Annual Report 2007 | KNPB Online

KNPB's mission is to enrich the lives of individuals and improve its community by focusing the power of media to advance education, culture, and citizenship. Our vision is to bring the world to our community through the power of trusted public service media.

Early in 2007 members of the KNPB Board of Trustees and staff worked together to develop a new Strategic Plan for the station. The following are the Five Areas of Focus for this new strategic direction:

Know our audiences and have our audiences know us. Improve our interaction with and marketing to constituents and use information gathered to guide station planning.
Collaborate with other organizations. Better serve the community by focusing on issues they identify as important.
Leverage new technology to better serve diverse audiences. Use all our media services to increase viewer knowledge of our content and services.
Tell the stories of Nevada and the West. Share the history and culture of our area and focus on current issues facing our region.
Plan for the future. Ensure that KNPB continues as a strong, relevant, and well-funded public service.

More from KNPB's Strategic Plan can be found online at www.knpb.org.

KNPB's 2007 activities as described in this 2007 Annual Report reveal a year of accomplishments that reflect a healthy respect for where we've been and recognition of the tremendous opportunity offered by the new digital technologies we now embrace. To guide us in this changing environment, KNPB Board and Staff developed a new Strategic Plan formally adopted in January.

I am pleased to report that we are making progress in implementing projects that embrace our Five Areas of Focus as described in this Strategic Plan. Each week we continue to add new local content from our production department to our web site. Nevada Stories, our new series of short subjects tells the many stories of Nevadans and the West – covering everything from business to outstanding community volunteers to World War II heroes. We continue our work on a new website that will allow for more robust content. Our critical local foundation support and our endowment continued to grow, reaching nearly three million dollars by year's end, and the interest payout is becoming a powerful resource to help our station research and develop new services.

We continue to strive each day to bring the best content possible to northern Nevada. The strength of the PBS schedule provides us national content from which to develop local programming. In September 2007 Ken Burns' documentary series The War , based on memories of World War II, became the most-watched program ever on PBS. From this content, KNPB produced The Nevada Stories: The War, featuring personal World War II memories of local residents. Our House With a History series premiered new episodes in November, and OpenLine became a monthly town meeting of the air featuring issues from AIDS in Nevada to the local Washoe County School District budget plans. In summer 2007 we began shooting the Great Basin Project looking at man's fascination with open space, our first production in high definition, due to air in 2008.

We continued to develop our digital channels, offering alternative public television programming both over the air and on cable. Create provided a schedule of “lifestyle” programming on KNPB II. And at year's end we added V-me, a full public television service all in Spanish, available on Charter Cable Channel 226. These digital services, along with our High Definition and regular Channel 5 programming, now provide 32,000 hours of content to our community each year, compared to 8,000 hours that we used to program only three years ago. At 2007 year's end, the anticipated results of the Digital Conversion – multiple broadcast channels, high definition programming, opportunity for local services – are within reach.

Education and Outreach are alive and well at KNPB. Using the 50+ hours of educational children's programming broadcast each week, Ready To Learn support services include free workshops for parents and other caregivers, and free books to children who might otherwise not own a book. Addressing skills necessary for the “Highly Qualified Teacher” status as described in No Child Left Behind, TeacherLine professional development includes a collection of online, web-based graduate courses, facilitated by local Master Teachers and approved for 2 graduate credits applicable toward advanced teaching degrees and merit toward career advancement. In 2007, KNPB again hosted the Nevada Educational Technology Leadership Conference in Reno, an annual statewide technology leadership conference for teachers and administrators in Nevada schools. Lifelong learners participated in outreach projects designed to extend the value of KNPB programming beyond broadcast. Over the past months, several hundred viewers have participated in discussion groups convened around the P.O.V. series, Ken Burns' The War, and Prayer in America.

Fund-raising activities in 2007 offered opportunities for many of our members to come together at events. Nearly 400 guests attended KNPB's Aged to Perfection Wine preview event honoring Senator Raggio, and, combined with the KNPB On-Air Wine Auction, was a successful fundraising endeavor for the station. Silver Circle event planning is on-going. Many members enjoyed 2007 events hosted in the homes of several Silver Circle members. Families enjoyed outings at the Animal Ark and Rancho San Rafael Park as part of Birthday Club activities. And a number of our corporate supporters joined us to answer phones during our pledge drives and work Lights! Camera! Auction!

Thanks to the continued support of our members and the various communities we serve, KNPB truly makes a difference. Please do not hesitate to call or email me ( ) should you have any questions or comments about our service. I look forward to speaking with you.

Honorary Lifetime Members:
Joan Bradley (1927 – 2005)
Robert Pearce
Dick Schuster (1927 – 2005)

Bert Ramos, Claudia Miner, and Phil Ringle left the Board in 2007.
Cole Campbell was killed in an automobile accident in January 2007.

Providing high quality programming is at the heart of Channel 5's business, the foundation on which all other station activities rest. Programs appeal to a diverse audience, with content ranging from the arts to news and public affairs, science to history. 2007 saw the full use of our digital channels, with Create in its second year on KNPB II, full 24-hour programming in high definition on KNPB HD, and the addition of V-me, Spanish language and culture channel distributed on Charter Cable digital 226.

A cross-departmental committee “Driving Digital” was convened to plan KNPB's program and technology services as we move toward the February 17, 2009 turn-off date for analog television. This collaboration between the Technology and the Programming Departments resulted in several successful preliminary programming processes including simulcasting HD versions of PBS primetime programming on the HD Channel and programming local break material on KNPB II. Amidst all the change, KNPB continues the tradition of airing 50 hours of children's programming each week. KNPB's kids' website offers fun and education for young viewers.

KNPB's education and outreach activities extend the value of public television programming into the classroom and the community. Professional development for teachers and opportunities for adults to discuss important issues ensure that program services are not confined to a broadcast schedule.

New staff was added to education and outreach services in the past year due to retirement of original KNPB staff member Sherri Dangberg at mid-year and transfer of Megan Myers from TeacherLine to the KNPB production department. KNPB welcomed new TeacherLine Coordinator Johana Franca and new Coordinator of Community Outreach Jasmine Tua in late summer.

Brooke Dutton continued to coordinate Ready To Learn services, including the Reading Rainbow Young Writer's and Illustrator's Contest, re-instated in 2007. Ready To Learn activities included more than 50 workshops for parents and professional development presentations for caregivers of young children, as well as distribution of more than 2,000 books to at-risk children. For the tenth year, KNPB partnered with UNR Extension in the Family Storyteller family literacy project. 2007 activities included development of a new series of Family Storyteller workshops in Spanish for our growing Hispanic population.

PBS TeacherLine offered a wide selection of online graduate courses for teacher professional development. PBS TeacherLine offerings expanded to more than 130 online graduate courses in Reading/Language Arts, Math, Science, Instructional Strategies, and Instructional Technologies. KNPB continued functioning as Station Resource Coordinator of the Sierra Collaborative, with partner stations in Northern California.

2007 Community Outreach Activities continued to provide the community with screening opportunities and workshops. P.O.V. screenings ran for four consecutive Sundays in the month of September with the help of our partners at downtown Reno's First United Methodist Church. P.O.V. programs screened included PrisonTownUSA, The Camden 28, Lumo and Made in L.A. November's Prayer in America Workshop centered on the 2-part program series aired on November 25 and based on James P. Moore's book: One Nation Under God: The History of Prayer in America. Various representatives of the faith community participated in the half day workshop which included screening clips of the program followed by facilitated group discussions. November's OpenLine incorporated the workshop and continued the discussion by opening the topic to the public. Composite DVD's of the OpenLine and clips of workshop performers and participants were made available to document the KNPB outreach project.

KNPB production enjoyed a year of growth and change in 2007. The young, energetic, and creative production staff of a year ago emerged from a trying twelve months of continually challenging work with an increased maturity and improved craftsmanship. The addition of Jillian Ocon as Resource Manager has proven to be a wise one, helping to streamline and organize the workload while simultaneously improving communication between Production and all other KNPB departments.

KNPB's nationally distributed series House with a History entered its third season with four new episodes. Wild Nevada continues its national distribution as well.

Goodworks Productions continues to create partnerships with community organizations in order to create program content. Among them, Great Expectations, a preview of the 2007 Legislature, was the result of partnership with AT&T, and The Creative Mind, a collaboration with Nevada Humanities, explored the meaning of creativity.

OpenLine, an extension of KNPB outreach, continues to offer a monthly opportunity for the community to come together and talk about the issues that face us all. Much concentration went into a tie-in project with the PBS series Prayer in America. Production staff worked with Education and Outreach to capture interviews and feedback from attendees as well as James Moore, the author of Prayer in America, during a November workshop held at KNPB's facility.

KNPB began broadcasting Nevada Stories in mid-2007, a series of short pieces highlighting some of the people, businesses, places and history of the Silver State.

Last year's Public Telecommunications Facilities Program grant has resulted in KNPB's first high definition camera. We have begun preproduction on our first HD program, which will be completed in 2008. Recently we received the good news that PTFP has approved a grant for HD studio cameras, and we look forward to high definition studio production in the near future.

The Technology Department continues to lead the station forward in meeting the requirements of digital broadcast. The focus for 2007 has been to flesh out the remaining equipment for completely digital master control and to begin building the high definition production facility. We were fortunate to have received several Federal grants to assist in the purchase of expensive equipment.

Archive System
The Technology Department purchased and installed an Archive system for storing programming for the long term on a file-based storage system. This replaces the main function of the videotape library.

HD Field equipment
The HD field equipment purchase partially funded by NTIA is nearly complete. The HD field camera is here and operational. HD editing software and hardware was ordered and has been installed as received. This will give us full capability to produce original local material in full High Definition.

HD studio cameras
We received an NTIA grant to cover partial cost of replacing our 12-year-old studio cameras with state-of-the-art HD studio cameras. This is the first step in converting our local studio productions to full High Definition. The next step will be replacing the production control equipment with HD capable equipment.

Verdi Digital translator and Digital Uplink
The 2007 NTIA grant also includes partial funding for a digital translator to be installed in Verdi, as well as an upgrade for our satellite uplink to enable digital uplinks. With digital uplink equipment, we can purchase digital satellite time at a lower cost than that of analog

Analog Channel Change for Verdi Translator
In December 2007 our analog translator on channel 54 was changed to channel 42 due to FCC frequency changes that left this channel out of the core broadcast spectrum.

Susanville
Working with translator engineers and cable operators in Susanville, we were able to restore a reliable KNPB analog signal to the Susanville area in fall 2007.

V-me
We added a fourth channel to the KNPB cablecast with the addition of Spanish language program channel V-me. This was done using the capacity of the multi-channel digital master control facility built in 2006.

Fund-Raising Activities:
KNPB's development staff manages a variety of fund-raising activities which combine to keep the station financially sound. This diversity of funding sources supports all aspects of KNPB services, from production and programming to education and outreach.

Membership:
KNPB Membership saw an increase in revenue in FY 07 of 15%. With some 8,600 individual members who support KNPB, individual members provide the largest single source of income to the station. Pledge drives in March, August, and December offer local viewers the opportunity to support the station at whatever level fits each budget, and mail campaigns reach out to renewing members and those who wish to contribute additional gifts.

Major Donors:
KNPB Major Donor programs continue to offer opportunities for members to support the long-term financial health of KNPB. These higher levels of annual giving represent an investment into continuation of station programs and initiatives that address KNPB's mission to inform, enlighten, and entertain our viewers. Recognized as special friends of Channel 5, these investors are encouraged to participate in station events and activities.

As of December 31, 2007 we had 166 Silver Circle Families (including Honorary members), two at the President's Circle level at $25,000 or higher and four at the Philanthropist level at $10,000 - $24,999. Click here for a complete list of our Silver Circle Members.

Another opportunity for major donors to contribute to long-term financial health of the station is through contributions to the Heritage Society or the Joan S. Bradley Endowment fund. Planned charitable giving to either of these funds can be as simple as including a bequest in a will or developing an annual giving plan that provides tax benefits to the donor.

Silver Circle membership raised $288,179.93 during fiscal year 2007, up 57% from the previous year.

Corporate Support and Foundation Activities
Local businesses and foundations also support KNPB, usually through underwriting broadcast programs or through grants to station projects such as Ready To Learn. Corporate support is acknowledged on-air, in Take 5, and in other print promotional pieces. Many KNPB underwriters have been supporting the station since its inception in 1983.

The Corporate Underwriting department was reorganized this past year and is now supervised by an experienced public broadcasting salesperson. Bobbi Lazzarone, former manager of the University of Nevada Reno 's public radio station, KUNR, now oversees the sales, invoices and collections for underwriting contracted by local businesses and corporations. She joined KNPB in July 2007.

Auction and Special Event Activities
Lights! Camera! Auction! in June invited viewers to bid on a wide variety of items from appliances to travel packages, fine wine to art pieces. Celebrating its 22nd anniversary in 2007, the auction attracts some 700 volunteers who answer phones, serve food, and crew the technical staff.

KNPB's 10th Annual Aged to Perfection was a magnificent success, far surpassing any auction fund-raiser we have done in the past! Scheduled Thursday evening before the Saturday on-air auction, the Aged to Perfection preview party was moved to a larger venue at the Eldorado Hotel & Casino, accommodating nearly 400 people compared with 100 people who attended last year. The food by the Eldorado was spectacular and the auction items wonderful. Operations for the evening went very smoothly. The event generated a very favorable response and people are already looking forward to next year's event.

Another reason for the increased popularity of The Aged to Perfection preview event was our decision to use the opportunity to honor a local celebrity. This year's honoree was Senator Bill Raggio. John and Gail Sande were our chairs for the event this year and we added a Dinner Committee. With the help of the Sande's and our Dinner Committee, there was a tremendous increase in our attendance numbers.

Saturday night's on-air segment of this two-part event was also highly successful, due mostly to our wonderful hosts of the event Dr. Kosta Arger, Dr. Lynn Learey and Tim Jones. 2007 marked the trio's tenth anniversary of hosting this event. Our production team was also in top form for this event featuring great auction and wine items. Our viewers responded with enthusiastic bidding, bringing a very positive conclusion to the project. Overall, the two night event was a great achievement for KNPB and our community.

Marketing Activities
KNPB substantially increased its marketing efforts in 2007 with a major focus on supporting station wide strategic objectives. Substantial work addressed a strategic redesign of the station's online and interactive media services. Encodes were made available online for many of the year's local productions, including OpenLine, House with a History, and Nevada Stories. Extensive marketing activities supported the broadcast and outreach activities for the premiere of Ken Burns' The War. Besides our local production of Nevada Stories: The War, local viewers described their personal memories using a new PBS web service, StoryShare. Other projects with online support and components included a monthly Enewsletter distributed to members, the local TeacherLine website, promotion of station outreach and education activities and Birthday Club happenings.

KNPB's 2007 “Champion” award honors Mark Herron, Treasurer of the KNPB Board of Trustees. Besides offering invaluable leadership in chairing the Board Finance Committee, Mark also has acted as liaison with the Davidson Foundation in building out KNPB's second floor as the temporary location of the Davidson Academy for Profoundly Gifted Children. Plans are for the improvements of the second floor to be donated to KNPB when the Davidson Academy moves to campus in 2008.

KNPB’s volunteers perform invaluable service to station activities in all departments. Their help extends across a wide range of activities, from working as studio production crew to helping with professional development activities for teachers, to serving as pledge and auction talent.

Production — Brian Alderman:
Brian Alderman completed a volunteer internship with KNPB in December culminating with his debut as a pledge director. During his four months with KNPB, Brian exhibited endless enthusiasm for any task we set before him, from sweeping the studio floor to directing. His reliability, skill, and professionalism made him invaluable to us. He has said repeatedly that he'll continue to volunteer, and for that we feel lucky.

Membership and Production — Bob Lissner:
Bob does many behind-the-scenes activities that have a direct effect on our members. Bob is also perhaps our most reliable production volunteer, ready to help at a moment's notice. Always on the lookout for new and improved ideas to help KNPB's membership department, Bob is an enthusiastic ambassador for the station.

Development — Susan and Robert Coleman:
The Colemans have been an important part of KNPB's fundraising activities for a number of years. They have been involved with KNPB's annual Lights! Camera! Auction! for the past 15 years, and have helped with the Aged to Perfection wine auction for going on 10 years.

Administration — Marsha Adams:
Marsha is an outstanding Board trustee who consistently volunteers her time and support for KNPB. She is often seen answering phones during pledge breaks and helping out at various station activities.

KNPB ended fiscal 2007 financially healthy, with increased revenues and streamlined expenses. This year Loree Daniels was hired as Director of Finance to replace Nancy Thiele, who left the position in spring 2007. Once again, individual giving was the largest single source of revenue for the station. As Federal dollars for public broadcasting are being reduced, community support will be increasingly important to the continued success of the station.

Access the 2006 KNPB Annual Report as a .pdf file with Adobe Acrobat Reader. For this program, visit adobe.com for more information or download it now.

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