Making public radio a little more private, one station at a time

Ron Grover at Bloomberg Business Week looks at the grand ambitions of Southern California Public Radio, the parent entity behind KPCC. From a story this weekend:

They're using business tactics rarely employed in the tame world of local public radio to create a megastation they hope will one day beam its signal from Santa Barbara to San Diego. By building a mini-empire of local stations, they say they'll be able to better distribute the fixed costs of radio broadcasting and draw on a much larger audience for the donations and corporate sponsorships that could keep them afloat if government funding dries up.
Those plans are taking shape in the $25 million, one-year-old studios of KPCC, the flagship station for Southern California Public Radio. SCPR already owns or operates three stations and is on the hunt for more. "We want to be a major player in providing news and information to Los Angeles in the 21st century," says Gordon Crawford, chairman of SCPR's board and a senior vice-president at Capital Research Global Investors.

Crawford is one of the media industry's most prominent investors and advised Lionsgate (LGF) in the late 1990s as it grew into a major studio by rolling up smaller film companies. He joined the board more than a decade ago, when KPCC was a struggling Pasadena City College station. Among the 24 current directors are such media heavy hitters as Jarl Mohn, former chief executive officer of E! Entertainment Television; Fox Sports TV Chairman David Hill; and Louise Bryson, a former Lifetime Movie Network executive.
The board has given SCPR the financial muscle it needs to extend across Southern California. Crawford and Mohn each donated $4 million to build KPCC's new studios, while Bryson contributed part of the $1 million used to create a new talk show and lure NPR reporter Madeleine Brand to host it. While other news organizations are scaling back, SCPR plans to expand from 42 to 100 reporters covering areas including public education, the environment, and health care. It opened its own Washington (D.C.) bureau last year. "I call it the 'hit 'em where they ain't' strategy," says SCPR President Bill Davis. "We're not going to take on the Los Angeles Times on sports or TMZ on celebrity news, but we can give our listeners information on the ports or about their local high school that they need and aren't getting elsewhere."

Another part of the plan to boost listenership to 25 million: provide free reports to Spanish-language stations to help build the public radio brand with new listeners.

Kicker: "Crawford says he envisions eventually merging with other public radio powerhouses such as Santa Monica's popular KCRW. 'That's just a dream of mine,' he says. 'But you have to start somewhere.'"