Attending:

Linda Aguiano Marketing Director - National Programs
Ginny Berson Program Director - KPFA
Gail Christian Acting General Manager WPFW, National Program Director
Garland Ganter General Manager - KPFT
Louis Hankins Program Director -WPFW
Jeff Hansen Program Director - KPFT
Marci Lockwood General Manager - KPFA
Samaori Marksman Program Director - WBAI
Pat Scott Executive Director
Mary Tilson Station Relations Director
Valerie Van Isler General Manager - WBAI
Gwen A. Walters Acting Program Director - KPFK
Bill Wax Executive Producer - National Programs

PRESENTERS

David Giovannoni
Bill Thomas

NATIONAL PROGRAMS

The group, with the exception of Valerie Van Isler, agreed, should potential CPB cutbacks become a reality, that National News is a priority.

Gail Christian wants Pacifica to be an alternative to right wing voices.She wants National Programs to offer a series of one hour programs produced by each station. Bill Wax would be the executive producer of the programming and Gail would work with local program directors on which programs would be offered. These programs would not be must carry. Gail plans to produce a plan on paper by April.

Samaori Marksman is fearful that "100 Days" is not driven from the bottom up. He does not think that Julianne Malveaux will work in New York. He says that the New York audience is interested in locally produced programs on international issues. He is also concerned about the National Board imposed freeze on Hiring because it stops WBAI's plans to hire an evening drive time producer.

Louis Hankins wants local programs for drive time so WPFW can provide time, temp and other pertinent local information to its audience. Analysis programs can be done outside of drive time. He would like to develop criteria by which national programs are judged. He wants some kind of study done that would indicate what Pacifica audiences want.

There was discussion of setting standards for production and engineering values.

There was discussion about shared pledge drives - stations would have to schedule their fund raisers at the same time for this to have any life. Dick Bunce will be asked to make recommendations on this matter.

Gail's report will include:

1. The potential for Daily satellite feeds of programs produced by Pacifica stations,
2. The possibility of expanding the News to one hour, and
3. Common pledge drives.

The report will be discussed more by the PD's and GM's at their June, 1995 meeting after the Public Radio Conference.

BILL THOMAS LED DISCUSSION ON ROLE OF PROGRAM DIRECTORS

Program Directors are responsible for:

1. Representing the listeners - they are the primary conduit for this task
2. Envision the future, develop a program plan and make it happen
3. Connection with the community - individuals are involved organically with the community
4. Supervise the paid staff
5. Target the listener that the station wants to talk to
6. Educating staff, training staff and volunteers
7. Planning and producing fund raisers
8. Production of continuity
9. Managing air sound
10. Managing volunteers - firing volunteers
11. Evaluating programs, develop evaluation criteria
12. Internal promotions of programs, external PR of specials
13. Dealing with National Programs
14. Analyze audience research and communicating it
15. Policy compliance - Pacifica and FCC
16. Motivating everybody
17. Maintain relations with the music industry
18. Study the competition
19. PR/phone calls/letters/community relations
20. Recruiting new programmers
21. Fulfill national audience goal - create a plan to do that
22. Discipline
23. Re-organize and re-build

The group talked over how many staff are at each station:

KPFT has 5 paid,2 of these are program staff. The station has 75-100 volunteers
KPFK has 16 paid, 8 of these are program staff. The station has 200 volunteers
KPFA has 31 paid, 17 of these are program staff. The station has 200 volunteers
WPFW has 5 paid, 3-5 PT staff, 4 of these are program staff and 100 volunteers
WBAI has 24 staff, 10 program staff (2 are PT) and 250 volunteers

It was suggested that program directors have a hard time with what is good for listeners verses what is good for volunteers.

The group broke into 3 groups to discuss care studies from the stations.

A discussion was held about what to do about "seeker" programs - programs that may have limited appeal, but PD's feel are necessary as a public service. It was suggested that these programs should be put to the same test as others: service to listeners, good audience and good revenue - they have to hold their own. There is no value to having a program on that has no listeners.

HOW STATIONS USE AUDIENCE DATA

KPFA - Will be making program changes in the summer. After these have settled in - hopes to be able to do some focus groups to test new concepts.

WPFW - The station will focus itself on one 35 year old listener and will use audience research to find out as much as possible about that listener. Where does he/she listen, what and when does he/she listen etc.

WBAI - Listeners listen in the subway. Producers are informed about audience data.

KPFT - RRC disks and Q and T system are used for analysis. This allows Jeff to manipulate data as he needs. KPFT wants to bring George Baily out for a workshop. Jeff is careful about who he educates about audience data because it can be mis-interpreted so easily.

KPFK - Gwen is getting up to speed understanding audience data. She hopes to work with Louis Hankins and be able to use his approach toward building audience at KPFK.

The Public Radio Program Director's conference is held in September. PD's who are able to attend should.

EVALUATION OF STATION SCHEDULES

Each PD provided the group with a copy of their program schedule for discussion.

KPFT - Gail asked why the schedule is so mainstream and why there are two distinct schedules. Jeff feels that public affairs does not work in Houston and the decision has been made to be a music station featuring Texas based music. KPFT could replace the BBC news with Pacifica produced programs.

WPFW - Louis plans to cut public affairs down to 10 hours of locally produced programs a week. He is developing a lifestyle format - based on how listeners live. Ultimately, the station will be 70% music and 30% public affairs. Gail Christian wants to build PA at WPFW. The station feels an obligation to cover the Nation's capital.

The meeting was adjourned for the day.

PROGRAM DIRECTOR MEETING (PART II)

ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO FEBRUARY 28,1995

David Giovannoni from Audigraphics presented audience information about Pacifica stations to the group. He asked the group about what they wanted to know:

1. How to project results
2. How to make program changes
3. Who is listening
4. How to evaluate changes
5. How to make changes based on past experience, how to make appropriate decisions
6. How to set reasonable goals
7. How to ask better questions of the research.

David encouraged the stations to think in terms of serving listeners. Stations have to be important to listeners. In response to a concern from WBAI about Pacifica programming turning into a personality driven device, David explained that radio is a personality driven medium - this is desirable. The key is to guide the personalities toward the mission of Pacifica. Stations should only put people on the air who fir the mission.

Stations need consistency of appeal and need to know their listeners daily behavior and lifestyle.

Giovannoni indicated that doubling the cume is a reasonable goal. The national average of TSL is 22 hours a week to all radio choices among public radio listeners. In order to get current listeners to listen more, stations have to make themselves into a more important service to them. The idea is to get current listeners to listen more.

Public Radio and country music stations have the same demographic numbers except for education. Public radio listeners are college educated for the most part. Giovannoni suggests that perhaps Pacifica should think along educational lines when developing program schedules.

Programming is created:

BY
FOR
ABOUT

Pacifica is good at programming by and about but it does not know who the programming is for. Programming that is more geared toward a slightly more moderate audience will be more inclusive. The more programming skirts the edge, the more people will be excluded.

Giovannoni thinks that in general for many listeners politics is not as important as being entertained.

Pacifica needs to look for what its listeners have in common. What is about people the stations are serving that will bring them together?

Generally in Public Radio the core is 33%

How much does it cost to serve an audience?Take the average quarter hour number and multiply it by 6270 (hours in a year) divide by the total budget times 100 OR:. budget X 100 AQH X 6570

Nationally it costs .05 or .06 cents per listener. Pacifica costs .04 cents per listener - David says this is low because the salary levels are low in Pacifica.

Time Spent Listening or TSL is calculated by multiplying number of tune ins

X stay ie: 5 tune ins at an hour each = 5 hours

Tune ins are more important

Core audience tunes in 3.2 times more than the fringe audience and listens 1.6 hours more First Pacifica has to get people to tune in more often. The way to do that is to have more consistent programming. Stations can choose to format the same type of programming at the same time of day and choose programming that will have consistent appeal. Appeal refers to programming that is not necessarily the same, but will appeal to similar groups of people. Station need to program in longer blocks of time - no program block should be shorter that 2 hours.

Outside promotion only speeds up discovery time - that's all it does.

Stations need to cross promote - like to like programming and promote the next 15 minutes of programming.

Most tune out is induced by life style. Most stations a have a peripheral audience who listen less than one time a week. They should try to make this audience into fringe listeners, fringe listeners should be made into core. Stations should try to keep a level mix of core and fringe - never piss off a core listener. It takes two years to turn a listener into a donor.

KPFT

KPFT should have a consistent 30% cume across the week. The station has strong loyalty at 8-9 AM and 7PM-12 M. KPFT needs to decide if it is a music station or a news station.

David says Pacifica stations can not compete with NPR

PACIFICA STATIONS MOST LISTENED TO PROGRAMS

KPFT

8-9AM BBC 41 Year Old 3/4 male and 3/4 white
6-12 BLUES, 47 Years Old, 3/4 male, 3/4 white
SATURDAY, 6AM-9AM CAJUN, 45 Years, 3/4 male, 3/4 white

WPFW

Saturday works on WPFW until 10pm - programming is blues and Caribbean music. The Bama had wide appeal, listeners were 34, 3/4 male. Caribbean programming listeners are 2/3 women. Lou will concentrate on dive times and work on consistency of quality. Daily 12N - The Blues Plate Special is showing early audience growth.

KPFA

9-11am, SATURDAY, Johnny Otis - R & B - 40 years, 50% men, white,
Sunday morning- Early music and Bach - listeners are 40-43, white, 50% women.
Daily 5PM-7PM news and public affairs - 35 years, white, slightly more male.

KPFA's weekends are for entertainment, the station is showing some success with news and public affairs.

KPFK

The numbers show that nothing is strong at KPFK.

WBAI

Saturday at 1:30PM there is no measurable audience. Sunday is very weak as well
12 Noon daily - Gary Null - 45 years, 40% non white, 60% white
7-8PM daily - "Behind the News" -does well.

All the above programs have the following aspects in common: Listeners are 40-48, more male then female and predominately white.

Currently - Blues, Cajun, R&B show up well in the current schedules, Behind the News, Flashpoints, Gary Null and BBC are doing well.

The best single measure of audience support for a program is donations.The more listeners a station has the more likely the donations will come.Ultimately stations want their listeners to support the station not individual programs.

Cume times Time Spent Listening (TSL) = Average Quarter Hour (AQH) (Share)

In the SF Bay area - for every listener KPFA has, KQED has 6.

David suggested that Pacifica begin to pool programming because centralizing programming lowers the cost of producing it by 80%. It needs to define a national community to which it can appeal - it should re-think its concept of community - toward communities of interest and program to these interests (Gary Null is an example of this concept.) He also thinks that the national office should mandate a schedule - sharing programs should not be optional.

Program Directors decided that they wanted to meet in June to go over station program plans, to continue to talk over sharing locally produced programs nationally, common pledge drives, and the production of an hour of Pacifica Network News.

The meeting was adjourned.