91.3 WLRN Morning Edition Grad School Comments
As has been the case with many News/Talk public radio stations of late, WLRN's experienced some audience flattening and even erosion. Once the recipients of the RRC's "Ralph Award" for most significant audience growth, our numbers have been flat for the most part over the past five or six books, with just a few notable exceptions.
Late last spring we noticed that the malaise had extended to Morning Edition, ours and most news/talkers' flagship program. As WLRN's PD, I felt I had a sense of where some of the issues may have lain, but did not have a clear understanding of them nor a specific strategy nor tactics for addressing them.
It was at this time that I decided to take advantage of the recruitment effort by NPR's Local News Initiative for the Morning Edition Grad School. We at WLRN felt fortunate to be included among the first stations to participate. Here's an account of what transpired and what I feel we gained from the experience.
The preliminary arrangements for the gathering in San Antonio were thorough and easy to facilitate. The MEGS team provided forms for us to supply information about our station and our audience. They conducted stealth airchecks of our Morning Edition presentation. Hotel bookings and such were completed without bother.
I and my News Director arrived the night before the sessions began. This was the first among many opportunities we found during this session to talk informally about our mission at WLRN (an unforeseen benefit that has paid dividends ever since).
The sessions were begun with each member of the MEGS team offering her or his view of Morning Edition from various standpoints ranging from the importance of the program in station schedules, to audience numbers to facts about what the many Morning Edition stations have in common or do completely differently. (There was a wide range of stations represented in our relatively small group, from small town, small-staffed operations to major market heavyweights.)
As the class progressed, we were invited to examine the program in ever more specific detail, breaking down its formatics in a way akin to dismantling the kitchen toaster to see how it works. Once all the springs, nuts, bolts and wires were on the table, we could analyze the makeup of each and how they best fit together to produce the most appealing toast.
With the aid of the aforementioned airchecks, we were asked to evaluate elements of the various participating stations' presentations and then, with suggestions from our "instructors", develop a vision of best practices. These covered a lot of ground, including:
- Announcing pace and style
- Host identification
- Station identification and positioning statements
- Weather delivery
- Traffic reports
Major consideration was given to analyzing and improving:
- News reportage (lead by Tanya Ott)
- Underwriting copy and numbers/types of avails (Marlene Schneider)
- Forward Promotion (Peter Dominowsky, Tim Emmons, Scott Williams)
One of the most highly encouraged practices was the assignment of a Morning Edition Producer. This person, it was suggested, could truly create a cohesive and appealing "show" by mining all the necessary resources each morning, making decisions about content, shaping the local breaks and providing the required materials for the host.
We station teams were eventually tasked with analyzing our own station's presentation, pinpointing specific practices in need of elimination, implementation or improvement and then elucidating-and committing in ink to--a specific action plan, complete with target dates.
The Morning Edition Grad School experience was certainly valuable to WLRN. I found that the sessions provided me with a concrete, deconstructed view of the formatics of Morning Edition. The current wisdom regarding best practices was clearly and extensively explained, both philosophically and empirically and then demonstrated in sound. The sessions helped me to form a clear idea of both the shortcomings in our then-current presentation and the steps I wanted to take to address them. As mentioned above, the experience provided a "bonding" opportunity for my news director and me. It promoted a valuable and extensive exchange of ideas between us in a setting that encouraged positive change.
Within a week of my return to Miami, I was in meetings targeted at implementing the strategy and tactics I and our news director had arrived at. (By the way, one of the important benefits of the MEGS program is the support offered by the MEGS team. This takes the form not only of moral encouragement, but in tangible backup in lobbying for change among less than enthusiastic "upper management". The added weight of acknowledged Public Radio "heavies" can provide some helpful leverage!) We and each of the participating stations were "assigned" to one of the MEGS presenters for follow-ups. Peter Dominowsky dutifully checked in at regular intervals to find out how our action plan was coming along and offer his and the rest of the team's support if needed.
In the end, I was able to realize most of the ambitions set forth in our MEGS action plan. These include:
- Creating a full-time producer position for Morning Edition
- Reducing our spot load during the program
- Restructuring our local news delivery to include less spot news and more feature length pieces (including the complete elimination of a number of spot newscasts.)
- More effectively applying News Core Values to newscasts
- Eliminating outsourced, voiced traffic reports (and replacing them with local host's)
- Slowing the pace of our host's delivery
- Initiating a clear and codified policy of forward promotion
Programming and Operations Manager
91.3 WLRN
172 NE 15 St
Miami, FL 33132
peterj@wlrn.org
