89.7 KSGN: The vision grows with Advocace
Not too long ago, KSGN's signal covered fast-growing areas of Southern California, but the station's income just did not grow as fast as the population.
Dawn Hibbard, KSGN General Manager, invited Advocace to gauge the opportunity for the station in audience and income. We discovered significant opportunities for growth in both areas. More specifically, KSGN's opportunities with underwriting and sponsorship showed great promise for funding KSGN's audience growth.
Non-profit culture and commercialism
With a history of university ownership and, later, as a stand-alone non-commercial radio station, KSGN required assurances that business development would not make the station sound too commercial. Also, with little experience in underwriting and business development, KSGN desired to quickly grow income with a safe on-air presentation.
KSGN hired a local business development manager and began attracting a significant volume of underwriting. With the success of the business development program came a few challenges.
Challenge 1: Compensation
Too little compensation could mean the station would not attract appropriate talent while too much compensation for the position could certainly create a stewardship concern for the board and staff.
Challenge 2: On-air burnout of underwriting announcements
The station attracted several high-volume underwriters--that's good for income, but repetitious underwriting acknowledgement announcements were a concern for the programming department.
Challenge 3: Budgeting and growth strategy
With early success in underwriting, the station needed to develop an appropriate growth strategy and create reasonable budget targets. Station leadership saw that under-budgeting would be poor stewardship and over-budgeting could potentially demotivate to the entire staff.
Challenge 4: Leadership of business development representatives
Station leadership discovered that business development representatives required different management techniques than programming and engineering professionals. Often, station representatives did not respond as well to a method that helped keep programming staff on track
KSGN saw great opportunity for underwriting support of the station and desired to build a strong, ongoing program of business development so these challenges required resolution.
The solution: Advocace training and coaching
Advocace met with station leadership, staff and select board members to build a sustaining and income-generating underwriting program.
- To attract talented business development professionals and display good stewardship, Advocace analyzed compensation for the local region then built a compensation plan for the station's business development professionals that was attractive to both prospective employees and the station's compensation committee.
- To decrease on-air burnout of underwriting announcements, Advocace began training KSGN business development professionals on all phases of business development so more underwriters would be on the air. In addition, Advocace guided business development representatives to update interesting messsages for underwriters more often.
- To create a growing, yet reasonable, underwriting department, Advocace built a logical budget for business development income. The budget provided significant income to the station while keeping business development department expenses in check.
- To keep station business development professionals motivated, Advocace coached station and team leaders in person and on conference calls. Advocace guided management on ways to help keep station representatives focused on business development and enjoy gaining new underwriters.
The results
KSGN 89.7 continues to grow underwriting income--even when sharathon income is stagnant or down. The business development effort complements the on-air sound that programming staffers create. Station leadership now helps keep station representatives focused on business development.
Most important, the station's audience continues to grow because of KSGN programming and promotions funded by business development partners.