February 2006 Staff Reports to the BoD

Music Director

VOLUNTEERS:

-- The Cipher Zone debuts this week on Saturday at 10 pm. The current hip hop programmers were advised against continuing to make deprecating remarks on-air about the new show and now, while they are less then enthusiastic, they're cooperative. The C.Z. collective has been in for several trainings and it's very exciting to see this type of audience building for a whole new underserved population - a true embodiment of our mission statement.

-- Chrissy Bocan, aka "Predator" is on the air Fridays 2-4:30 pm with her show "Get To the Chopper!" (replacement for Hootenanny.) She's been training with myself, Dave Zero, Mike Heminger and others to get up to speed in time for the pledge drive. Response so far has been enthusiastic and I'm sure she'll work out to be another great host with wide-ranging music tastes and a real commitment to the community. On another note, I've heard no negative comments so far regarding the loss of the half-hour of rock programming. Hopefully those folks are staying tuned to Democracy Now! and we're gaining a whole new audience for that show as well.

-- Patrick Swickard, aka 'Swickape' who has done late night Thursdays for several years as well as LTE work in the LSDir dept, is moving to Santa Fe in March, leaving us with a 2-5 am Friday program opening. I plan to fill it with a current volunteer or an applicant(s) from another hire, if possible.

MUSIC LIBRARY

-- Held a very succesful music sort last Monday and got through a lot of stuff downstairs. Every time, different DJs show up with different musical expertise and there was a nice cross section of knowledge here this week. Pared down CDs to be reviewed to just a few boxes, found some to use for pledge premiums and the browse shelf, put the rest in the record sale.

-- Culling of CDs continues slowly, this is a priority since we're running out of room but not on the top of my to-do list

-- Various physical plant upgrades in terms of shelving, ceiling tiles and lighting need to be done in the CD library.

MISC.:

-- Preparing for the Pledge Drive....

-- Attended events committee, assisted in brainstorming and contacts for bands for the Bowlathon, Block Party, etc.

-- Spoke at the joint MCOC/PC meeting about needs and desires for outreach and marketing materials for concerts

-- I don't think I'm going to Austin in March for SXSW, but will try to hit a different music conference this year. Am planning on NFCB in April, and will be here for the GRC in July.

-- Am supposed to attend a training regarding a new paperless payroll system for work-study students at the UW.

-- Want to expand capabilities of the Promo Exchange Database, and Jim can help me with that; we have been using to set up tickets for premiums with great success! No more duplication of efforts, missing information or mistakes.

--Am looking forward to working with Mitch Rosefelt and others on a system to post playlists automatically to the web

Listener Sponsor Development Director

FALL 2005 PLEDGE DRIVE

* With all pledges processed from the drive the total amount pledged is $111,281. As of today (2/13) we have received $101,573 in pledge payments--a fulfillment rate of over 91% (with pledge payments still trickling in).

DECEMBER DIRECT MAILING

* So far we have received 109 donations totalling $8,090.

WINTER 2006 PILOT

* The Winter Pilot was printed last week and a .pdf version has been posted on our website. Many copies are available here at the station. It has been mailed to 3,014 people and will be arriving in folks' mailboxes starting today.

WINTER 2006 PLEDGE DRIVE

* The dates of the Winter '06 drive are Sunday February 19th to Saturday March 4th. The theme for the drive is THE WIDE WORLD OF WORT/World Wide WORT--reflecting the now global reach of WORT's eclectic programming while also paying homage to the "wide world" that is WORT on a local level. The goal for the drive is $100,000. The LSDD office is in full "pledge drive mode" at this point with my foci for this week being the preparation of show folders, audit process training, and final inventory checks of all types of premia. It's almost here and we are almost ready!!

RE-ORGANIZING OF MY OFFICE

* Nancy Mae has continued to spearhead the re-organization and "de-crapifying" of my office (most importantly including the organization of pledge drive premia). The goal is for premia to be (much) easier to find for our steadfast auditors in a space that is easier to navigate.

CSW stuff

* I attended a CSW new board member orientation meeting last Monday Feb. 6th. The next CSW board meeting is during our pledge drive (ouch).

BUSINESS and FOUNDATION DEVELOPMENT

January 2006 BOARD REPORT*

I am still acclimating to my position, and am really enjoying my time at WORT thus far. Raechel is officially on leave, and has graciously offered to communicate with me regarding important matters.

I am gearing up for the pledge drive, and looking forward to meeting more of our treasured volunteers throughout the next two weeks.

*_EVENTS_*

*-Events Committee* - Met Thursday, February 9th - see Justin's notes. Discussed planning for bowl-a-thon, block party, and Willy St. Fair.

Discussed outreach for events participation. Next meeting set for March 8, 2006 at 6:00pm.

*_Upcoming Events:_

-*Pledge Drive - *have been working to line up food, premium and challenge grant donors for the winter drive. Sending reminders for food donors, and scheduling people for pickups.

*Bowl-a-Thon *- WORT's 11th Annual, set for Saturday, April 8th at the Village Lanes in Monona. Lots of planning in the works on entertainment lineup, promotional materials, business sponsor outreach, prize acquisition, etc. Raechel and I met with bowling alley manager to discuss details.

*-Block Party* - preliminary planning for this year's May 21st event. Filling out paperwork for permits and licenses.

*-Willy St. Fair * - I will meet with members of planning committee on Tuesday, Feb 14^th to discuss WORTs involvement and participation for this year..

Operations Report to the Board

Finance Committee will not meet this month, but will continue to work on plans for more lucrative investments.

The Engineering Committee met last week and discussed and planned various projects (see Eng Comm Report). A grant was submitted to PTFP to fund a possible 2nd digital channel and new mixing boards for Combos A & B.

Following the very successful test of webstreaming last December, we obtained the use of 50 streams at 96kbps (better than FM radio, less than a CD). We launched a new full-time streaming service on February 6th. Training and discussions with music volunteers continues.

The Elections committee completed a successful election on February 5th, welcome to our new directors.

Our Sister-Radio station group made a presentation to the annual meeting, and continues to other activities for the coming year.

I was in Venezuela for the World Social Forum during the last week of January, assisting in an international broadcast and presenting in a couple of workshops. WORT had 5 volunteers at the WSF (a record I think) and our reports reached community stations across the globe (and internet) and Air America as well.

Volunteer & Outreach Coordinator

It has been a busy 2 ½ weeks since the last Board meeting.

Annual Meeting

I wrote a script for the on-air announcement; posted info throughout the station regarding the meeting time, location, etc.; signed out absentee ballots; wrote a summary of the year for my part of the staff report; completed calling to remind volunteers about the meeting; packed up materials; picked up the soda and cookies; helped with set-up, signing out ballots at the meeting and clean up.

Pledge Drive

I have been putting a considerable amount of time into preparing for the pledge drive—writing scripts for promos for phone answerers and premium pickup; maintaining and updating the phone answerer sign ups (So far we have only 53% of the shifts filled, which is considerably behind last year’s sign ups. So, I will be putting significant energy into getting more of these shifts filled, particularly the shifts in the first half of the drive. I am also working at finding bilingual Spanish/English phone answerers for Los Madrugadores, Saturdays, Feb. 25th & March 4th. ) I have been working with Jim Goronson and John Kraniak to arrange a pledge folder auditor training, scheduled for this Wednesday at 12:30 (Please RSVP with Glenn or Jim if you would like to attend.)

Receptionists

I have been working on filling a holes in the reception schedule. At this moment, all reception shifts during the pledge drive are covered.

Recruitment

I have been working on follow-up from the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Job Fair, 1/24; Government and Non-Profit Volunteer and Career Fair, 1/31; I will be attending the Multicultural Career Fair on Wednesday, 2/15.

MCOC

The Marketing Communications and Outreach Committee met on 2/2 and is scheduled to meet on 3/9 at 5:30pm (see separate report)

CAB

The Community Advisory Board met on Feb. 8th (see separate report)

Outreach

I am working with our volunteer graphic artist on the monthly Maximum Ink and Rick’s Café ad.

Tours

I gave a tour to 8 cub scouts and three adults on January 30th. Today I gave a tour to 3 adults and two staff from the Grow Program, an outpatient mental health program.

News and Public Affairs

Pledge Drive

• Preparations are coming along. Most APA hosts have guests booked, and premiums are also being procured. The News Department has three books to be used across the board for this drive: Howard Zinn’s Voices of a People’s History; Aaron Glantz’s How America Lost Iraq; and Kurt Vonnegut’s Man Without a Country. There are also many magazines and several DVDs (including some Black History Month DVDs).

• I’m about to re-send the Pledge Rapping Tips document to the news volunteers again.

• This week, I’ll be filling the pledge rapping shifts with our crack team of good fundraisers.

• We’ve been in touch with the folks from Democracy Now and FSRN about pledge rapping, and they’re likely to hook us up.

Programming Committee

The committee met on Feb. 1. Ryan and Les would like to re-apply for their current seats on the PC (their two-year terms are up). The Programming Committee recommends each of them for another term. We also discussed:

• Program Publicity, as per our LRP charge. We’ll be working with MCOC to develop genre-based and block-based fliers, forward- and cross-promotional materials, etc.

• A new show proposal came in ­ a program proposed by a local law firm that would focus on immigrant rights. We referred them to existing programs.

• Democracy Now on Fridays has been going well with more cheers than jeers. No jeers, really. Just one person who said they miss FSRN. As of Feb. 13, I think I’ve found an engineer for the DN hour.

• The PC continues to work on the Programmer Review Process (another part of our LRP charge). We reviewed comments on the draft, and I will be making further edits.

• We followed up on the new Saturday night conscious hip-hop show, “Cipher Zone.” They go on the air for the first time this Saturday.

Program Special

WORT will air two hours of the Homelessness Marathon on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 6-8pm. (I may need to periodically duck out of the BoD meeting to check it.) More information on the Marathon at http://www.homelessnessmarathon.org/

Staffing

Not much new to report since the last Board meeting. A few new volunteers are coming in. A few engineers will be out here and there in late February and March. One bit of news… Cheri Dubiel, alternate host of Thursday’s “A Public Affair,” told me that she would like to drop back to one show per month. This raises several questions, and there may be some shifting about in the APA lineup. But no news yet. Perhaps by next meeting.

Pacifica National Board

I’m running for one of the two Pacifica National Board Affiliate seats. These seats are not likely to be contested, so I very well may be on the PNB come April or so. I’ll keep you posted.

Grassroots Radio Conference 11

The GRC-11 is now going to be in Madison, very likely the weekend of July 28-30. The staff collective agreed to act as the host station, so long as I agreed to be the point person. Other stations on the GRC list were amenable to the offer. We have rooms reserved for that weekend at the Pyle Center to host the conference workshops. The staff is looking for organizers who preferably have experience with WORT, conference planning, and the GRC; we may have found a couple. We’ll keep you posted.

News Workshops and Discussions

The second workshop went very well ­ Audio Editing and Tech training. I managed to cram 14 people into Combo-A to learn Sound Forge, and most seemed to have a good (if cramped) time.

Mel & Floyd Archiving

One of the attendees at my last workshop was Ken Brady, aka Mel. Since then, he has been recording all of their shows as high quality (128Kbps) mp3 files, which I’ve been posting to WORT’s website at <http://lists.wort-fm.org/archive/Mel%20&%20Floyd>. I’ve also publicized the archive at some online forums.

30th Anniversary Testimonials

The testimonials have hit a plateau, so I’m going to draw up a quarter sheet blurb promoting the testimonials line that we’ll staple into every pledge drive thank-you note. If that doesn’t get the calls, nothing will.

Website

• The web workgroup met on Jan. 31 to discuss the project of overhauling the site. One of the workgroup members just had a baby, so she’s a bit tied up, but she still managed to come up with some mockups. Another web volunteer, Lincoln Theiler, drew up an awesome workplan for the site: 1. Design Phase; 2. Site Hierarchy Development; 3. Programming Phase; 4. Content Development; 5. Implementation of Content. We’re in the design phase right now, and Lincoln will offer several versions for our review after the pledge drive.

• I’m posting to a blog now, that’s linked from the WORT “News Programming” website. It’s just a small attempt at web development. Interesting thing is that about half the hits are from outside the Madison area ­ including viewers as far away as Chile and South Africa.

WORT Structure

I got a wild hair and decided to try to create a visual representation of WORT’s structure. I’m sending it as a PDF, in case you’re curious. It might come in handy for that Board orientation we’re doing in March