Bill Davis
Title:
President
Organization:
Southern California Public Radio
Born:
1958, Denver
Education:
M.A. in journalism from UC Berkeley; M.A. in business administration from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Career Turning Point:
Becoming general manager of a radio station in Berkeley
Most Admired People:
Mom and dad
Personal:
Married, two young daughters
The head of Southern California Public Radio raises presence of KPCC-FM
Bill Davis had planned on becoming a lawyer, but a short stint at a public defender’s office in Portland, Ore., quickly turned him off to the profession. So, he entered the graduate journalism program at UC Berkeley dreaming of becoming the managing editor of a magazine. That didn’t happen either.
Instead, Davis turned to broadcasting and became general manager of UC Berkeley’s radio station. While at KALX-FM, he had to deal with everything from death threats to a disc jockey overdosing during her shift. His latest job, as president of Southern California Public Radio, may not be quite as tough, but it does have its challenges.
Davis is charged with turning Pasadena’s KPCC-FM (89.3) into a major player in public radio. He left his post as senior vice president of programming at National Public Radio to head SCPR and become senior vice president of its holding company, American Public Media Group (which includes Minnesota Public Radio). The number of listeners and donations are up and the station has expanded its staff, more than doubling its news department.
Question:
How have staffing levels changed?
Answer:
We have about 28 full-time employees. We have 14 in the news department and three in administration, four in development, five in engineering/operations. … Basically what we’ve done is reduce the amount of administrative staff that we’ve had as we’ve increased our programming and operational staff.
Q: Why did you make the change?
A: The model we’re trying to create is one where more of our funds are channeled into broadcast operations, which is what people really care about, while we try to control or reduce administrative or fund-raising costs. The more money that we can put back into programming we feel the better off we’ll be in the long run.
Q: How does that affect fund-raising?
A: So far, our fund-raising efforts have been very successful. The (membership) drive that we’re in right now is on pace to nearly double what was raised last year in the same drive. Our corporate underwriting efforts are in a sort of nascent phase and in terms of grants and foundations, that’s usually work that the general manager or I do. We have a number of grants outstanding right now. We’ll find out in the next three to six months whether they will come through.
Q: How much of the station’s funding comes from individual donations, corporate sponsorships and other sources?
A: We’re about two-thirds individual support. We are about 20 percent either foundation or corporate support and we are about 11 percent federal grants.
Q: Describe the ideal funding model.
A: The ideal funding model would actually be to have about 50 percent of your support coming from individuals and about 20 percent from foundations, about 20 percent from corporations and then the balance would be government-earned income. What’s encouraging to us is that the percentage increases of individual support are outstripping all of the national averages for fund-raising.
Q: What is the station’s annual budget?
A: Our expense budget last year was about $3.6 million. This year, it is projected to be $5.2 million. Because of some of the uncertainty surrounding the fund-raising with foundations and philanthropic foundations, we are tightly monitoring the expense budget.
Q: What are those uncertainties?
A: On the foundation side, with the decline in the stock market, portfolios have been significantly reduced. That means that the grants that they are able to make or willing to make have also been cut back. So, it’s a much more difficult environment to raise funds.
Q: What about corporate support?
A: What you’ve seen with commercial media is the same for non-commercial underwriting support of public broadcasting. So, just at the point when we were really beginning to try to gear up our corporate fund-raising efforts, we hit this downturn in corporate willingness to do that.
Q: Is it tough to get corporate underwriting in L.A., a city with few corporate headquarters?
A: There’s no question that the relatively small number of Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000 corporate headquarters in Southern California does have an impact on local philanthropy. But there’s an increasing number of dynamic new businesses and a lot of these businesses are struggling to develop their brands and strongly identify their brands with corporate or civic decision-makers.
Q: In 1997, KPCC was drawing in audiences of less than 10,000 listeners. How have the ratings changed?
A: In the spring of 2000, just after the programming change was made, the metro audience was about 220,000 people. In the spring and summer of 2001, the metro audience was almost exactly 300,000.
Q: Why do you think individual support has increased?
A: Two reasons. The first is because of the format change that we had about a year and a half ago. We were starting at a very low level. The station was, I think, significantly under-performing. I think the second aspect is that as we’ve attracted more and more people to our service, we’ve also simultaneously improved the quality of the service.
Q: What is KPCC’s target audience?
A: Our audience tends to be well-educated. They tend to be a bit more affluent than the median. Our goal is to begin to diversify the public-radio audience, which has traditionally been a very, very white audience, and we are seeing the fruits of our efforts in that we’re beginning to see an expanded Asian-American, Hispanic-American, African-American audience.
Q: Los Angeles has more public radio stations than other large cities, such as New York, but they attract fewer listeners. Why?
A: The actual physical geography has played a role there. KCRW, KLON, KUSC and KPCC do not have the signal strength that say a WAMU in Washington has or WBEZ in Chicago.
Q: How much cooperation is there, if any, among public radio stations in L.A.?
A: I wouldn’t say that there’s a huge amount, but that’s something that we’re beginning to talk about. Some of the public radio stations have been talking about cooperation and coordination in terms of on-air promotions and cross-promotions, in terms of events, in terms of corporate underwriting.
Q: Do you think NPR is overly focused on the East Coast?
A: Even when I was at NPR, I was noted for consistently challenging all of the programs, particularly the news ones, to look beyond the Beltway. It’s fair to say that I was a champion of and for the L.A. production facility that (NPR) is building.
Q: Was Minnesota Public Radio’s decision to come to L.A. the beginning of an expansion to the West Coast?
A: The opportunity that presented itself was not a West Coast expansion per se. What they saw was an opportunity to try out a model that would allow for consolidated back-office operations and then to put more resources into both local programming and potentially the development of new, national programs.
Q: What will NPR’s West Coast expansion mean for KPCC?
A: It will be a good thing for KPCC I think it will also be for public radio generally. My hope has always been that “All Things Considered” would move a significant portion of their editorial staff, including one of the hosts, out to the West Coast.
