Iowa Public Radio: The Commercialization of Non-Commercial Radio
Reprinted withpermission from The Prairie Progressive
by Nicholas Johnson When, and why, did our Iowa universities’ non-commercial, educational radio stations go commercial?
Listen online, become a member, or learn about underwriting opportunities at our Web site, IowaPublicRadio.org.
I feel like a once-proud parent who discovers that her former star student has become a pregnant, alcoholic, drug dealer and college dropout.
“Proud parent?”
WSUI’s programming has been a significant part of my life since growing up in Iowa City in the 1940s.
As an FCC commissioner, I helped promote the growth of educational, non-commercial public radio and television.
There’s a photo on my office wall of me with President Lyndon Johnson the day he signed the law establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with one of the pens he used.
I have hosted two seasons of “New Tech Times” for PBS stations, and provided NPR with commentaries, reporting from the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, and on the road from early RAGBRAI rides.
I have great admiration for, and a good many friends among, those who do the programming and get it on the air for public radio and television. My beef is certainly not with them.
I’m no enemy of public broadcasting.
But the licenses for Iowa Public Radio’s stations were originally issued by the FCC to our State’s universities in accord with Commission regulations still applicable today:
(a) A noncommercial educational FM broadcast station will be licensed only to a nonprofit educational organization . . . for the advancement of an educational program. . . .
(b) Each station may transmit programs directed to specific schools . . . for use in connection with the regular courses . . . and may transmit educational, cultural, and entertainment programs to the public.
(c) [An educational] broadcast station may broadcast programs produced by . . . persons other than the licensee, if no other consideration . . . [is] received by the licensee. . . .
(d) Each station shall furnish a non-profit and noncommercial broadcast service. . . . No promotional announcement on behalf of for profit entities shall be broadcast at any time in exchange for the receipt, in whole or in part, of consideration to the licensee . . .. However, acknowledgements of contributions can be made. The scheduling of any announcements and acknowledgements may not interrupt regular programming. (emphasis in original; 47 CFR Sec. 73.503).
Whether the Regents have violated the letter of the law by turning over the universities’ stations to “Iowa Public Radio,” and financing from for-profit corporate advertising, I’ll leave to others. Seemingly, Congress and the FCC have neither noticed nor cared. But the Regents decision has clearly done violence to the spirit of the law creating America’s non-commercial radio alternative.
Law aside, the universities are spending big bucks on technology, personnel and press releases to improve their image, encouraging “faculty engagement” with Iowans, and lobbying for a level of financial support from the Legislature more befitting “State” universities. Their failure to enlist in these endeavors the statewide radio network they already own is a bewildering oversight of monumental consequence. (For more go to FromDC2Iowa.com).
Of course, the money has to come from somewhere. But as I’ve written elsewhere, “Once ‘revenue is needed’ is the Polestar for a university’s financial decisions its moral compass begins to spin as if it was located on the North Pole.”
For our universities to sustain their radio stations financially by abandoning the stations’ very reason for being is like the Viet Nam War rationale: “We had to burn down the village to save it.”
Nothing offers more benefit-cost return on a higher education dollar than using educational radio stations for educational purposes. Properly used, the stations can multiply those Legislative and university dollars many fold. That funding, plus some simple acknowledgments of donors (without “enhanced” advertising), can provide all that’s needed.
— Nicholas Johnson teaches at the University of Iowa College of Law. Check out his website nicholasjohnson.org.
From the November 2010 issue of The Prairie Progressive, Iowa's oldest
progressive
newsletter, available only in hard copy for $12/yr. to PP, Box 1945,
Iowa City
52244. Co-editors
of The Prairie Progressive are
Jeff Cox and Dave Leshtz.
Blog For Iowa 
As a former Iowan and being employed in public radio for the last 12 years, I read Mr. Johnson’s article with particular interest. I have, from a far, been watching as WOI, KSUI, WSUI, KUNI and KHSE have been formed and molded into one (nearly) statewide radio network. The very formation of such an entity is testimony to the changing of the times in public media and its growth and development since inception.
During my 12 years I have been writing underwriting credits for clients and attempting to comply with the FCC’s regulations for acceptable underwriting credits. It has been interesting always and certainly daunting when I was a newbie. What I have learned is that each station has to make its own decisions about what it will air. What is our sound and what fits within those parameters. There are no hard and fast FCC rules about wording, no unacceptable words, just rulings that the “line” was crossed from an informational message to commercial. And that only happens when the FCC holds a hearing and levies a fine AFTER the fact of a station airing announcements. Until then stations are playing without net, (a ruling), hence the interesting and daunting comment.
So with that said let me focus and critique the underwriting credits Mr. Johnson quoted.
Support comes from Iowa City Tire and Dodge Street Tire, where Mike Brown and Brian Sekafetz have been providing full auto service and repair for over 25 years. Featuring nitrogen for tires to help fuel economy and steel wheel weights instead of lead. Two locations on Kirkwood Avenue and Dodge Street.
The opening reference to Mike and Brian sounds a little too personal and commercial for my ear, and our air. But maybe not to IPR’s listeners.
Here’s how I would rewrite this;
Support comes from Iowa City Tire and Dodge Street Tire, Mike Brown and Brian Sekafetz, providing full auto service and repair for over 25 years. Offering nitrogen tire inflation for fuel economy and steel wheel weights versus lead. Locations on Kirkwood Avenue, Dodge Street and online at iowa city tire dot com.
Support comes from Adamantine Spine Moving, a locally owned, socially responsible mover, offering full service, green moves down the block or across the country. Adamantine Spine Moving. Funny name, serious about doing good. On the Web at SpineMoving.com.
I was ready to rewrite this spot UNTIL I Googled” green movers”. There actually is a green movers industry, complete with standards. Now, actually, I’d probably air this spot as written, well maybe drop the “funny name” statement, the purpose seems to qualify the business as better, rather than talking about the service.
Support comes from Fin and Feather, locally owned and family operated, dedicated to helping others enjoy the great outdoors, offering a wide variety of gear for outdoor activities, including fishing, camping, hiking, winter sports and more. More information at FinFeather.com.
Here’s a slight rewrite;
Support comes from Fin and Feather, locally owned and family operated, offering a wide variety of gear for outdoor activities, including fishing, camping, hiking, winter sports and more. Fin and Feather, helping others enjoy the great outdoors. Information at FinFeather.com.
And finally;
Support comes from Quality Care, the nature care company; complete lawn and landscape maintenance for home, business and institutions, with over a century of combined gardening experience. Since 1980, quality work done with care.
I started to question “the nature care company” but that is a bonafide slogan according to the website. I’d have to drop “with over a century of combined gardening experience” and “quality work done with care” as purely qualitative and comparative statements, not allowed.
Here’s a rewrite;
Support comes from Quality Care, the nature care company; Since 1980, offering complete lawn and landscape maintenance for home, business and institutions, including cutting, fertilization, tree pruning and other landscaping maintenance services. Quality Care.
In defense of IPR one must realize that all public radio stations across the country that air National Public Radio, Public Radio International or other program provider offerings, are at the mercy of those organizations. They imbed their own underwriting credits that local stations have no control over. And it’s difficult to explain to local business why NPR announces “BMW, the ultimate driving machine” and local business cannot use similar language.
Hope that helps to understand the unique world of public radio underwriting, best, Mike Foster.
mdfoster@esisnet.com
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