Louisville Magazine

FEB 2014

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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Lamb is uncertain what role collaboration might play. "We approached (public radio) several years ago — probably before any of the current people were there — with the idea to do just that," he says. "Tey were not real interested. We have not re-approached them, nor have they approached us, but if we saw equal beneft, it would be something we would have an interest in talking about." It's this issue of equal beneft that could prove the toughest barrier to collaborations between the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting and the larger media players. "I don't want to sound arrogant, but whatever we do is going to be disproportionate," Lamb says. "We reach thousands of people, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands. If we do something, they'll beneft more than we will. So we're not talking about a partnership of equals. Tere has to be some way to ofset that." Neil Budde, who replaced a retiring Bennie Ivory as executive editor of the CourierJournal in September, spent about a year and a half in Philadelphia leading a nonproft with goals similar to the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. He was CEO of the grant-funded Philadelphia Public Interest Information Network. Before that efort, he was president of the Daily Me, a start-up delivering personalized news and information, editor-in-chief of Yahoo News, and founding editor and publisher of the Wall Street Journal Online. He doesn't dismiss the idea of collaboration. "It's entirely possible we may fnd some ways to work together with organizations like the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. I've reached out and had some tentative feelers. . . . We all recognized that as some resources have gotten smaller, there are lots of benefts to working together," not just with nonprofts, but with for-proft companies as well. But there remains the question of mutual beneft. "Is each party bringing something, or is one party kind of getting a lopsided beneft, or do both sides beneft?" he asks. Is Louisville Public Media really big enough to partner with the big boys? Gray Smith's numbers suggest the clout of LPM cannot be ignored. Smith, the director of development and marketing at LPM, wears a suit. His Brooks Brothers tie has little yellow cats on it — cheetahs maybe, or leopards. His wife picked it out. He peers over frameless glasses perched on the end of his nose, leaning forward and occasionally windmilling his arms when he's making a big point. Basically, he's the guy in charge of persuading businesses to give LPM money. If this were a commercial station, he would be the advertising director. He spent years on the advertising side at commercial stations. It gives him a sharp perspective on what he sees as LPM's particular advantages: having three stations, each with a distinct format, each reaching a diferent audience. Tat contributes to the growing audience size. "Te audience was 75,000 people (for all three stations) when I got here (in 1997)," Smith says. Te radio-audience measuring company Arbitron's 2013 report says 184,000 people listen to LPM stations. Te most recent Arbitron report that covered listening time, this one issued in 2012, shows LPM's audience listening time is twice the market average. Among college-educated people, no radio station beats them, according to a Media Audit survey by International Demographics, a Texas company that conducts media marketing research in cities throughout the U.S. A great success story. Unquestionably. Tings look a little diferent when you count bodies. For those of you who sufer from math anxiety, I'll try to make this painless. But I must begin with several caveats: First, media marketing studies are created not to inform the general public of trends but to sell advertisements. Generally, a business buys an ad for a specifc time slot, such as during the WAVE-TV morning news. Or it buys for a certain part of the paper, such as the front news section. So the data in these studies pits all three LPM stations at all times against a single section of the paper or a single news-show time slot. So there is no way to compare all LPM viewers to all viewers of WDRB news broadcasts, for example. Further, this data is only a snapshot. It represents audience information compiled by International Demographics Inc. for just August-September 2013. Tis survey shows what percentage of people listened to the most recent broadcast of a show or read the most recent issue of a periodical. Such snapshots have an inherent weakness: Tey reveal only a moment in time, a tiny window through which to view a complex and changing landscape. A yearly average, viewed over several years, would be more telling. Still, this snapshot suggests a few things: First, that Louisville Public Media is not much of a force in the big-fat-undiferentiated 18-andolder market of 907,000 people. It ranks No. 18. No surprise there; this is not LPM's target audience. Second, that Louisville Public Media is much more of a contender among the 100,000 or so households that earn $100,000 or more. For this audience it ranks No. 12. Tird, that Louisville Public Media is strongest among folks with a college degree — a total of about 270,000 people. It's at No. 8 in that segment, with 14 percent of respondents saying they listened to one of LPM's stations' most recent broadcasts. Tis snapshot also suggests something else: Te Courier-Journal is king. Or queen. Or some kind of royalty. Te front section of its Sunday edition is No. 1 in all of those categories. It has nearly half the collegeeducated market — 49.5 percent —- for its Sunday news section, and it has almost 3.5 times more college-educated bodies than LPM. Still, by anyone's best guess, uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. It all comes down to money. How advertisers read these statistics will determine the fate of most media. As readers and listeners move online, advertisers race after us. Circulation will also contribute to bottom lines, probably in bigger ways than before when it comes to newspapers: Te Courier-Journal began charging for online access in June, a strategy that has proved an important source of revenue for some papers. But traditionally, advertising pays the bills. Smart phones are changing things further. Since LPM made a decision to be more than radio, the smart phone trend appears to be good news. Todd Mundt, NPR director of digital media services and former vice president and chief content ofcer for LPM, said smart phone access to public radio has been increasing steadily, by 1 percent per month. When we spoke in December, it was up to 29 percent. "Te message is now that the core competency you built over 40 years of really great storytelling on radio has a chance to be pretty great online as well," Mundt says. "Radio is still our core business," executive director Reynolds says. "But we really need to be where the consumer is. . . . We say, radio isn't going away; it's going everywhere." Reynolds can sound a bit like Charles Dickens as he surveys the future. "Everything in media these days is terrifying," he says. "People's media habits change daily. Trying to keep up with that, trying to anticipate that, is almost impossible. You have to make certain investments. You have a strategy. But can anyone say what's going to happen to me in fve years or 10 years? I don't think they can. "Tat's why, everywhere, it's an exciting time. It's a terrifying time." 2.14 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 51

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