentucky University had call sign WPAY, which stood for Pay any yodeler. That’s because between 1933 until it was taken over by the university in 2011, it played country music. Boston’s WGBH refers to the location of its transmitter in Greater Blue Hill. When Seattle’s listeners saved KPLU from extinction in 2016, it thanked them with its new call sign, KNKX or connects. Even WHYY, the moniker of Philadelphia’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, was initially filed with the FCC to stand for Wider Horizons for You and Yours. But call signs are not sacrosanct, meaning stations can change them at will. The Gap, Pennsylvania station currently known as WLRI has changed call signs 21 times since 2003.

But call signs may be disappearing. Many stations determined to re-brand themselves into friendlier sounding, easier to remember entities have, over the years, become groups such as New York Public Radio or Oregon Public Broadcasting. Those names are constantly repeated while stations use their legal IDs only when and because the FCC orders them to. Listeners wanting to easily identify a station in west-central Colorado must know, for example, that Aspen Public Radio is actually two stations; KAJX Aspen and KCJX Carbondale. And the traditional way to identify a station may change if pubcasters get their way. The FCC’s Call Sign Reservation System lets potential broadcast owners know if the call sign they want is available. But even as they ask the government for a new identity, they’re petitioning that it be less identifiable. In May 2017, the FCC sought suggestions for regulations to update; removing the burdensome station requirement to give IDs at the top of the hour was near the top of the list. Stations argue that they should have the right to identify themselves in ways that fit the local community. They say listeners know to whom they’re listening.

It is an interesting point that doesn’t seem to apply during pledge drives when stations may repeat a telephone number up to 30 times a minute because they say listeners might not remember it or not have anything with which to write it down. For listeners who only know stations through their taglines, their broadcasting groups or their bookmark rather than their frequency or call sign, the move raises questions of how station accountability might be affected. And it seems to say that making sure listeners send in their support is apparently much more important than insuring they know who they’re sending it to.

Most of those stations live on the FM band, which stretches from 87.9 to 107.9 megahertz for all U.S. radio stations. And many public radio stations live below 92, a part of the FM band the FCC calls reserved. Only non-commercial, non-profit stations can be there. Those stations don’t have to pay for their broadcast licenses because they’re broadcasting not-for-profit underwriting, not advertising. And because of crowding at the low end of the FM band, the FCC sometimes lets public radio broadcast outside of it. But ironically, those that do must pay for a license. Rome, Georgia’s WGPB FM and WNGH FM in Chatsworth, Georgia were both former commercial stations before being bought by Georgia Public Broadcasting in 2007 and converted to pubcasters to serve the ridge and valley Appalachians northwest of Atlanta. They wanted the elbow room near the middle of the band (97.7 and 98.9, respectively), but they were not alone.

NPR’s 2013 station list shows about 85 CPB funded stations exist between 92.1 and 107.1. About half of the states have public radio stations outside of the reserved band. And the more remote a state’s terrain, the more of its stations are outside this band. But public radio is also on the AM band. That same NPR station list shows at least 56 AM public radio stations. From 2004 through 2009, Salt Lake’s KCPW broadcast at AM 1010 as well as 88.3 FM until its AM frequency was bought by Immaculate Heart Radio Educational Broadcasting and re-branded as KIHU Catholic radio.

FM stations may seek AM just to have another presence before another audience. But the trend since 2009 is the reverse; the FCC is letting AM stations simulcast on FM. AM has been losing listeners for years, though sports and conservative talk radio has slowed the exodus. The band enjoyed revitalization in 2013 due to lobbying by the nonprofit Minority Media Telecommunications Council, an advocacy organization which promotes and preserves equal opportunity and civil rights in the mass media, telecommunications and broadband industries. But AM’s higher cost for lower quality has pushed some owners to ask the FCC to throw them a lifeline and let them expand their audiences to FM.

Chapter 2 - Major Public Radio Players

NPR... is not responsible for every show in which polite voices speak in a restrained, earnest manner about the issues of the day; other players that traffic in such fare include American Public Media, which produces Marketplace, and Public Radio International, which co-produces The Takeaway.

—Slate staff writer Leon Neyfakh in a 2016 article, The Fight for the Future of NPR.

Don’t forget the Public Radio Exchange, or PRX, which has a number of award-winning shows like The Moth Radio Hour. But that it was left out says something about public radio hierarchy. There are other big names; Wisconsin Public Radio, WNYC, WGBH, KERA and Texas Public Radio, among others. Stations that can produce and distribute their content are in a different category than those stations that serve smaller communities or can’t produce syndicated shows.

Keeping track of which programs are produced by which stations or affiliates is a recurring problem not only for listeners but broadcasting peers. On July 14, 2017, Jackie Watts reported for CNN Money, on the impending strike by 400 NPR employees over stalled negotiations for a new contract. The story’s 2:50 p.m. version mentioned affected shows that were identified as NPR’s, including Serial, This American Life, and Radiolab. The 6:53 p.m. update said, "An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the producer behind Serial, This American Life and Radiolab. Those programs are not made by NPR."

In 2016, On Being (formerly First Person, then Speaking of Faith) was moved from American Public Media to PRX. Another non-NPR show, the Peabody award winner moved mostly because delivering it via Internet was cheaper for its producer than bouncing it through the Public Radio Satellite System. This American Life apparently left APM for similar reasons two years earlier. Radiolab, a production of WNYC in New York has also never been an NPR show. And Serial, the lovechild of This American Life and WBEZ, is also not NPR’s. But hey, none of this affects what is public radio’s big happy family, right? Not exactly.

While, of course, I don’t have any inside knowledge of the situation, says poster aaronread on the Radiodiscussions.com thread from December 2008, in my uninformed opinion I always thought the creation of APM was a naked power play and made little sense. It antagonized affiliate stations, who now had to pay even more licensing fees to a third content clearinghouse (APM, PRI and NPR) and it fragmented things badly; neither PRI nor APM had any really rock-solid shows that could be viewed by affiliates as ‘they’re not going anywhere.’ Well, maybe APM had Market-place, but that’s no Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Fresh Air or Car Talk.

He goes on to describe what looks like a lot of midnight style raids amongst providers in an effort to hold onto audiences or grab new ones.

"This led to all three outlets scrambling to sign new programs (for example, PRI 'stole' Living on Earth away from NPR, but NPR 'stole' Mountain Stage, too ... and APM ‘stole’ Marketplace, American Routes and A Prairie Home Companion from PRI) and also to create new shows (APM’s The Story, PRI’s The Takeaway, etc). Aaronread concludes, These are not bad things per se, but I think the feeding frenzy was way too much to be sustained in anything but a boom time, and now we’re seeing the painful fallout from that"

Aaronread was referring to the painful fallout of budget cuts that public radio was again cycling through while he typed in 2008. A well-trodden path, financial crises came in 1983 and 1994 and would come again in 2014 and possibly, in the wake of the 2017 inauguration of President Donald Trump. For the four general personalities of public radio—NPR news, APM culture, PRI international and PRX innovation & grassroots—threats of painful fallout are not new or necessarily threatening. The greatest dangers seems to be from within their mosh pit rather than from outside it.

NPR

In reality, NPR is much more corporate than many of its progressive admirers believe, and it is much less liberal than many of its conservative critics assume.

—Michael Arria, In These Times for Salon

In April 2017, the website tracker Similar Web said NPR.org was visited by about 84 million people, making it the 180th most visited website in the U.S. With Google being the second most visited site in 2013, and indexing 30 trillion web pages a month, 180 is pretty high. Yahoo was number one. That helps explain why public radio and NPR tend to be conflated even though they’re not the same. But NPR, being the biggest dog, has less reason than any of its competitors to separate the two since this confusion serves the organization well during pledge drive time.

NPR’s history is as much lore as common knowledge. It began as a collection of mostly hippies from the counter-culture with few real reporters among them. It broke ground by pushing the technology of the day as far as it could possibly go; namely, by sending a new and experimental, 90-minute national program over telephone lines to a few dozen stations across the country. Robert Conley, its first host broadcasting its first report—live coverage of a May 1971 march on Washington—made history. It was just what National Public Radio’s first head of programming, William Siemering, hoped for public radio. His idealized manifesto, Public Radio Purposes, spelled out roles and responsibilities for the new, non-commercial alternative in contrast to what he detested, which was commercial radio.

He wanted to tell stories that lifted the human spirit and serve the individual, encourage a sense of active constructive participation, rather than apathetic helplessness, and not regard its audience as a market. But by the early 80s, Siemering was gone. And though staff was sad to see him go, the increasingly weighty problems and complicated political landscape in which the network found itself made his lofty rhetoric seem quaint. It should also be noted however, that with the advent of big data and website APIs, especially as they are used in the service of pledge drives, Siemering's concerns about not regarding the audience as a market were prescient. The more choices we are giving to the user, the more information we’re capturing about them, the more targeted and effective we can be in asking for membership, said Thomas Hjelm, WNYC’s VP of business development and chief digital officer for New York Public Radio in a 2013 interview. There’s a delicate balance there, and one of the more powerful things about public media is the unique compact and trust we have with our audience. I don’t want to ever cross that line where we become creepy and invasive. But despite how far some may accuse it of practically straying from Siemering’s goals, public radio would argue it has strained to stay true to its spirit

Around the time Siemering left, CEO Frank Mankiewicz was building his news operation while his organization headed into debt As financial problems loomed, he was approached by the head of upstart Minnesota Public Radio, William Kling, to bring a new MPR program into the NPR fold. The odd little weekend show, called A Prairie Home Companion was surprisingly popular. Mankiewicz said he was concerned that PHC’s costs would take away from his news operation. But the bluntness with which he rejected Kling’s offer is as significant as the fact that he rejected the offer at all. It showed his well known dislike for Kling and what MPR represented, which was a threat to NPR’s dominance to shape the public radio universe. In retrospect, had Mankiewicz accepted Kling’s offer, it’s possible some of the financial issues the network faced later wouldn’t have been as severe.

By 1981, overspending, a poor and untested accounting system and hopeful but unrealistic schemes to raise cash pushed NPR into a meltdown. It took less than six months to bring the network to the brink of death. Intense negotiations saved NPR at the very last moment with a $9 million grant from CPB. But among the conditions were that CPB hold NPR’s Public Radio Satellite System as collateral to insure the money would be repaid. This led to the first Drive to Survive, which asked listeners directly, via affiliates, to give NPRHQ money so it wouldn’t go away. The next year, another, less popular network drive took place. Mankiewicz promised to leave NPR as soon as it was in the black. And in 1983, he did. Staff lionized him for his dedication to them and the news they produced. The rest of the industry was not as kind, practically blacklisting him for what it saw as his heavy-handed tactics, especially with other stations and the CPB.

Though the emergency drives of 1982 and 1983 helped NPR clear the massive debt, to this day, network drives are taboo. Some say the programs NPR produces are so good, they could coax listeners to give to the network directly. That’s called bypass. When it happens, listeners don’t hear the underwriting embedded in local shows that local stations depend on because they’re listening to network shows instead. Until the 1990s, that wasn’t much of a concern because there was no easy way for people to hear NPR programs without their local station piping it into their clock radios and dashboards. But with the advent of the Internet, digital streaming, apps and now podcasts, many affiliates live in a state of fear as they try to strengthen listener loyalty to the local station. In 2009, the idea of a national pledge drive was again floated by some at NPR, but then-CEO Vivian Schiller, as reported in Current, downplayed the idea. They’re not our listeners, she told the trade publication, implying that local audiences belong to local stations. Former Weekend America host John Moe promised that if the network decided on a national drive, affiliates would storm the gates of NPRHQ, torches blazing. The subject of programming and who pays for it is at the heart of pledge drives.

The technology of the day, which limited program movement to only one direction along those telephone lines, gave affiliates the uncomfortable feeling that they were under the network’s thumb. Until 1979, it insured that NPR but none of its 200 or so affiliates could inject programming into the network. But that year, the Public Radio Satellite System came online, and with it, the ability of affiliates to upload their own shows. Since then, the technology improved further, first with the Satellite Operations Support System in 1994 and later with Content Depot in 2007. Located at NPR’s Network Operations Center in Washington D.C., NPR Satellite Services arrange temporary and full time accounts for entities that want access to the public radio satellite. The system manages programming feeds from NPR affiliates, as well as those from APM, PRI and PRX. All programs from all providers can now be on the satellite feed to affiliates. Stations can choose their most popular shows directly from their sources. Satellite distribution is supported by grants from CPB and all networks share it through cooperative agreement.

Douglas Bennett, NPR’s next CEO after Frank Mankiewicz, was aware of affiliate frustration with the costs of shows and problems with distribution. He proposed funding for unbundled shows—programs sold individually rather than as part of a costlier package—go directly to stations. Until then, CPB funded NPR, who in turn funded its network of stations. But station complaints along with the introduction of PRSS made Bennett press for change. CPB started funding stations directly in 1987. That gave them the freedom to buy whichever shows they wanted from whichever providers they chose. Bennett also responded to station manager complaints that they were losing weekend audiences. The network debuted All Things Considered Saturday and Sunday in 1977, Weekend Edition Saturday (WeSat) in 1985 and Weekend Edition Sunday (WeSun) in 1987.

NPR also worked to match the overseas bureaus of its media competitors by beefing up its foreign desks. It dispatched reporters around the world, putting it on par with network television’s foreign correspondents. But even as NPR was growing up, some felt it was losing something. William Drummond, a creator of Morning Edition, left the network on the eve of its seemingly imminent shutdown and never looked back. The network recovered, he said, but it did so at a tremendous cost. Drummond said NPR was no longer the little network that could. It began to take itself too seriously, Drummond said. Middle management proliferated. NPR cut off its ponytail. Drummond called the network unrecognizable. He called it, Just one more media company, dispensing the conventional wisdom. He said, In its new headquarters, it resembles an insurance company.

When the network launched Morning Edition in 1979, it chose polished voices from commercial radio. But complaints quickly rolled in that they didn’t quite capture what public radio was about. NPR dropped them and looked inward. One of the two voices that that eventually became All Things Considered belonged to Kentuckian Bob Edwards. Edwards joined NPR in 1974, and began co-hosting the show with Susan Stamberg. That year, he was pulled away for a 30-day trial as host for NPR’s new morning show, Morning Edition. He started out with Barbara Hocter, another trial host, but Hocter left in March 1980, leaving Edwards to host the program for the next 25 years. Edwards is most remembered for chats with baseball’s Red Barber, his connection to his listeners, and his legendary 2004 split from NPR. That split, opposed by NPR’s Cokie Roberts and CBS’s Charles Osgood, ultimately generated over 50,000 angry letters and emails.

NPR replaced Edwards with hosts Steve Inskeep and Renee Montaigne to freshen up the Morning Edition brand and attract younger listeners. Edwards himself kept a low profile, speaking rarely about the firing. He went on to win many awards and host two shows on Sirius XM Satellite Radio for another eleven years, until 2015. After his 2004 firing, the backlash against NPR was so severe that in later years, it adopted a philosophy that de-emphasized the individual host or reporter. The thinking seemed to be (and research supported) that the story told should hold universal attributes no matter who is telling it. That way, a generic voice that captures the NPR brand of storytelling with the NPR sound accomplishes the mission while avoiding the problem of cult followings. Commenter Greg said at Josh Gerstein's blog in 2008, "The host is secondary to the formula, and while I’m sure a bad host could drive people away, it doesn’t take a superb talent to mind the store there. People don’t tune in to ME for the talent. They tune in for the formula." That was part of the thinking behind WAMU’s internal process for replacing The Diane Rehm Show with 1A in 2016. Executive producer Rupert Allman said in selecting host Joshua Johnson, WAMU looked for the same attributes that made Diane Rehm such a great host. It was more evidence that public radio was going for a flavor rather than a taste.

In the 90s, some conservative legislators, like Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich, were no friends of NPR. Gingrich directly attacked federal funding for public broadcasting with his Contract with America. It promised, among other things, to reduce unnecessary spending for what he called the elitist enterprise of NPR. Much has been made of his later backing down from that fight. Scott Sherman, writing for The Nation in 2005 quoted Gingrich in 2003 comments about his vitriol towards NPR, saying, Either it is a lot less on the left or I have mellowed. But in 1994, the network was his mortal enemy and his bill was engineered to cut support. Although Gingrich was not fully successful in defunding NPR, funding levels for CPB were frozen in 1995 and a House proposed $141 million cut for 1996/1997 became a cut of $55 million. NPR and its affiliates raised enough grassroots attention to defang much of the measure, but cutbacks in state funding to stations themselves reduced money system-wide by about $150 million. With less money, stations bought fewer NPR produced shows. That may have