Radio executive meets with concerned listeners
Lou Marzeles
News Editor
During the emotionally charged luncheon meeting Monday with guest speaker Marshall Johnson, market manager for KLCK radio, a member of the audience made reference to the one point of greatest concern to those attending: "How is a radio station based in Oregon," she asked, "still 'Goldendale's station'?"
"This is where the transmitter is," Johnson quickly and pointedly responded. A sea of perplexed faces gazed back at him.
"Do you mean that if the transmitter is here, Goldendale still has a radio station?" another person asked.
"Yes," Johnson responded. Looks turned from puzzled to slightly bewildered.
It was this kind of turning of points, as if herding recalcitrant cats, that made the meeting and its concerns largely unresolved to many in attendance.
Johnson, the guest speaker at Monday's meeting, the most recent in a series of weekly luncheon meetings put on by the Goldendale Chamber of Commerce, spoke to a packed house at Boonie's restaurant. His address aimed to make clear KLCK's reasons for what many, despite Johnson's apparently paradoxical reference, still see as the radio station's abandonment of the community after 25 years of presence.
Johnson spoke for some 35 minutes before opening the meeting to questions and answers, which went on well past the meeting's scheduled one hour. In his opening remarks, he said there had been a lot of news headlines and stories about KLCK's changes, "about half of which are true," he said.
"We're in the communication business," he went on. "That means there are people who have strong likes and dislikes about what we do."
Johnson went over details about KLCK's business and technology challenges, highlighting the station's economic distress, going over history of the radio industry roughly since 1984, a turning-point year that made radio station licenses and station tax situations much more difficult. In the face of those changes, Johnson indicated, "We have to balance all that with what we have to do to stay in business.
"We have three customer sets we have to answer to," Johnson said, "our employees, our listeners, and our advertisers. We're in an unrated market-we have no idea how many people listen to us. The closest rated markets to here," markets where listenership is tracked, "are the Tri-Cities and Portland. If this were a rated market, we wouldn't be having this meeting; instead, we'd be meeting with a thousand-dollar-an-hour consultant on how to do our programming.
"We have to produce results. That's my job."
Technologically, Johnson pointed out, the station has additional challenges. All radio music today is delivered electronically, not using CDs or other similar recordings. Music is contained on computer drives and delivered over internet connections to participating stations. More significantly, KLCK lacked required technology to meet legal requirements for live call-in talk shows in particular.
Advertising revenues were also a significant problem, Johnson stated. "Most purchases in this area, our studies show, are made outside the immediate area," he said, adding that "75 percent of our listeners are under 60 years old." He did not explain how that could be, given the area's well-known demographic of area residents being mostly retired.
"If you gave a party but sent out no invitations, how many people would show up?" Johnson asked the audience. "Advertising is your invitation for people to come to your party. No invitation, no one comes." He made the point by way of saying that advertising revenues were insufficient for the station's needs; he explained his analogy as meaning that local businesses were not sending out their party invitations.
Johnson stated that since making its controversial changes, the station saw a significant increase in revenue from local advertisers. "But our programming costs," he added, "are covered only by national advertising."
Finally coming to the key issue of concern for his audience, Johnson spoke to plans for the station's future. "We're still going to do high school sports," he said. "We're looking at reassigning most of our programming back on the air. For example, we're going to put back our morning show, though I have to warn you that it's going to look to the future; that's what I have to do." He added that previously KLCK was playing unlicensed music for which it now could not acquire licenses, referring to the legal requirements for playing copyright-protected music on public airways.
Asked what he meant by saying the morning show would look to the future, Johnson responded by saying "morning show" meant the statio's morning music programming, not a talk show. That music programming would now look to a younger audience and call its music "classic hits" rather than "oldies."
Once the question and answer period began, one audience member spoke with strong emotion about the impact of KLCK's departure from Goldendale. "It was like a death in the family," he said. "What made it especially hard was how you did it: there was no advance notice, just an announcement that it was done."
"No matter how public a radio station is," Johnson responded to him, "it's still a business." He did acknowledge that the station could have better handled its changes and let the public know ahead of time.
"The station was part of what made Goldendale a community," another audience member told Johnson."
"I don't write the checks," he responded. "I presented several options to the management, one of which was to have the station go dark."
Referring to Johnson's comment about reassigning most of the station's programming back on the air, another audience member asked if that included bringing back the station's popular call-in live talk show. "No," Johnson responded. His response sent a visible wave of disappointment through the crowd.
"We're legally required to have a time delay on live talk shows," he added. Turning to on-air personality Julian Notestien, he asked, "Julian, did we ever have a time delay?"
"No," Notestien responded. Johnson went on to say that the machine that would allow the required time delay would cost $1,000. "When you look at that kind of expense," Johnson said, "you see that you have to make that expenditure" in a way that made economic sense.
Pressed again on the return of a talk show, Johnson backtracked slightly. "There will not be a talk show," he stated again, but then added, "Does that mean you can't call the radio station and get on the air? I don't know. The technology may allow that at some point."
Another audience member said that the community and its advertisers would have helped had it known in advance what the station was considering. "We'd have put in more advertising," she said.
Johnson responded, "You need to be saying that to this person," indicating Notestien. "I don't want to embarrass him any more than he's already been," adding that the company saw Notestien responsible in some measure for the lack of station advertising.
After going overtime by almost a half hour, Johnson remained longer to answer indivudal questions
New KVH CEO sees progress ahead
Lou Marzeles
The Sentinel
MaLisa Mudgett has been on the job as Chief Executive Officer of Klickitat Valley Health (KVH) for all of two weeks, but she knows she's here for the long haul.
"I'm very happy to be here," she says. "It's a great area; I fell in love with it when I came."
Mudgett has lived in Washington for 20 years, and, except for a brief experience in Alaska, has spent her hospital administration career in the state. She was a chief financial officer and assistant administrator at a hospital in Omak for 10 years and held the same position at a hospital in Chelan for seven years. For 15 months she served in Homer, Alaska as the director of business services.
"I love Washington," she says, "I love the Pacific Northwest. I wanted to be back here; this is home. I enjoy working in rural hospitals with rural health care in small communities. I have no interest in a large community. This location is beautiful-I don't think you could ask for anything better. It's a perfect location. And I know critical-access hospitals very well; I'm very comfortable with them."
The new CEO plans to look closely at KVH's overall situation, including the possibility of adding some medical services. "I'd like to take a look at expanding services," she says, "possibly bringing in some specialty doctors. I will work with the medical staff to see what their needs are. I know they have a couple of traveling surgeons who are coming in, and we'll look at bringing more, perhaps cardiac, orthopedic, internal medicine."
She sees KVH's patient care environment as critical. "The culture so far is a home-town environment," she points out. "That's another reason that I like rural communities. You do know everybody; you don't just walk down the hall and see just another person or another number. I like to be able to know the people that I work with.
"I can tell you that I believe in patient-centered care. There are different philosophies for treating and caring for patients, and I believe that patients heal better if you have that home environment, the caring environment, where the patient is involved in their care at the hospital. It's not white, sterile walls."
Mudgett's approach to patient care is based on a philosophy known as Planetree, named for the sycamore tree under which Hippocrates is said to have stood as he taught his medical students in ancient Greece. Planetree is described as the provision of nurturing, compassionate, personalized care to patients and families, including how staff care for themselves and each other; and how organizations create cultures which support and nurture their staffs. Careful education of patients on their care options and getting them fully involved in their own care is an important part of the philosophy, since the approach seeks to make patients as fully informed as they want to be.
"It's a philosophy that is based around patient-centered, holistic care, involving the patient in their care," Mudgett says. "It's customer service-how you and I would treat each other, how you treat another person, how you work in the facility. It's just the way things should be, but aren't always necessarily."
Problems have been cited by state auditors in the past regarding misconduct primarily in KVH's financial dealings, and some in the community have voiced strong concerns about the hospital. Mudgett is aware of the matters and acknowledges reading a letter to the editor in last week's Sentinel about KVH's billing practices.
"I am familiar with the state auditor's reports," she says. "I'm fairly confident that Leslie [Hiebert, KVH's new Chief Financial Officer], with her background and knowledge, will be able to make changes that are needed, if they have not been made already. I know that she's already been working on it.
"I don't believe that it will get better overnight; it's a process that we'll have to go through. Change is not always easy. But I'm confident that we will be able to make the changes that we need to make. It will take a little while to review all the processes and see what the right thing to do is, what's the best thing to do for the community. But it is going to take a little while. You have to educate and train your staff. You have to take a look and see what the problems are and getting things flowing. I can't say that problems people have identified are actually real yet, because I haven't taken a look at the situation to be sure." Mudgett maintains that concerns will be identified and addressed.
The Sentinel hosts Java Talk, live community discussion group
Beginning Friday, July 10, readers of The Sentinel will be able to join in an informal and in-person chat group, with coffee courtesy of the newspaper. The program, tentatively called Java Talk, has been in planning stages for some weeks.
In an effort to fill some of the void left behind by the departure of KLCK radio's Friday morning one-hour phone-in talk show, the newspaperer will hold get-togethers every Friday morning from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., at Sodbuster's Restaurant. The first event is July 10.
"We'll provide the coffeeand an opportunity to bring up whatever is on your mind, and Sodbuster's provides the place to sit and gather comfortably" says News Editor Lou Marzeles, who will host the meetings. "We know this can't take the place of live radio, but we want to do something for the community, something that can offer a measure of the kind of communication that used to occur on KLCK every Friday morning."
There will be some structure and guidelines for the get-togethers. "If you've got something you can say in a letter to the editor," Marzeles points out, "you don't need to do that here. And there will be no ranting allowed; make your points as frankly as you like, but we won't allow someone to go on forever on a single issue.
"We do want to keep communication free-flowing. This will be a place where ideas and thoughts about the community can be discussed." |
