December 10, 2013

Public Radio in Mid America
Board of Directors Meeting Minutes
December 10, 2013

Called to Order:11:30 AM EDT
Board Members Present: Regina Dean, Tim Eby, Christina Kuzmych, Karen Olstad, Paul Maasson, Mike Savage, Steve Schram, Dan Skinner, Guests: Greg Petrovich and Tom Hunt 

  1. Welcome New Members – President Skinner welcomed Steve Schram and Mike Savage and thanked past president, Christina Kuzmych for her six years of service. Paul Masson assumes new role as Vice President.
  1. Update on Super Regional—Dan Skinner
    1. Survey – Board reviewed draft of survey to be sent to PRIMA members and the survey of the Super Regional meeting. One of the objectives is to determine PRIMA members’ interest in continuing to have super regional meetings and/or regional meetings. Dan will make noted changes to the survey and distribute to members.
    2. Discussion – about merits of benefits of super-regionals and regional meetings.
  1. Reflections from Immediate Past President– Christina Kuzmych
    1. PRIMA is most active of the regionals, it will be important for us to figure out who we are and what we want to be. Something to think about because there will be pressure for regionals to merge.
    2. A project Christina hoped to do but never completed was to send a letter  urging non-member stations in our region to join PRIMA. She will draft a letter for entire board to sign. Regina will compile list of non-members to which it should be sent.
  1. NPR Update
    1. CEO Search (Petrovich) – Since Greg is not on search committee, he doesn’t have any information to share.
    2. Clock 2.0 project – Eby and Schram on GM committee, meeting next week with GMs and Programmers to look at this. It started out as a clock management issue but since it has business implications, GMs were included. Tim and Steve think that NPR has recommendations, but will certainly get feedback and pushback from stations on various aspects.
    3. Carbon Project– Eby was guest at iMa last week, now part of Greater Public. Focus of summit was on revenue, hosted at NPR. Session about Carbon project “Pandora-like app for news.” Concept is to pull chunks of content from NPR and other producers including stations based on algorithm with serendipity to discover new things. The implications are pretty big for stations. This is the first real significant attempt to create a local-national experience on the digital side similar to on-air news magazine programs. It is important to get right when you consider that listeners are moving to digital experiences, but is especially challenging in markets with more than one NPR station. One of the questions is how much presence will local stations have. Other questions concern “big data” and how it is used and how revenue would be split. For small stations not producing a lot of content, it will feel like by-pass. There needs to be discussion and this needs to be a local-national collaboration. It is being developed by the largest stations, but smaller stations need to be included for buy-in. Tim will send a link with info and instructions to participate in the beta test for people with iPhones. Question: What is business model? Is it ad based? Yes, ads can be targeted better because people share interests/preference when they register but will also have membership messages and ability to donate, presumably to local stations.
  1. USA Update–Craig Beeby has been busy helping individual stations. Board is planning calendar for 2014. Website has a lot of good information. Contact Craig for calculating a station’s “quantitative worth” to licensee. Very useful if you have to train a new administrator.
  1. Next meeting will be January 14 at 11:30 AM EDT.

Meeting adjourned at 12:35 PM EDT

Respectfully submitted,
Karen Olstad
Secretary

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