Community Advisory Board

WAER Community Advisory Board

WAER’s Community Advisory Board (C.A.B.) is a volunteer group of interested listeners, University community members, and members of the broader CNY community that meet 2 times per year to make recommendations to the WAER staff and Syracuse University Board of Trustees. All meetings are open to the public. Board members offer reflections on WAER programming and audience engagement, while helping us learn about and connect with our broader community

The board is advisory in nature and is not authorized to exercise any control over WAER’s daily management or operations. While the C.A.B. is a requirement of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, we hope the board members help us reflect and connect with the community, in support of our missions: to enlighten, entertain and engage our audience, and to provide professional development opportunities to student and community volunteers. The board also offers feedback on current programming and other station initiatives. Regular meetings are held during fall and spring at times convenient for the majority of board members and are held at WAER, 795 Ostrom Ave, Syracuse, NY 13244 or spaces in the community.

Last Meeting Minutes:

WAER Community Advisory Board Meeting Notes – 12 Dec 23

Update on hires:

ATC Host/Producer – We’ve hired Kat Kollins, whom you’ve heard on the air. Very solid technically, helping a lot in production, and we’re working on her on air delivery to meld well with our overall sound. Really good hire because she’s very intuitive worker and team member.
Development Director – Tracy Caryl will start Dec 18, she’ll get her feet wet, then full tilt in January. Tracy comes from Brady Faith Center, and before that Le Moyne. She’s extremely excited to be helping us and working in Public Radio. Has a lot of energy and ideas!
Content and Ops Director – Considering a couple of candidates, could be finalizing an offer in coming weeks.
News Director – search goes on. This has taken longer than I ever anticipated … and I said during the meeting that the lack of someone leading and guiding the department is hurting us doing really great things, even as our experienced staff is managing day-to-day fairly well. We might have an interesting development that I can’t divulge, someone the community already knows – gauging interest on both sides right now..
Searches about to start for Development Assistant (data, bookkeeping skills needed). If you know anyone good, especially if they’ve worked with a CRM system of some sort and has billing, accounting or related background. That job should be posted soon.
Digital Content Manager – This job is a mix of journalism, digital content, multimedia, social media experience. This was a priority of mine way back when I became General Manager. So excited to have this positon in development. The Digital Manager will help create content on web, social and digital channels, spread content we’re already doing to a much broader audience, and maximize digital presentation on multimedia additions to stories, web build-outs, tailor content to each social channel, instead of what we do now, which is fairly simple.

Review of upcoming holiday/special programming:

Holiday Theater – 2^nd year we’re doing this, producing radio plays from members of the Armory Square Playwrights that have a holiday theme. We did this last year and got a lot of good feedback, and community connection. This will be on air Dec 22^nd @ 8:00 pm & Dec 28^th @ 2:00 pm.
Holiday at Hendricks – They record their concert and give us the audio. We’ll be airing this (probably) twice.
Big Sports Day on Dec 21^st. – SU’s bowl game is at 8:00 … and leading right into it is an SU basketball game broadcast. SU actually moved the start time of the game up, otherwise they would have overlapped, which would have been a nightmare for us. So that day Sports will start at 4:30 basketball pregame and run all the way through 1:00 am with the bowl game post-game.

Community Engagement tasks – WAER reaching out, and us inviting community in:

*** I’m asking for board members’ help with these ideas

Problem – We’ve been talking about a lack of recognition many have – even university members – of exactly who and what we are here at WAER. Sometimes it’s distinction from WRVO, or misinformation about relationship with the University, or student station, or how we’re funded.
So I’m asking you to: Find organizations, groups, companies, that would welcome WAER in for an info session or presentation. That could be: simple overview of station relationships with SU, NPR, etc; what we see in our future and the importance of local news coverage; it could review and emphasize our community benefit & mission; A presentation or session could focus on a topic, such as elections coverage or other topics (local government, poverty, environment, health or education issues) on which we’ve done extensive coverage.
I thought you could talk with leaders of such organizations, companies, industry groups, non-profits to see if they’re interested. Work on this independently or collaborate with your fellow board members.
WAER Open House – Let’s have a committee of board members create an event in which invite the community into the station. We would advertise, mention on air, have station on-air talent there for people to meet, give tours, Board members would come, bring people with you (from orgs, neighbors, family). A committee could figure out the format and a date that made sense – we discussed in the meeting that perhaps this would be in spring.
Story Ideas (absent City Limits) – I know we’ve talked a couple times about starting another in-depth, sweeping project under our City Limits brand. But staffing – mostly the lack of a News Director right now, continues to limit that possibility. But let’s hear story ideas you have that I can share with the newsroom. Especially valuable at this time of year, when news kind of slows down. We have plenty of holiday themed softer news stories … so hopefully you have ideas that revolve around important issues for the whole community or specific locales. Share your idea and if you have possible sources, that always helps.

CAB Members List

Corporation for Public Broadcasting Community Advisory Board requirements:

In accordance with the Communications Act Section 396(k)(8), WAER must establish and maintain a Community Advisory Board.

"(A) Funds may not be distributed pursuant to this subpart to any public broadcast station (other than any station which is owned and operated by a State, a political or special purpose subdivision of a State, or a public agency) unless such station establishes a community advisory board. Any such station shall undertake good faith efforts to assure that: (i) its advisory board meets at regular intervals; (ii) the members of its advisory board regularly attend the meetings of the advisory board; and (iii) the composition of its advisory board are reasonably representative of the diverse needs and interests of the communities served by such station.

"(B) The board shall be permitted to review the programming goals established by the station, the service provided by the station, and the significant policy decisions rendered by the station. The board may also be delegated any other responsibilities, as determined by the governing body of the station. The board shall advise the governing body of the station with respect to whether the programming and other policies of such station are meeting the specialized educational and cultural needs of the communities served by the station, and may make such recommendations as it considers appropriate to meet such needs.

"(C) The role of the board shall be solely advisory in nature, except to the extent other responsibilities are delegated to the board by the governing body of the station. In no case shall the board have any authority to exercise any control over the daily management or operation of the station.

"(D) In the case of any public broadcast station (other than any station which is owned and operated by a State, a political or special purpose subdivision of a State, or a public agency) in existence on the effective date of this paragraph, such station shall comply with the requirements of this paragraph with respect to the establishment of a community advisory board not later than 180 days after such effective date.

"(E) The provision of subparagraph (A) prohibiting the distribution of funds to any public broadcast station (other than any station which is owned and operated by a State, a political or special purpose subdivision of a State, or a public agency) unless such station establishes a community advisory board shall be the exclusive remedy for the enforcement of the provisions of this paragraph."