Florence Rogers, general manager of KCNV and KNPR, expects the economy to help maintain listener numbers that grew during 2008, an election year.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Beyond the Sun
Florence Rogers had a tough act to follow as president and general manager of Nevada Public Radio.
Rogers took the reins from founder Lamar Marchese, who grew the operation from scratch over 30 years. Today NPR operates KNPR 88.9-FM (news) and KCNV 89.7-FM (classical) with 30 staffers and an annual budget of $4.5 million.
How many listeners do you have?
Our weekly listeners for the news side are about 135,000 and for the classical side, 41,000. We’re often the No. 1-rated station for college-educated listeners.
To what do you attribute the growth of the local audience?
Public radio always does well in an election year. Our educated audience cannot get enough political coverage. We had record audiences in the fall. We did an outstanding job of covering what was happening on the local level and had a record number of downloads of audio content.
Will there be a drop-off?
I think our audience is intensely interested in how things will play out in the economy, both locally and nationally. You can’t match the coverage you get from public radio, whether it’s “Marketplace,” “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered” or “KNPR State of Nevada.” So I don’t see those audience levels changing very much.
What about “State of Nevada” draws listeners?
It’s a program about this place. We said, “We need to create a program that reflects who we are as a community.” It’s not about what authors are coming through town. It’s truly focused on who we are, the challenges that face us and the solutions we can provide.
What’s the financial picture for Nevada Public Radio?
We have been very prudent. Corporate support is down about 28 percent. When you look at that entire revenue picture, we’re down 15 percent. That’s OK. Membership and special-event revenue is up.
How does KNPR interact with the city’s commercial radio stations?
It’s kind of a quirk that the way that the ratings operate, we can see them, but they can’t see us. Many of my colleagues in commercial radio are big fans and sort of secretly say they listen to us. We’re not looking to those quarterly financial statements. At the end of the day, we’re in the business of serving this community. It’s a fundamentally different philosophy.
A version of this story appeared in this week’s edition of In Business Las Vegas, a sister publication of the Las Vegas Sun.
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