WFIU Community Advisory Board Meeting
At the Distinguished Alumni Room, Indiana Memorial Union; and via Zoom
Monday, October 4, 2021, 4:00 p.m.
Attending: Adrian Starnes, Nathan Watson, Samantha Johnson-Helms, Brent Molnar, Alain Barker, Matt Pierce, Sara Peterson, Judy Stewart, Lauren Dexter-Burns, Abby Henkel, Lacy Hawkins, Miah Michaelsen, Catherine Winkler,. Staff: John Bailey, Brad Kimmel, Eva Zogorski.
Absent: Sharon Sung Andrews, Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, Michele Bergonzi, Sarah Taylor, Daren Redman, Quincy Robinson.
Alain Barker calls the meeting to order at 4:01 p.m.
Welcome & Introductions
Alain Barker seeks motion to approve July 2021 minutes. Samantha Johnson-Helms moves, Nathan Watson seconds. Motion passes.
No members of public are present to comment.
Board Composition
Alain Barker notes that five current members will be rotating out at the end of 2022. John Bailey adds the board will by 2023 have lost all but one member who has served in board leadership. Alain and John offer appreciative farewells to Sara Peterson, Daren Redman, and Lacy Hawkins.
Alain suggests his moving out of board leadership in advance of his rotation out in 2022, and recommends Abby Henkel as incoming board chair. Board offers unanimous consent; Abby accepts, and suggests forming a new executive committee to maximize the CAB’s utility to the station.
Alain recommends a leadership trio, including committee members focused on development and advocacy. Supportive comments from Adrian Starnes, Sara Peterson, and Miah Michaelsen. Alain recommends forming the committee before the January meeting.
John adds that repopulation of the 2022 loss is underway, with one person already recruited to join by January; and recommends recruitment focus not only on demographic diversity, but also adding new members from Terre Haute, Kokomo, and Seymour.
Strategic Plan Update
John Bailey: each unit within Radio-TV has met for two SWOT/PEST sessions – one to brainstorm, and one to winnow the items to a Top 5 in each category. Each station’s CAB has met as well. All of this information then informed a pair of Leadership Team SWOT/PEST sessions in which we came up with a building-wide Top 5 in each category. From there a three-year strategic plan will progress. Brad has enlisted Jim Pagliarini, formerly of Twin Cities Public TV, to meet with the LT across a couple of days in early November and facilitate work on articulating priorities for the organization as a whole. The hope is to have the report finalized by early in 2022, which will be shared with the CAB.
Alain asks whether a restructuring within Radio-TV is in the offing. John says there likely will be a collapsing of non-news content into one unit, that development activities will be consolidated into a sole unit, and marketing will become a unit of its own.
Meetings in 2022
The board agrees on these dates for the quarterly meetings in 2022: January 10, April 4, July 11, October 3. Each is a Monday at 4 p.m. Locations are to be determined. Alain requests Outlook calendar invites to the board.
Manager’s Report
John Bailey refers the CAB to the pre-reading attachment for the bulk of the report, and offers these additions:
Fall drive recap and Giving Tuesday preview: Against the same ambitious $135,000 goal as last fall, the station topped last year’s showing, missing the goal by a shade over $2,000. Web and phone pledges are now roughly even in quantity; email accounts for 7% of the money, and 5% was challenge money. About half the pledges – and two-thirds of the dollars – were from renewals. 22% were from add gifts; one-sixth lapsed; one out of nine were new gifts. New gifts were more minimal then we had hoped, but 46% of them joined as sustainers. Giving in the final two hours was driven heavily by the CAB’s $50-per-pledge match, which found us taking in 77 pledges. About a third of the fall individual challenges went unmet; and we anticipate some or all will be reissued as part of our end-of-year campaign centered around Giving Tuesday on November 30.
Personnel transitions: - Alex Chambers is now in charge of our Arts Bureau. He assisted Kayte Young on Earth Eats, and also has worked as a writer, editor, educator, and community organizer. He is actively working to reboot our dormant interview program, Profiles, which is slated to launch on-air and/or online toward the first of the year. Also, Violet Baron is an audio producer who is initially joining us as a part-time host of All Things Considered, and whose capacity is likely to expand into arts reporting. Finally, Radio-TV and the IU Foundation are working together to fill the new position of Development Director, which will oversee our now-separate Membership and Corporate Development units, and will enable us to redouble our efforts to secure grants and to cultivate major and planned gifts.
Jazz in July / Swing in September: This year, out of necessity, Jazz in July vacated its titular month and the Prebys Amphitheatre, its standard venue. The series we were now calling Swing in September took place in Dunn Meadow and enjoyed a healthy turnout. The event’s planning team is actively reviewing options for next year.
Ratings and research: In September we received our Spring 2021 over-the-air audience data from Nielsen Audio. The ratings book was practically identical to the previous spring’s: about 27,000 “cume persons”; 1,500 listeners in an average quarter hour; seven-and-a-quarter hours of time spent with WFIU per average listener per week. Also, an August Share of Ear study from Edison Research found that 12% of all AM/FM radio listening (in time spent) is via streaming, with 88% occurring via terrestrial receiver.
Adjourn
4:57 p.m.