Status Report
1) APRI Representative Resigns from CAG

2) Continued Inaction of WABE Management on Member Survey

3) Implications of WABE’s Fall Pledge Drive



Prepared for October 27, 2005
AETC Board Meeting


About Atlanta Public Radio Initiative

Status Report for October 2005

APRI Representative Resigns from CAG

Below is the text of a letter submitted to Chuck Taylor, Chairperson of CAST’s Community Action Group on October 26. It is from Andy Altman, co-founder of the Atlanta Public Radio Initiative.

Chuck

I am writing to inform you that I am resigning from PBA's Community Action
Group. My action is supported unanimously by the other members of APRI's steering committee, who have concluded that the CAG has failed to provide a forum for the fair consideration of the programming ideas strongly supported by our members and many other radio listeners in Atlanta.

In the wake of the Board meeting in October 2003, you promised me and the
other APRI members who attended that there would be "no sacred cows" (your exact words) in the process through which the CAG would consider station programming and make recommendations to the CAST. All issues regarding programming were to be on the table, and all views were to be given a fair hearing. Unfortunately, your promise proved hollow.

It would be tedious for me to recount all of the ways in which you have stymied APRI's efforts to present our views and arguments to the CAG and to have them discussed on their merits. Suffice it to say that our concerns about your opening remarks at the first (and only) public CAG meeting, where you insisted that the meeting was not about the news versus music issue, grew into disillusionment as it became clear to us in the following months that you were indeed intent on protecting sacred cows.

It was APRI's hope that the CAG would provide a forum for the full and fair consideration of competing views about station programming. We were quite willing to hear the ideas and arguments of those whose views are in conflict with our own. We did not seek any guarantee that our views would hold sway in the recommendations of the CAG. We wanted only a complete airing of the issues and disagreements. Unfortunately, your unilateral decisions severely circumscribing the jurisdiction of the CAG and the issues that could be raised at its meetings made such an airing impossible.

Accordingly, APRI has reluctantly decided to suspend its participation in the CAG.

Andy Altman
Steering Committee
Atlanta Public Radio Initiative


Continued Lack of Management Response
on Member Survey

It has now been over 11 months since Mr. Clipper and Mr. Weatherford met with three members of the APRI steering committee. At that meeting Mr. Clipper stated that a survey of WPBA members would be coming soon and, further, that APRI would be invited to participate in the scope and wording of the survey.

In all the intervening months, the only action that has occurred has been a single returned phone call by Mr. Weatherford, during which he said he knew nothing about the survey being underway.

Frankly, that is a pathetic response to a grass-roots organization representing over 700 WABE listeners. We can only see Mr. Clipper’s and Mr. Weatherford’s total inaction as an indication of WABE’s unwillingness to undertake any action that might alter the status quo of the station.

Is that what the nature of a community resource as vital and valuable as WABE should be?

APRI feels at a complete loss. Our last hope is you, the individual AETC board member.

We ask that you use your influence with WABE management to at least get them to act on their own commitment to produce a member survey, with input from APRI, as they promised us nearly one year ago.

Implications of WABE’s
Fall Pledge Drive


As we are all aware, WABE is right now in the final days of its fall pledge drive. It is again obvious to APRI that the vast majority of funds raised come during NPR programming.

So our question is a simple one: If that type of programming is what WABE listeners support most, why not provide them (us) with more of it? Financial support in this arena is the clearest statement of a person’s preferences; WABE listeners are literally voting with their pocketbooks for NPR-type programming. And as a publicly funded community resource, the station should acknowledge and accede to the will of its supporters.

As we’ve stated many times, APRI also recognizes that WABE has a responsibility to represent diverse elements of the Atlanta community, regardless of financial considerations.

But why is the balance of NPR programming and music tilted away from the clear preferences of the majority of WABE’s listeners? It’s a simple question station management has not been able – or willing – to provide to APRI for over three years.

On this issue, which is even more fundamental than the member survey mentioned earlier, we again ask you – individual board members – to use your influence on behalf of the thousands of WABE members who support the station solely because of NPR programming.