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 WAMU 88.5 COMMUNITY COUNCIL Minutes of the Meeting of the Council  Wednesday, February 8, 2017  WAMU Community Council Members Attending
: Eugene Sofer; Council Chair, Shay Stevens; Vice Chair, Armele Vilceus,
Margaret O’Bryon
, Dr. Christine Berg, Maura Brophy, Donna MP Willson, David Nemazi, Stan Soloway, Avis Thomas-Lester, David Smith, Nakeisha Neal Jones, Kumera Genet, Navros Gandhi, Audrey Alvarado, Lucinda Crabtree, Susan Weiss, Kumera Genet, Don Britton Peter Tannenwald and Matt McCormick, ex-officio
 WAMU/AU Staff Attending
:  JJ Yore, Carey Needham, Andi McDaniel, Rob Bertrand, Audrey Johnson, Kelsey Proud, James Coates, Amy Powers, Latisha Few, Patrice Jackson, Nancy Guis, Madeleine Poore
Members of the Public
: Gar W. Young, Steve Kaffen, Timothy Tilghman, Cliff Brody, Lisa Bregman, Dani Kauffman, Lisa Shepard, Carolyn Finney.
I.
 
 Welcome
 – 
 Eugene, Council Chair
Eugene opened the meeting at 7 p.m. Council members introduced themselves.
II. State of the Station Report - JJ Yore, General Manager
 A.
 
Strategic Plan Recap: JJ Yore, General Manager  JJ provided some background on the strategic plan developed by Atlantic Media Strategies. In an effort to create a strategic path moving forward, the station wanted to incorporate public media Best Practices; define a sound and style that can only be from WAMU; as well as improve revenue functions so that we have money to invest in content and platforms. Goal: To create a public service media company that provides the best possible service to the region, on par with top-performing public media stations in country. The result was an ambitious 5-year plan completed at the end of 2015; Launched beginning of FY (last May 1) B.
 
 Audience Update: JJ Yore, General Manager  JJ explained that the station receives different kinds of audience information: weekly, monthly, seasonally, annually; by metro market, Baltimore, and outlying areas. Some of the current audience data shows that for fall - Sept, Oct, Nov - (9/8-11/30), for DC metro  WAMU was: the number one station, with a 32% increase from Fall 2015 to 862K listeners/week (new high). Including Baltimore, Eastern Shore, Fredericksburg 984K (almost
 
million) was also a record high. It was also important to note how many people listening any given moment: *38K (40% increase from Fall 2015) *10.4% AQH Share of listening (35% increase from Fall 2015). We gained a huge number of listeners during the presidential election year. Often some fraction of listeners drop off, but we are hoping to retain at least 50% of growth this year. C.
 
New Department; Marketing and Engagement: JJ Yore- General Manager  JJ discussed the changes that have been made in restructuring departments. A new department is in the works. The idea is to rethink how we are connecting to audiences beyond the journalism we create and to deepen our relationship with audiences. It will also bring together all the people who are supporters of the station in terms of volunteers, our internship program, and the Community C
ouncil. That’s a process we’re just now working
on;
 we’ve got our lead position defined,
 with luck we will have this department up and running by the summer. D.
 
Federal Funding: JJ Yore- General Manager
 This isn’t the first time CPB has been under Congressional scrutiny. Some of
you may remember 2001 and 2009
 – 
 JJ recalls seeing Diane Rehm standing next to Big Bird outside our building. So
 – 
 what are we doing now: WAMU is setting aside a larger than normal contingency in FY18/19 to buffer against cuts in funding and our five-year plan will include a reduction in its dependency on CPB funding. Ideally we could zero out this dependency over five years.  JJ also acknowledged that there are 2 bills currently introduced - HR 726: To prohibit Federal funding of NPR and the use of Fed Funds to acquire radio content and HR 727: To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit Fed funding for CPB after FY 2019.
Navros Ghandi asked “Doe
s CPB give money to NPR directly? JJ answered, not really, NPR can apply f 
or funding for special projects but the funding is directly for stations”
One thing to keep in mind is that stations are used as an emergency communications system, and that is ano
ther reason why they shouldn’t be defunded.
E.
 
 WAMU’s Finance Update: Carey Needham
 
Carey set the stage for the finance presentation with objectives 10, 11, and 12 from the strategic plan.  When JJ began during FY15, there were tough decisions made about
 WAMU’s financial performance
 and operation. $1 million was cut from the operating budget, FY16 ---- As we look to the future, our projections show the revenue eclipsing our expenses, meaning we would have surplus.
Christine Berg asked about the Capital Campaign, Carey clarified we participated in  American Universit
y’s
 campaign but have never done our own. Expense break down: WAMU Donor Count, going back to 2010
 – 
 total donor count hovered around 50,000 for five years with no growth. Revenue was flat. Between 2015-2016  we brought in industry expertise to assess our membership operations, re-set our campaign strategy, set aggressive monthly goals - which included increasing the # of on-air fund-raising days, split out Major Giving and Membership
 – 
 hired new leadership in both areas. Between 2016-2017
 – 
 
34% increase in donors, at the same time we’ve seen a dramatic
 
increase in audience, largely due to this incredible news cycle and the presidential election. Note about January: added 4319 new donors in what is normally a slower month
 – 
 as a comparison we added 4157 new donors during our on-air campaign! As of Feb 1 we are 70,874! March on-air campaign is next up and David will give us a preview of what we will expect from this effort.
 
 Avis asked “why did this
 increase
happen?” Carey responded by saying it has to do with our
content, engaging with the audience and JJ chimed in to add it might have to do with the
“Trump Effect” which is something Andi will be discussing later, but a lot of nonprofits
have been seeing an uptick in donations. Carey introduced the upcoming on-air membership campaign, March 3
rd
 to 10
th
 with a goal
of 1.2 Million. The theme will be “Journalism and community, the importance of fact based content” something new that we are doing is pro
ducing new member spots, drawn from members all over the region, taken from produced in studio. He then played two spots for the council to listen to.
 
 Andi said an important way to contribute that isn’t financial
is to boost to your audience on social media, sharing why you support and listen to the station.
 A well placed Facebook post can go a long
 way.”
 
 A community member brought up the #PressOn hashtag that journalists and supporters have been using to show the support the press.
F.
 
 Journalism and Content: Andi McDaniel
 
 Andi began by talking about
stationarity 
, a made-up word that described the sound and feel of the station. The main focus is to create a seamless listening experience, a sense of place-
 when you tune in you know it’s D.C.’s station not New Hampshire’s. Greater
consistency, give hosts best way to connect with audience and a unified content vision. David Nemazie made a comment about reducing phone sound and skype sounds because the audio quality is not great.  Timothy Tilghman said he really liked the concept of stationality and said he wants to strike a balance between hearing voices from all over the world and also staying true to a distinct D.C. voice.  Andi spoke to this, mentioning BBC Newshour and how that was added because an international perspective is important. Another aspect of our stationality plan is prerecorded underwriting. Underwritting will now be voiced by Heather Taylor. Other Stationality tweaks:
 we’ll mention sports when it’s relevant, regional and national news, local events and traffic when it’s important.
Bluegrass country, we are thrilled that the Bluegrass foundation is now the steward of BGC,
it’s such a success story that we were able to
accomplish this transition.

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