WFIU Community Advisory Board Meeting

Indian University Radio & Television Center, Faculty and Staff Lounge

July 14th, 2008

4 p.m.

Prepared by Josephine McRobbie

Present: Becky Cape, Jane Clay, Pam Davidson, Laura Ginger, Nancy Krueger, Christina Kuzmych, Lewis Ricci, Janis Starcs, Charlotte Zietlow, Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, Marty Donnelly, Lynn Schwartzberg.

Absent: David Bowden, Peter Jacobi, Perry Metz, Gwyn Richards, Michael McGregor, Leonard Newman, Jefferson Shreve.

Janis called the meeting to order. The Board made a motion to approve the minutes from the previous meeting with two slight changes.

Upcoming Meetings

• Next meeting is Monday, November 10th – will consist of an informal meeting and fund drive phone answering. Please come at 3:15 if you plan to answer phones. More information will be distributed before fund drive.

• Meeting after next will be Monday, February 9th, 2009, at 4pm.

• Information included in packets: 4/7/08 minutes, July newsletter, Open House flier, Directions in Sound, programming for August.

Secondary Audio Channel (HD2)

• HD2 launched unofficially three months ago, and we are slowly starting to fill in breaks. There is no underwriting right now. There will be no live announcers for now or the foreseeable future.

• July 21st is the official launch date, but it will be an ongoing process – people will likely not go out and buy HD radios, but buy them when they naturally plan to replace their current models.

• We are cross-promoting HD2 on HD1.

• Fund drive will be prerecorded, as audience isn’t large enough yet to warrant live announcers.

• One issue right now is that HD2 is only on the 103.7 fm frequency.

• Some models are better liked than others (the Accurian home model is a favorite).

• As far as weather alerts, EAS alerts cut in on both channels, but details will be on primary channel. As WFIU/WTIU merge, protocol will change. “Sighter” versus National Weather Service discrepancies are an issue. Another problem is when we are on automation and there is severe weather, someone has to come in – we can’t do it remotely yet because of possibility of security breaches.

National and State

• House and Senate Appropriations Committees have approved a $10 million funding increase for public broadcasting.

• On the state level, the money that is appropriated for fiber and the Indiana Channel got stalled when Senator David Ford passed away. The money is currently going through the back and forth with the state budget agency.

• IPBS is looking at other ways to connect all the stations.

• IPBS has a Fiscal Year 09 budget, and is developing the News Director job position listing.

Station

• We had a very successful visit from Fred Child of Performance Today. He taped two episodes of Performance Today from our studios, attended a dinner, reception, question and answer session, concerts, and a pre-performance talk. The concerts he hosted were broadcast live from Auer Hall, something we will be able to do again in the future once they are finished with renovations.

Gifts and Grants

• The E. Nakamichi Foundation gave $10,000 to the Harmonia Traditions series

• The Raymond Foundation gave $10,000 to A Moment of Science

• The Brabson Foundation gave $30,000 to A Moment of Science for videocasts for TV and Internet. Grant will also go towards making the archives searchable.

• Johnny Mathis gave a $10,000 lead gift towards the Al Cobine fund, which is an endowed fund to support jazz programming on radio and TV.

• We received a $2,500 gift from a resident at Meadowood.

Programming

• Artworks is now a half-hour program due to music copyright issues

• Josephine is producing a half-hour weekly show focusing on non-profits and community issues, to be called “Making a Difference”.

• We now have 13 programs available as podcasts.

• NPR is still paying us a quarterly royalty, but not taking any new programs.

• We have little idea how the problems in the economy will affect fundraising

• The bugs in the automation system are being worked on – they are mostly there because of new protocol learning curves.

Meeting Adjourned