Why I am Not Contributing to My Local Public Jazz Station Fund Drive — And Why You Might Not Want to Contribute Either

by Anthony Medici in Editorials, Industry News, News, Opinion Posts

Regular readers of this blog know that I have had some tussles with public radio in the past, most notably my ongoing critique with the disappointingly bland programming of WBGO (Newark, NJ).  Most recently, and closer to home, that is, my local jazz-public affairs station, WPFW, Washington, DC,, I have encountered some rather more serious reasons why I –and you– might want to look a little deeper into our public radio stations before we give them any more of our money–especially in this era when everyone else-from bankrupt banks to greedy CEOs– seem to want it also.  The question I wanted to answer was whether or not these stations handle the money they receive with the care and prudence which we expect them to handle it.  The answers I found were alarming. 

In a February 14, 2009 article in the Washington Post, “Public Radio Fundraisers Dial It Back,”  we discover that some stations have hired “pitch” coaches to train on air “personalities” on how to cajole the maximum amount of money out of us.  Nice to know that professional spin-meisters are utilized to manipulate us.  Further down in the same article,  WPFW station manager, Ron Pinchback, is quoted as saying:

“People do react to certain words: credit card debt, unemployment,” said Ron Pinchback, general manager of Washington’s WPFW, a community-oriented public affairs and music station. “When they hear these, they have a tendency to think twice about donating. We don’t have list of banned words, but we do tell our programmers to acknowledge the economy without dwelling on it.”

Pinchback, who made almost daily appeals during the station’s pledge drive that ended this week, said he expected the campaign to fall about 15 percent short of its $450,000 goal as listeners feel the pinch.

“We’re going to have to rely less on our pledge drives and find other ways to raise revenue,” he said.

There are reasons for the lackluster WPFW drive.  I have been a long-term supporter of WPFW, but lately my support of the station has been dwindling.  The immediate cause has been a series of ill-conceived and executed program changes.  The formerly solid and knowedgeable staff of morning “drive-time” programmers has been gutted and replaced by a line-up of amateurs with little or no interest in jazz programming.  Their collective taste in music is woeful.  The evening line-up has been pushed back from a 7:00P start time to 8:00P, to make room for a couple of hours of jumbled, poorly-produced public affairs programming.  By 8:00P I am on to other things, as are many other listeners.  “Democracy Now” is still one of the better public affairs programs on the station, despite its sometimes overly-shrill mode; the show serves the same function as the Roman geese, who raised alarms whenever the enemy was at the gate.  The show did admirable service during the last regime, er, administration.   The rest of the programming tends towards the shrill without the substance.  There are other programming changes and shortfalls that I will not bore you with; suffice it to say that have left a lot of listeners (or make that former listeners) cold. 

But I would likely have still contributed again to the station, if only for the greater good of jazz and the ocassionally effective public forum the station provides, until I received a startling communication from the station’s Development Director.  This came in a response to my email to the station director containing some of the criticisms I voiced above.  The initial response was non-substantive.  However, one of the comments I made was that the station should post its annual financial statement online, so that subscribers to the station could see for themselves why the station is now running seemingly endless fund drives.  Listeners are told over and over that the station staff is made up of volunteers, yet there always seems to be a dire need for money.  Where does it all go?  It seems to me that public stations should lead the way in financial transparency and accountability.  Boy, am I naive!

WPFW’s Development Director’s email acknowledged that putting the finacial statement online was a good idea but in the meantime directed me to the Pacifica (of which WPFW is a member) main web page for the station’s financial statement, where the most recent financial statement I found  (and that took some searching) for WPFW is 2005!   When I asked the Development Director if this was the most recent WPFW financial statement, she advised me that it was.  When I asked the followup question if this was simply the most recent public posting, or actually the most recently completed statement, I received no answer.  Draw your own conclusions. 

The WPFW statement reflects that for its 2005 budget (most recently available), WPFW budgeted $1,723,833 in income, $1,435,112 from listener donations.  On the Expenses side of the ledger, I found total expenses budgeted at $1,546,638.  Of this, $565,259. went to salaries; $329,620 to admin expenses; $244,593 to “development” [huh? what's that?]; $115,114 to actual programming; and, $5,000 to community events (this from a station that prides itself on being a community station).  On top of these expenditures, there was an additional expenditure of $287,022 for “central administrative services” [huh?  what's that?]. 

Well, this was hardly reassuring.  Now, I don’t expect the station to run without cost or even some paid staff (the drive pitches don’t talk about that).  One would assume there is a paid station manager, a paid admin/bookkeeper, and a paid engineer.  Rather suprising then to discover that the station has twelve full-time, paid staff, including, obviously, a paid “Development Director”  (this information from the Development Director).  Obviously, salaries and a multitude of administrative and “development” expenses eat up a huge portion of the station’s budget– and your money and mine.

To see if my evaluation was overly tough, I checked out a site called www.charitynavigator.org, which states as its mission to foster more efficient and responsive philanthropic work.  The site draw its evaluations from IRS Form 990, which is the only public filing required.   Enter WPFW and it brings you to the Pacifica entry, which rates no stars (out of 4), “exceptionally poor,”  for its organizational efficiency, and an overall rating of 27.9.  Frankly, this is pretty shocking, especially for a group of public radio stations that boast of their selfless devotion to the public (and they have done some great political work). 

Out of curiosity, I checked www.charitynavigator.org for WBGO.  I found the station has an efficiency rating of two stars, “needs improvement,” and an overall score of 42.25.  WBGO has an audited financial report for 2007 (most recent shown) on its website at:  http://www.wbgo.org/downloads/auditReport/2007WBGOAuditReport-short.pdf.  I think it’s commendable that this at least is an audited financial statement.  However, I recommend you check it out; the details are interesting. 

Indeed, the point of this blog is to encourage listeners to do more than just allow themselves to be “cajoled” by pitchmen/women and spinmeisters during “pledge drives,” and to demand that their public radio stations “pledge” to maintain and make available online audited financial statements; to cut unnecessary costs; and to ensure that the money we give them is appropriately used.