Mary Grace Herrington was appointed chief executive officer of Iowa Public Radio in January 2009. She had been assistant vice president for advancement operations at Creighton University in Omaha. She has a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Arkansas and has experience in commercial broadcasting, business development, marketing and advancement. (The telephone interview transcript has been edited for publication.)
Q. You have been on the job since January; reflect on your tenure so far.
A. There are a couple of things. Iowa is really lucky, because I’ve been in the Omaha-Council Bluffs metro area for the past 20 years and the public radio operation there, which is run out of the public schools, is very, very limited. There is no local news, no news talk shows or local news reporting. They don’t have reporting in the field truly going out and capturing the flavor and culture of the community and doing public radio features and in-depth reporting. All you have is what commercial radio is doing, and their objectives are a little different in terms of reporting.
My first reaction (when hired) was how rich a public radio culture we have over here. Monday through Friday we have two one-hour locally hosted and produced talk shows (The Exchange and Talk of Iowa.) To have two locally produced shows is very rich in terms of public radio service, and to just to have field reporters truly covering as much as they can in our 21 (core) communities. We were able to add a Cedar Rapids reporter in January. We have field reporters in five (major) markets now.
On the music side of the house, it just gets better. I come from a market where students are playing records at night doing their best to pronounce Mozart or its just syndicated programming. Sixty-five percent of our classical music service is locally produced and hosted by people on our staff; and we do live broadcasts.
Also, in the music department we have alternative music that was branded as Studio One a couple years ago. That’s where you have everything from Beatles medleys and classic rock during the week to Sunday afternoons’ The Folk Tree, where we focus on blues and folk music and interesting bands from the state of Iowa.
Q. Is this a good time to be public radio?
A. Here’s what different, and I’m not sure every state is adopting this, and they’re watching to see how this works for us. What we have done is the three universities, under the leadership of the Board of Regents, came together and said we probably in the long run won’t survive in a siloed environment so let’s come together and operate under one entity. That strategic objective and that concept alone is what is helping this organization fare well in the economic downturn. I’m not seeing that in other states. There are very few statewide networks where the universities have come together to create this operating agreement and work as a large team and deliver this media to the state. I think that is key to our survival and key to the success we’ve had. We’re a guinea pig, and people are waiting to see how we do.
Q. What have been some of the challenges you have faced?
A. I inherited an amazing leadership team with hundreds of years of combined experience in public radio. The hard part has been, like anything, I was the new person who came in and was charged with picking up on the efforts of realigning the operation, an initiative that started in 2005 and did not get finished. So it’s kind of tough, I’m the new person and that’s one of the initiatives that have to lead.
I would say the Board of Regents, the Iowa Public Radio board of directors, the university presidents and key stakeholders throughout the state have been extremely supportive because they recognized those were very tough decisions, but that they were strategic in nature and they’re to ensure that Iowa Public Radio and all of its stations are here for the next three, five and 10 years. Had we continued down the path we had been going on, that probably would not have been the case.
Q. How so?
A. It’s funding, operations management, efficiencies; whether it’s public radio, the symphony or the arts center or pick any non-profit organization the past five to 10 years, even universities, you will find there has been a shift in leadership to where they are no longer ‘programming’ presidents but fund-raising presidents. There has been definite shift in the thinking, in the mentality of what should drive, and who should be the driver, for the sustainability of that non-profit organization.
If you aren’t being very strategic about managing your development activity and not always relying on state or federal funds, you’ve got to rethink that. That’s exactly one of the first things we did here was to rethink our development operations. It’s almost as if we need to assume that five years from now we do not get an appropriation from the state and we do not get a financial appropriation from the universities.
We need to look inside and re-engineer ourselves from a funding perspective. How can we reorganize and be in a position to replace that funding over time.
Q. How will you do that?
A. We had one or two folks in each of the markets that were more your traditional underwriting sale rep, like a commercial radio or TV sales rep, they would sell underwriting spots on public radio. It worked at the time, but that’s one of the areas we changed right away. In higher education in the past 10 to 15 years there has been a shift in how a development officer approaches their development operation.
We have retrained and retrenched inside. (The development process is) building a culture of philanthropy, it’s not just a quick sale, but it’s a relationship that starts with standard practices of managing a portfolio, working through discovery, cultivation, stewardship of those gifts. It’s already improving the efforts our development officers are doing. (From FY ’08 to FY ’09) our underwriting was up 42 percent, our member count, those members giving individually, was up 9 percent, their giving was up 7 percent, and the average gift was up 8 percent.
Q. Where do you see IPR in five years?
A. If I had a crystal ball, thinking about some of our long-term objectives, we would be fully serving the entire state of Iowa. Once you get to about Atlantic, Iowa, we really don’t have anything after that to serve the western side of the state. There’s a couple of things were doing in partnerships to help that. We allow KIOS in Omaha to retrieve any news packaging we do free of charge. We have created a similar partnership agreement with the community college in Sioux City.
The ultimate goal would be fore Iowa Public Radio to have stations in the northwest and southwest, to have field reporters stationed there, and have development officers stationed there to cultivate those markets in terms of revenues.
Q. Are you glad you took the job?
A. This is the best job. I remember going to a seminar and seeing Tom Peters say if you don’t jump out of bed every day and you can’t get to work and just fully sink your teeth into what you do, you need rethink what you’re doing. When I joined this organization, the good, the bad, the ugly, everything, this is that job he was describing. I absolutely love Iowa. I really love getting out into the Iowa communities, because it seems Iowa has preserved all the great Americana. I’m grateful every day.
0 comments:
Post a Comment