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From the Dal Gazette:
CKDU-FM funding drive comes up short, may result in cuts
Reid Southwick
News Editor
The burden of CKDU-FM’s funding shortfall rests on the shoulders of the volunteers who were on the air, says station coordinator Michael Catano. “It is disingenuous to imply that it was anybody’s fault but the programmers,” he says.
Dalhousie’s radio station may be forced to cut staff hours and hold more fundraising events unless almost all donors to its recent campaign honour their pledges.
The station budgets to collect roughly 60 per cent of the pledges made during its annual finding drive but the campaign raised only about $32,000 this year — $18,000 short of its goal.
The little more than $19,000 CKDU-FM would receive under this plan wouldn’t be enough to cover its costs.
The spoils of its funding drive already account for roughly one-third of its budget. And the station drained its savings this year to buy a new transmitter, antennae and other equipment to increase its output power from 33 to 3,200 watts. Staff wages were increased from $9.65 to $12 per hour to be more in step with national standards and the stations’ student levy is down due to a drop in enrolment.
Unless almost every pledge made during the fundraiser that ran from Oct. 21 to 29 is honoured, the station will have to consider raising additional funds and reducing the spoken word coordinator’s portfolio from a full- to part-time position.
Other staff members may have to fulfill key responsibilities of the post, which has been vacant since Chris Arsenault was fired in early September. And many aspects of the portfolio that demand a great deal of attention, such as developing special interest programming and documentaries, may be shelved for the near future.
“It is important for people to know that funding drive is a real and important part of our budget,” says station manager Michael Catano. “There are real consequences for not meeting the goal and not having participation from the programmers at a level that it should have been at. And this is a real consequence.”
Many of the station’s programmers hadn’t been involved in the funding drive before and likely did not understand the importance of bringing in pledges before they went on the air, Catano says.
While the on-air shows and the events the station holds throughout the week of the campaign are important to raise the station’s profile, Catano says the advance pledges “make or break” the funding drive.
“And we went to great lengths to make sure that the membership knew what the responsibilities were and there were no end of meetings and posters and notices.”
Although funding drive coordinator Adam Binet was largely responsible for coordinating the volunteers and ensuring they knew what was at stake during the weeks before the campaign, Catano says the burden of the shortfall hangs on the shoulders of the volunteers who were on the air.
“It is disingenuous to imply that it was anybody’s fault but the programmers,” says Catano.
Other staff members, however, say that more emphasis could have been placed on how central the station’s annual fundraiser is to the budget.
“Next year, we should make it more clear that it is a necessity and not just a hope to reach a funding drive goal,” says program director Melissa Buote.
The campaign also faced some major setbacks this year.
Binet became ill with mono and could no longer perform his duties during the week before the fundraiser. Staff members scrambled to hire programmers Trish Turliuk and TK Thorte on temporary contracts but Buote says the absence of both Binet and a spoken word coordinator still had a negative impact on the campaign.
The duties of assisting programmers with their shows, calling volunteers to remind them of their responsibilities and nailing down final contract details with organizations that donated prizes had to be shouldered by the rest of the staff.
“It made things a bit more difficult for all of us,” says Buote.
This was also the first year that CKDU-FM held its funding drive in October rather than February. The membership anticipated that more listeners would be more willing to cough up donations during the fall but the change could have had the reverse effect: many people called in to the station in February asking when the fundraiser would begin.
“We thought the change worked in our favour but it’s possible that it worked against us,” says Catano.
More importantly, about 18 months have passed since the station held its last funding drive and the number of new volunteers was much higher than usual, which Catano says was the main cause for the shortfall.
“It is a terrible thing to have happened but it is the reality of the situation,” he says. “Having a real effect will hopefully push people to work harder next time or to have a stronger grasp on the necessity of the funding drive.”
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Mending and building more bridges with the community would also help.
Better than the last Funding Drive total, however.
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