Terry Green Blogs About KUSP

Today’s Monterey Herald reports that KAZU General Manager Duncan Lively will leave the station in May to manage KVCR-FM, the NPR station in the Riverside-San Bernardino radio market.

KVCR is owned by the San Bernardino Community College District, and they operate both a public radio and a public television station. The stations are growing swiftly, as is the population of the Inland Empire that they serve. Larry Ciecalone, who is the General Manager of their whole public broadcasting organization, has done a remarkable job of positioning the stations for this growth, and they’ll be moving into new studios soon… so overall, Duncan’s stepping into a great opportunity, and I’m certainly happy for him on that score.

I’m also sorry to see him leave our area. We collaborated very closely while developing the proposal to bring KAZU and KUSP together last year, an experience which only deepened my appreciation for his understanding of all aspects of public radio and his commitment to public service through public media. The fact that the plan we worked on did not move ahead doesn’t diminish my regard for Duncan one whit.

Duncan’s level of commitment to KAZU has been exceptional, even among public radio managers – who are, by and large, an incredibly dedicated lot. KAZU’s staff is very small given the complexity of its operation, and Duncan played many roles above and beyond that of chief executive. Few people in my experience have his combination of ability and versatility, something that has been crucial for KAZU these past few years.

The Monterey Bay area’s loss will be the Inland Empire’s gain. Congratulations to Larry and the KVCR team, and good luck in the new gig, Duncan…

On 2/28/2008 the Foundation of CSUMB decided to continue operating their public radio station, KAZU, independently. This wound up a planning process that in some sense had been going on for over a year and a half, and intensively so since February 2007.

I’m really disappointed in this outcome, because I genuinely believe that we can serve the people of the Central Coast better if the two stations can fully collaborate on programming. And the economics of local public radio are such that full collaboration would have to translate to a shared management team, and a financial structure that would let us pool our resources and share the risks of trying new things.

There’s been a lot of media coverage about the end of this process. I think the most careful reporting was by Jennifer Squires at the Santa Cruz Sentinel; you can see her stories here (before the decision by CSUMB) and here (after the decision).

KUSP did a “Talk of the Bay” on February 26 about how the proposal to put KAZU and KUSP together fits into the larger context of changes in the media landscape. I was a guest, but I think the most interesting and important insights came from Tom Honig, former editor of the Santa Cruz Sentinel. The mp3 of the show is here.

A quick word about “editorial firewalls” – host Deanna Zachary and KUSP Talk/Information Producer J.D. Hillard put that show together without oversight from the rest of station management. They asked me to be a guest and I agreed. Though I think the show reflects positively on the idea of bringing the stations together, it wasn’t designed with that in mind. Part of the difficulty Deanna and J.D. faced, as Deanna says in the show, is that CSUMB and KAZU declined to make anyone available to appear.

One of the hardest things for any reporter is presenting a balanced story when some people involved in the story are willing to cooperate with you, and the “other side” isn’t (and that’s as if all stories had two sides, when they usually have many more). We run into this problem at KUSP constantly.

Now we at KUSP will begin developing plans to improve our service, independently of KAZU. Much, much more about this in the weeks ahead…

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