So this happened yesterday at the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission Meeting: The Album 88 Alumni president spoke first and was cut off by Teya Ryan, and we were all told that we werent allowed to ask any questions of the board. Which is really sort of an outrage since this is a public meeting. Here is my letter to her in response, following up on our presentations. #SaveWRAS Dear Ms. Ryan, I wanted to thank you for the opportunity to present to the Georgia Public Telecommunications Association Board Meeting yesterday at Georgia Public Broadcasting. Since we were not allowed to ask questions of the board, I wanted to follow up with GPB and provide you notes from my presentation. I look forward to your response to the issues I raised in my presentation as outlined below. I am here today as a community member and long-time listener of Album 88. I began listening to the student-run station in 1980 when I was in middle school. This is the station is what made me want to go on to work in college radio, which I did in Athens, GA at WUOG, in both undergraduate and graduate school, an experience that provided untold leadership opportunities paving the way for me to be successful in my career today as a media relations specialist. As both a community member and public relations practitioner, I have become increasingly concerned about GPB’s public behavior. Specifically, GPB’s lack of response to the public. Initially when the agreement was announced, GPB released a press release, but when outcry began to build almost immediately, your organization became mute. I am aware of hundreds upon hundreds of communications that remain unanswered by GPB, although Ms. Ryan is quoted in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Ombudsman’s report as responding to “virtually every letter we have gotten.” I am one of the hundreds who remain unanswered. One of the criticisms of GPB is not only that it silences student voices from the airwaves, where their listeners were, but that it is duplicative programming of WABE. GPB has never addressed WHY this is and HOW this serves the community with rich, diverse programming? Another concern is regarding GPB’s behavior in having a policy to not engage in public comments, actively deleting posts, blocking users, and deactivating the comment features online and on social media. The only person to receive any response from Teya Ryan is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Ombudsman. This is unacceptable behavior from a publicly funded entity. As a listener, community member and tax payer, I take issue with GPB saying they are not using any GSU student or Board of Regents funds to support your programming. The very station you are broadcasting on is paid for by student activities fees. The new transmitter to the tune of nearly have a million dollars is student funded. It is disingenuous to say you are not using student funds; you are. Nearly half of your operating budget is from the state which is taxpayer dollars. Again, why is my tax dollar being used to silence student voice and provide programming already heard on the Atlanta radio dial? Regardless of the “benefits” both you and GPB are touting for the TV SIDE, this does nothing to address the questions on the RADIO side of the deal and how you are addressing RADIO listeners with their lack of access to programming during the day, except for the stream, which is eating up huge amounts of data from the listeners who once got programming for free. A full three months into GPB on WRAS, your listenership has never exceeded the April listenership for student-run radio and your share actually dropped from a .4 to .3 from August to September. September would have been one of the highest listening periods for students as they return to class. For perspective, WABE which is providing the same programming has listenership six times higher than GPB on WRAS. This is not an audience that is “clamoring” for your programming, and the numbers prove that. As a public organization, GPB must operate in the light of day and answer to the public – not just the listeners of your programming, but the taxpayers that are financially supporting your organization, and you are not doing that. I look forward to hearing from you on these issues. Regards, Lynn Harris Medcalf
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 22:27:34 +0000
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