WFHB FireHouse Broadcasting

Welcome to a SPECIAL edition of the weekly GM report, dedicated entirely to a recap of Saturday's annual membership meeting!

Big thanks to the sixty or so WFHB volunteers who came to our annual meeting on Saturday.  Many people have told me it was the best annual meeting we’ve had in years, and I agree!  The only thing that was NOT so good is the recording I made of the meeting; I tried using a pair of omnidirectional conference mikes and the resulting audio is barely listenable.  If you want a copy by all means let me know, and next time I’ll try a different setup.  Here are my notes from the annual meeting:

BOARD OF DIRECTORS ELECTION
Board secretary Emily Jackson and board member Suzette Weakley ran a very tight ship, tracking ballots and tallying the results quickly and efficiently.  The membership elected two new board members (Kirby Thompson and Carolyn VandeWiele, both of whom have served on the board before) and re-elected current board member Matt Pierce.  Congrats to all three!  Board treasurer Shaun McDermott announced his resignation from the board, and promised to stay involved in oversight of station finances as chair of the Finance Committee.  The newly-reconstituted board will now choose new officers; stay tuned to Spot Online for an update on that directly from the board.

AWARDS
We handed out a record NINE plaques to a handful of our 176 participating members, and almost all of them were there in person to received their accolades:

"Genre Director of the Year" - Tilman Piedmont, Jazz Director
"New Programmer of the Year" - Nicole O'Neal
"Programmer of the Year" - Andrew Miller
"WFHB News Rookie of the Year" - Louis Malone
"The MacGyver Award" - honoring excellence through innovation, this award went to our outgoing technology director Markus Lowe.  We also recognized our incoming technology director Johrdan Vicstein.
"Producer of the Year" - honoring the person who pulls it all together "behind the scenes", this award went to Pam Raider for her amazing community organizing in support of the Brown County Hour.
"The Legacy Award" – this is NOT an award we give out every year; it’s kind of like a lifetime achievement award, honoring those who have dedicated many years of continuous service.  This time it went to Helen Harrell for her work as a founding member of bloomingOUT and many years of service to the station across many different areas of operation and governance.
"Board Member of the Year" – this is a new award this year, and the first one goes to retiring board member Shaun McDermott for his service as a financial officer and for leading the recent GM search.
"Volunteer of the Year" – this is the most prestigious award we give out each year, honoring the Most Valuable Player for 2010-2011.  Our staff unanimously agreed that this year’s MVP is Jim Lang, an engineer and producer who put in hundreds of hours in support of both music and news programming.

Congrats to all our award winners!

TREASURER REPORT
As his final act as board treasurer, Shaun McDermott offered a detailed look at station finances.  He put together a PowerPoint presentation and wore a suit to deliver it – so professional!  Some highlights:  WFHB hit our budget numbers almost exactly in 2010-2011; we talked about the recent IRS audit; and we saw some ambitious numbers for the coming year, including an optimistic forecast for our next two fund drives and a goal of 50% more revenue in business underwriting.  A copy of the full presentation is available upon request!

STAFF REPORTS
GM: Looking back, I reflected on our significant increase in community partnerships/event sponsorships, and national memberships in PRX, DEI, and Spinitron.  I highlighted the recent reorganization of administration systems, efforts to improve communication, and our recent most successful fund drive ever!
Looking ahead, I welcomed the challenge of higher underwriting and fund drive totals and the need to diversify revenue streams, expressed my hopes of deepening our partnership with CATS and my intention to lead a renovation of our music library to accommodate a new studio, and looked forward to a formal strategic planning process in partnership with our board, working toward my five-year goal of hiring a full-time Development Director.

NEWS: January celebrated our record-breaking TWENTY awards from SPJ, discussed a reorganization of departmental duties, and highlighted recent partnerships with IU classes and recent grant applications.
Looking ahead, January gave an update on the search for a new Assistant News Director, creating goals and visions for the public affairs shows with more integration and content-sharing between news and public affairs shows, and the need to expand the volunteer base by at least thirty people.  This goes hand in hand with an initiative to create more training infrastructure, like our upcoming classes through People’s University.

MUSIC:  Jim crowed about the launch of the Local Live CD series, the reinvention of our Acoustic Roots Festival, the implementation of Spinitron, and his recent visits to South by Southwest and the WXPN NonComm radio conference.
Looking ahead, Jim expressed excitement about the production of our new CD of in-studio performances by Lotus Festival artists, and outlined his goals to produce Local Live podcasts, deepen the online archive of music offerings, purge or digitize more CDs and LPs, host more live broadcasts from new venues, and a general “reset” of our program schedule.

OPEN DISCUSSION
We had about twenty minutes left at the end of the meeting to discuss any topic; we would have gone longer but we needed to vacate the room so that the crew of our Firehouse Follies variety show could resume rehearsal.  I started things off with a discussion of the optional “Buy It” links on our online playlists, and we heard several opinions both pro and con.  A straw vote on the issue was almost evenly divided between those who want the links and those who don’t, and in the end we opted to keep the links deactivated for now.  We DID agree on a new name for our online discussion listserv The Kennel, which will now be rechristened “Spot Unleashed”.  Love it!

Volunteers offered other valuable insights on station operations:
Ensuring the “Safe Harbor” warning appears in the program log during the 11pm hour
Rotating the scripts for on-air promos read by DJs
Evaluating our hourly clocks to ensure the announcing load is not too heavy
Bringing back pre-recorded station IDs – Cindy signed on as the producer of these
Reviewing the decision-making process for what items get into the on-air event calendars, and ensuring phonetic pronunciations are included when needed
More promos for locally-produced music programs
More direct access to online playlists and adding a “Now Playing” feature to the website homepage

WHEW!  We sure covered a lot of ground, and in this report I’ve offered only a general summary and not necessarily comprehensive coverage.  But one thing is certain: your station staff and board are genuinely interested in what you have to say, so we invite you to attend the next quarterly meeting on September 10.