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KXCV-KRNW


Telling Public Radio's Story

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Describe your overall goals and approach to address identified community issues, needs, and interests through your station’s vital local services, such as multiplatform long and short-form content, digital and in-person engagement, education services, community information, partnership support, and other activities, and audiences you reached or new audiences you engaged.

Our primary goals for 2016 are to inform and serve the community, provide instruction, education, information and entertainment using all resources of the community, University, state, national and international sources. to provide alternative programming to our stakeholders while strengthening the interest and understanding of the programs and services of the University and offering a valuable training experience for students.We offer up to 24 student job opportunities each trimester (72 per year) to students in the School of Communication and Mass Media to be job ready upon graduation in the area of on-air and news staff positions.We are the only source of alternative or public radio programming to our 32 county coverage area on a consistent basis. That coverage area comprises parts of four states. We have identified community issues in the areas of education, healthcare, agriculture, economic development, senior/elderly and government as issues that we are addressing through our vital local services and programming. we are heavily involved in our communities providing 19 full service newscasts each day, weather and severe weather reporting when weather deems necessary 24/7, 365 days a year. We provide local programming through news, weather and sportscasts, long and short form interviews, website and social media platforms such as Facebook and twitter. Some of the local programs we offer include Rhythm N Roots, a local Americana music show, All Things Northwest, a program hosted by the President of the University that brings a high quality program to discuss the issues, collaborations and partnerships with communities and people all across our coverage area and educational opportunities for the region. Other examples include a healthcare show called Sound Medicine and for economic development a spotlight on Regional Industry program. We have many local collaborations including providing tower space at no charge to Nodaway County Public Safety, Fire and Rescue for reliable communication over the entire county, an Audio Reader Service on one of our sub-carrier channels that provides a reading service for the visually impaired and is a joint venture with the District Lions Clubs in NW Missouri and NE Kansas. Many collaborations with the University including a network of six commercial radio stations forming the Bearcat Radio Network where we serve as the flagship station and offer streaming of all football and basketball games serving over 10,000 households. We also host a weekly Bearcat Coaches Show at a local business during September through March with over 2300 people attending. KXCV-KRNW has paying members in 113 of the 151 communities we serve.

Describe key initiatives and the variety of partners with whom you collaborated, including other public media outlets, community nonprofits, government agencies, educational institutions, the business community, teachers and parents, etc. This will illustrate the many ways you’re connected across the community and engaged with other important organizations in the area.

We partner with the Protect Our Public Media organization as well as other Missouri Public Radio and TV stations to promote the continued need for federal funding. We have sent letters to our Senators and plan on local face to face meetings with them. In 2015 Missouri Public Radio stations met and continued working on our collaboration to benefit public radio and our listeners statewide pooling our resources to better deliver to our audiences. We also have collaborated and submitted stories to Harvest Public Media which deals with agricultural issues and concerns. We continue our partnership with Greater Public Media to assist primarily with fundraising and member development. Included below is a list of community and area partnerships and collaborations and a brief description of each of KXCV-KRNW is involved. 1) List of Formal Business Partnerships; Second Harvest Food Bank, Bluegrass Battles Hunger, st. Joseph Performing Arts Association, St. Joseph Symphony, St. Joseph Rubidoux Resident Theater all in St. Joseph; Northwest and Missouri Western Music Departments; Aramark Food Service; Campus Activities; Northwest Crisis Team, KXCL Radio in Liberty Missouri, 102.9 FM in Kansas City, KKWK in Cameron, KAAN in Bethany, KMA in Shenandoah Iowa; District 26F Lions Clubs of NW Missouri and NE Kansas; Missouri Broadcasters Association in Jefferson City Missouri; Missouri Arts Council; Don Parks Landowner Chillicothe Missouri; Associated Press in New York; Northwest Missouri State IT Department; Corporation of Public Broadcasting in Washington D.C.; Nodaway County Economic Development; Northwest Alumni Association with 17 chapters across the nation; Edward Jones Investment-JR Kurtz in Maryville; over 120 business underwriters. 2) Purpose of Partnerships; Second Harvest Food Bank and Bluegrass Battles Hunger is an ongoing partnership to provide food for the hungry across all of North Missouri and Northeast Kansas. We help with promotions, events and provide underwriting to promote them; Partnerships with St. Joseph Performing Arts Association, St Joseph Symphony, Rubidoux Resident Theater, Northwest and Missouri Western Music and Art Departments allow us to to help promote arts and entertainment in Northwest Missouri; Partners with Aramark and Campus Activities and the Encore Performing Arts series allows us to hold Northwest Nites to our public radio members allowing them of a night of fine dining and entertainment; Partnership with the Northwest Crisis and Disaster Prevention team to communicate in the event of a severe weather or disaster. We also have entered into a partnership with Maryville Public Safety, fire and Rescue where we give them tower space for their communication equipment allowing them the ability to communicate throughout Nodaway County and beyond. For that service we receive a back-up generator system that provides us the ability to stay on the air when electrical service has been interrupted. We are the only station in the entire area of North and North Central Missouri to have that ability and service; Partners with six commercial radio stations that are members of KXCV's Bearcat Radio Network broadcasting all Northwest football, men's and women's basketball games; Partners with KAAN, KKWK to share and provide extensive election coverage during every major election; Partners with KMA in Shenandoah in a news sharing collaboration 365 days a year; A partnership and collaboration with the District 26F Lions Clubs and the University of Kansas allows those in our area that are visually impaired to receive a audio reading service via a special radio that receives it's signal from the KXCV and KRNW sub-carrier channels. Local newspapers, regional papers, magazines and even individual prescriptions are read on a daily basis; Missouri Broadcasters Association offers help with many aspects of the broadcast industry and has named our program at Northwest as their best source for job ready broadcasters for placement in Missouri radio stations; Partnership and lease agreement with Don Parks for tower space in Chillcothe that allows additional coverage of alternative programming to North Central Missouri; Partnership with the Associated Press in New York to provide additional state wide and national news to our area; Ongoing partnership that moved all of the radio station audio streaming to the University IT department from an outside vendor and saves nearly $8,000 dollars per year; Partnership with the Corporation of Public Broadcasting and is instrumental in helping fund this service to the people of this area. KXCV-KRNW is a non-comercial educational public radio facility and can not sell regular advertising as commercial stations do to finance their operations; The other 120 plus business partnerships are underwriters who help support our mission to provide alternative programming that cannot be received through commercial radio stations, helps to provide our students the hands-on training so important to make them job ready upon graduation as well as broadcasts of the Bearcat Radio Network.

What impact did your key initiatives and partnerships have in your community? Describe any known measurable impact, such as increased awareness, learning or understanding about particular issues. Describe indicators of success, such as connecting people to needed resources or strengthening conversational ties across diverse neighborhoods. Did a partner see an increase in requests for related resources? Please include direct feedback from a partner(s) or from a person(s) served.

We continue to be called upon to provide news, information, and become partners to help promote, educate and inform the public on issues, events, needs and issues which in our opinion means we are on the correct path. We offer a free community news service and also the opportunity for those partners and events placed on Maryville cable channel 9 which we switched from Channel 8 this year to improve the channel quality. Service clubs, organizations, communities have all continued to use this service. Additional specific examples include increased food and monetary donations for the Second Harvest Community Food Bank across their 19 county area  and they also were able to increase the number of corporate support for their Backpack Buddies program. Our news, long form programming and feature reporting allowed them to gain national attention to the child hunger issue in our area. Partnerships with St. Joseph Performing Arts Association, St. Joseph Symphony, Rubidoux Resident Theater, Northwest and Missouri Western Music and Art departments have seen gains in attendance and have allowed us to continue to promote the arts in our 32 county area. We are partners with Aramark and Campus Activities and the Encore Performing Arts Series allowing us to hold Northwest Nites for our public radio members a night of fine dining and entertainment and has seen nearly sell-outs for many of these shows. KXCV-KRNW has partnered with the Northwest Crisis and Disaster Prevention team to help communicate in the event of a severe weather of disaster event. We have an ongoing collaboration with Maryville Public Safety, Fire and Rescue where we give them tower space allowing them communication capabilities county wide and beyond in return we received a back-up generator system allowing us to stay on the air in the event of an electrical outage. We are the only station in the North and North Central Missouri area that has that ability. A partnership with the District 26F Lions Clubs and the University of Kansas allows those in our area that are visually impaired to receive a audio reader service via a special radio that receives it's signal from the KXCV-KRNW sub-carrier channels. Local newspapers, regional papers, magazines and even prescriptions are read on a daily basis. Many visually impaired residents in our 32 county area benefit directly from the service. Our partnership with University IT has allowed us to reach over 10,000 households when streaming our Bearcat Radio Network broadcasts. Our Bearcat Coaches Show held September through March has seen over 2300 people in attendance.

Please describe any efforts (e.g. programming, production, engagement activities) you have made to investigate and/or meet the needs of minority and other diverse audiences (including, but not limited to, new immigrants, people for whom English is a second language and illiterate adults) during Fiscal Year 2015, and any plans you have made to meet the needs of these audiences during Fiscal Year 2016. If you regularly broadcast in a language other than English, please note the language broadcast.

KXCV-KRNW is licensed to the Board of Regents of Northwest Missouri State University and enjoys a diverse student and faculty population and has grown our international student population dramatically in the past year. We meet the needs of our diverse audience through our programming efforts and involvement in community and university activities. This past year we joined we joined with the University in addressing diversity issues after problems on some Missouri University campuses. To be pro active we aired a special forum sponsored by our University titled, " Northwest Social Justice Forum". We are actively involved in Martin Luther King Jr. celebration and educational activiites, Black History Month each February. We are involved through news, long form interviews and other areas with our international student organiztion and the English as a second language program. We participate in their events and provide promotion and education services over all our platforms. We do so through on-air, public service announcements, cable channel 9, website and through social media platforms. We sponsor annually the Heart of America Tractor Cruise to raise money for Children's Charities of Northwest Missouri. We partnered with the international student organization to help students experience the American Farm Culture. We continue to provide the audio reader service for the visually impaired and helped sponsor a summer reading program for children now in it's seventh year that has served from 150 students in it's first year to over 350 last summer. We are also actively involved with the University's Distinguished Lecture Series that brings very diverse guests to the area through news, long form interviews with those guests and promotion for their events.

Please assess the impact that your CPB funding had on your ability to serve your community. What were you able to do with your grant that you wouldn't be able to do if you didn't receive it?

This area has been hard hit over the past seven years due to the poor economy and since we are so strongly tied to agriculture the years of drought then a 500 year flood combined with the loss of state public radio funding, our states yearly cutting of the higher education budget and a poor national and regional economy has made CPB's federal  funding more important that ever. Only now has the economy started to improve but because we are tied so strongly to agriculture we are seeing the negative effects of Climate Change on the ability to maintain crop yields. Our survival is based on our continued federal funding!! At one time only 10-12 percent of our budget came from federal funds now 20-22 percent of our budget is reliant on those federal funds. Over the past seven years our operations budget has been cut by nearly 40 percent. State funding has been zero to only 11,500 dollars last year and if the Govenor doesn't withhold promised state public broadcast funding we would recieve  only11,000 dollars this fiscal year.  We can not afford to lose anymore of our federal funding. In this time span, we have lost two full time professional staff members due to the University's reduction in force. Our federal funding is used to purchase national programming and pay for one full time professional staff member and a portion of another employee. We are the only alternative programming option for the residents of most of our listening area. We have members in 113 of 151 communities we serve and they do all they can to support us but we are in a very, very rural area and sparsely populated portion of North Missouri. With the small population also means few businesses to choose from for underwriting opportunities. If we were to lose our CPB funding there is no way the University could add those additional dollars to fully fund us. CPB funding allows us to carry alternative and national programming programs that speak to diverse populations, offer diverse options, music, culture and education. It also allows us to provide hands-on training to students in the School of Communication and Mass Media to become job ready upon their graduation. We have cut everything to be cut, have sought out and created additional revenue streams but we have few people and businesses to grow significantly however we serve an area that needs the cultural, diverse thinking and non-bias reporting that we provide our residents needs. For all these reasons and more our mere survival is incumbent on the continuation of our federal funding!