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Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Minnesota Public Radio and me
I like MPR. I listen to quite a few of their shows and think they generally do a fairly good job. Their news is good, the talk shows are good. I find Prairie Home Companion pretty amusing and I enjoy This American Life and even Car Talk in small doses. And I like 89.3 The Current's music programming. I have some minor quibbles all the way around but for the most part I am a fan of all of it.
I am also never ever going to give them one thin dime. One reason was on display in the Strib today:
At a bare minimum we are talking about 16 people at a nonprofit corporation making over $2.3 million, tho it is likely to be closer to the $4-5 million range. And this is an organization that wants little old ladies to send them ten bucks a month? I have nothing against people making a decent living, and yes, of course the law requiring them to disclose salaries is politically motivated. And in a way that kind of proves my point. Republicans, who don't like MPR content (you know, fact laden, honest reporting) are hoping to damage the organization by stirring public outrage over the level of compensation these executives are paying themselves. Well, absent outrageous pay there wouldn't be a potential for an outraged public, would there? (What exactly do MPR trustees do that warrants six figure pay anyway?) If MPR can pay people this kind of cash they sure as hell don't need help form me.While it's conducting a fund drive for listener contributions, Minnesota Public Radio hasn't claimed $190,000 in state funds that are available under a new condition that it reveal salaries exceeding $100,000.
... But O'Keefe and other MPR officials said they are bothered by the salary disclosure requirement.
...
On the 2004 tax return, MPR listed the names and salaries of 13 officers or trustees, 12 of whom earned more than $100,000. [President and CEO, William] Kling received $326,700 in salary, pension and benefits, and incentive compensation at MPR. He earns roughly an additional $218,000 from American Public Media Group, the parent company of MPR.
...
The top five highest-paid employees earned from $117,845 to $174,040, plus benefits and deferred compensation.
[If it turns out that Thorn or Mary Lucia are among those 16 I will reconsider the whole thing. I'm not holding my breath, tho.]
But there is another reason I'll never give MPR money again. (I will admit to being a paid member in the past.) About 7 years ago there was a plan put forward by a number of community activists and supported by a number of FCC commissioners to start a new radio service called Low Power FM broadcasting. The service would have made available FM broadcast licenses for thousands of radio stations broadcasting at 100 watts or less in cities all over the country. The intent was for the licenses to be used by community groups to set up small stations to serve the local needs of radio listeners that were ignored by big commercial stations. The Twin Cities stood to gain at least a half dozen new stations that could have broadcast anything from Hmong or Spanish language programing to local news to community events to overlooked music genres. Obviously for-profit stations were against the idea of having anything other than their bland narrow offerings on the public airwaves and they were dead set against the the plan. What was surprising was the vehemence with which non-profit stations like MPR and NPR fought the measure. (To their credit, smaller public broadcasting stations like KFAI in Minneapolis welcomed the addition of new voices to the airwaves.) But MPR fought it tooth and nail, even publishing phony claims of possible signal interference that were backed up by neither the FCC or private studies. Needless to say, public radio and the commercial broadcasters had more political clout than the head of the FCC and the plan was scrapped. But in the process MPR revealed itself to be just another profit maximizing corporation with no real interest in promoting the public good. Now there's nothing wrong with being that sort of corporation, that's how the market economy works. But when you become that kind of company you give up the right to claim you're a poor little non-profit who deserves the tax free donations of the public. Sure I might think you put out a good product, but you've told me you're just another market player who can take care of itself, thank you very much.
Bottom line? I will never again give those people any money, and I don't think you should either.
9 Comments:
Who is responsible for MPR? Who provides oversight? Who elects the Board? Who is accountable?
The "Members"? No way. It's a fraud to call contributors members. Being a member implies having some say in the operations, at least to the extent of being able to nominate and/or vote for a Board of Directors. Not so with "public" radio. Perhaps there is some statute that makes the Attorney General the chief oversight official (like a private foundation or non-profit), but I am not aware of that.
What really galls me is that here is an organization the bilks money out of the public by calling them members, and then takes advantage of the fact that it pays no taxes, and goes ahead and competes with other for profit businesses. When you don't buy a CD from Barnes & Noble who pay taxes, but rather from the Music source that's owned by a non-profit, you're allowing a tax subsidized organization to compete with a tax paying organization. Not good.
By 
, at
6:35 PM
I'm not going to go all libertarian free market on anyone, but that is a good point. I think there is a place, and considering how worthless commercial radio is, certainly a need, for public radio. But there comes a point when a "public" corporation loses sight of what its original charter is and just becomes another market player. I think MPR has reached that point. What makes this a tough issue is that so many of the people who have their knives sharpened for MPR are ONLY after it for ideological reasons. TRR, I think I know you well enough to know that is not your beef, but already I have been accused by (fellow) liberal friends of aiding conservatives with today's attack. I think my main point might just be that even tho MPR provides a service many of us on the left appreciate it is not really "on our side", so much as it is simply on its own side. Again, nothing wrong with that, buts let's not not pretend it is something it's not.
I know you can buy a Cities Sampler from 97 and Stuck on AM anthologies from Radio K, but I don't think you can buy a CD directly from any of the commerical radio stations. But you can buy Batman Beginsfrom public radio for the same price as at Amazon That doesn't make sense to me.
The flips side, though, is the argument that PBS doesn't aggressively market and license its characters. Not enough Big Bird merchandise.
Hasn't it occurred to any of you that the Strib (a competitor of MPR) released this story intentionally during MPR's pledge drive?
Your playing right into the Strib's mud-slinging campaign. Why be party to the Strib?
The grant offered to MPR asks them to do what it doesn't ask any other non-profit to do --list employees salaries other than execs. There are over 300 people working at MPR and you guys are quibblying over 16 of them making more than 100,000? What about the the other 284 making salaries at below the market rates? You would screw over Thorn and Mary Lucia so they can't get paid based on some competitor slinging-mud?
By , at
9:51 AM
Thanks for the comments, Tom. Jambo's beef with MPR goes back a long, long time. Although he links to the Strib article, the article didn't change his position on this particular issue.
I don't think the Strib article has anything to do with sticking it to their competition, otherwise they would have run it at the start of the pledge drive rather than the end. And the market for the two products is different enough that I don't think there's much competition (in the zero sum sense) between them. And hey, I love Thorn and Mary. If I thought pledge week was about upping their pay rather than lining the pockets of a bunch of trustees I'd give it some thought. How much of the success of The Current has to do with the board of trustees and how much of it has to do with Mary Lucia? Mary is the f'n gold standard in local radio and there are thousands of people who tune in just because she is on the air. How much do you want to bet she's not making anywhere close to six figures?
Yeah, the law is bogus and is motivated 100% by conservative ideology. I think it's probably a bad law, but if the fat cats at MPR had clean hands the law wouldn't even matter.
Unlike most of MPR's content, you can support "This American Life" without supporting MPR.
"This American Life" is actually produced by WBEZ in Chicago and is distributed by Public Radio International (www.pri.org) and is not owned or produced by MPR.
I notice they haven't had a fund raiser to pay Bill Kling yet. Why not set aside a day for fund raising. All the money pledged goes to pay Kling's salary for a year.
At least Kling is gone !!
Sad but true, MPR wants us to be generous but seemingly to increase their salaries. Kling 604,000, Thomas Kigin 359,000, Jon McTaggart 376,000 Jon Gossett 300,906 Mark Alfuth made 276,614. These top 5 make $2,000,000 a year.
Do they need our $5 a month ? NO !!
By , at
10:52 AM
