illinois public media annual report 2010

catalyst for growth • collaboration • learning • ideas • enjoyment

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Illinois Public Media

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College of Media


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Interaction causes a reaction. By reaching out and joining with others, we become a catalyst to bring about meaningful change in the lives of individuals and communities.

When we offer you news of the day, music that speaks to your soul or documentaries that make you think, ideas start percolating and life becomes richer. When we bring partners together to address com-munity problems, we help create something new and powerful.

Catalysts. Connectors. Facilitators. At Illinois Public Media, we’ve been describing ourselves this way more and more frequently during the past year. We have been reaching out to the communi-ties we serve not only to tell community stories and report on issues of concern, but to invite groups and individuals to work with us to seek solutions to com-munity problems. By bringing partners together, we help create something new and powerful.

People are accustomed to seeing us in our traditional role of producing a televi-sion show or radio news story. This new additional role is harder to describe. But we believe it is important and we hope this annual report will help you understand our evolving work in the community.

In these pages about what Illinois Pub-lic Media has achieved in the past year, you’ll see a number of examples of this work. Our Youth Media Workshop brought together African-American middle school students with elders from the community, and both were changed by the project. We connected community volunteers to Head Start classrooms in our Book Mentor Project to promote a love of reading, and both the mentors and the children benefit-ted. We organized a group of people to plan a community garden that provided 5,400 pounds of sweet corn to the East-ern Illinois Foodbank. We joined with a group of community organizations, in-cluding the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District, to make sure the public received timely H1N1 flu information last winter.

We also hope we have created meaning-ful improvement in the lives of individu-als who use our services.

The past year was full of financial chal-lenges for Illinois Public Media. We could no longer sustain all of our activi-ties and needed to focus on areas where we could have the greatest impact. We

will continue to be local, but local in a new form—in the community, build-ing partnerships and using the tools of both traditional and new media to do our work.

We began making video, audio, news and entertainment available on the Web to an extent we couldn’t have imagined a few years ago. We streamed Illinois Gardener online, and devel-oped rich Web-specific content related to on-air projects such as the 2010 election, central Illinois baseball and the 25th anniversary of Farm Aid. We jumped enthusiastically into Twitter and became more active on Facebook, updating users immediately when im-portant news broke or when we posted or discovered Web content of interest. By adopting these new tools, we are reaching more people and becoming an increasingly valued resource for the community.

Thank you for your belief in our mis-sion and your steadfast financial sup-port, which make all of this possible.

Mark Leonard General Manager

dear friends,

When Shony Coleman first started going to his son’s Champaign pre-kindergarten classroom to read books to the children as part of the Illinois Public Media Book Mentor Project, his son coached him to act out the stories. “You have to do it this way. You have to jump,” 4-year-old Tayshawn told him.

Now the kids can’t wait for Shony to come. ‘The kids just run to me and I melt and sometimes I want to shed a tear,” he said. “It’s a feeling that I never had in my life, getting a response, not just from my son, but the other kids.”

“It’s been one of the most important things in my life right now,” he said. “I not only am interacting with my son, I’m also giving the other kids the op-portunity to see a young man come and bring them pizza and, you know, hug them and show them the same love I show my son.”

Shony’s son seems to be picking up the love of reading. “There’s been times I caught him reading to the dog, his little Chihuahua puppy,” Shony said. “He sits there and reads to her.”

The Book Mentor Project, serving more than 500 Head Start and early child-hood families in Champaign County, is a service of Illinois Public Media’s Young Learners Initiative. Through this project Illinois Public Me-dia trains more than 50 teachers and 60 volunteers, works with 30 classrooms, and distributes more than 3,500 books each year.

In September, a leaf walk kicked off fall activities for the project. The children used their collected leaves to make leaf rubbings with a volunteer mentor, who also read a related book, “I Am a Leaf ” by Jean Marzollo. At the end of the day, each child got to take the book home to keep.

Shony said he thinks the project is hav-ing a huge impact on kids’ lives, and a big impact on him. “The reason I’m do-ing this is because I want (my son) to do the same thing when he grows up and has his own kids. I want him reading, too, to his kid’s class. And he’s gonna do it, because I did.”

growth...Book Mentoring Project Encourages Reading

Home day care provider Mary Perez of Hoopeston and other providers around the state made use of kits created by Illinois Public Media to help get their kids up and moving, resolve conflict, tell stories and celebrate diversity.

“I had my best summer ever because of those kits,” Mary said. “The school-agers didn’t complain that they were bored.” The kits provided ideas she wouldn’t have thought of herself, and activities were adaptable to all the different ages in her day care, she said.

Illinois Public Media created 180 kits for day care providers statewide in partner-ship with the Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies with funding from the Illinois Department of Human Services.

The kits were available for child care providers to check out from Quality Counts resource vans operated by child care resource and referral agencies. Molly Delaney, Illinois Public Media director of educational outreach, put together the kits featuring ideas from A Place of Our Own, a WILL-TV program for anyone, includ-ing family members and neighbors, who cares for children.

Activity Kits Help Child Care Providers Engage Kids

In early spring, it wasn’t much to look at, a muddy, two-acre field near Old Church Road southwest of Champaign. But Illinois Public Media and its com-munity partners envisioned a garden full of sweet corn that could feed hungry people in our community. Provena Cov-enant Medical Center donated the farm-

collaboration...

C-U Fit Families Targets Childhood ObesityIllinois Public Media found inspiration in connecting with other community and university members in C-U Fit Families, a diverse coalition of groups who want to increase active living in our community, particularly for children. IPM took the lead in keeping the group together and helping to forge a shared understanding of the barriers and op-portunities to reducing childhood obe-sity in Champaign-Urbana.

The group is focusing on four areas —active living, food advertising and marketing, shared family meals and access to healthful foods at home and at school. The group hosted an April

land and the vision took shape. The corn grew tall and when the ears were ready, volunteers picked more than 5,400 pounds of sweet corn for the Eastern Illinois Foodbank. The project was an extension of Illinois Public Media’s news reporting and community initiatives on hunger and childhood obesity.

leadership breakfast, at which key gov-ernment, social service providers and university leaders discussed the need for changes in school and government policy, and provided input on what goals the group should pursue. Participants talked about research that suggests shar-ing family meals together, and turning off the television during the meal, pro-motes healthier eating habits.

Members of the group also took part in community conversations to assess needs, and a workshop on blogging to help them tell stories of community in-novation in reducing childhood obesity.

Sweet Corn for Eastern Illinois Foodbank

collaboration...

Community Music on the Air and on the Web

C-U Fit Families Targets Childhood Obesity

Musicians from classical to folk to roots music to jazz cheerfully hauled their instruments into the WILL per-formance studio and let the notes fly during the past year. WILL-FM’s Live and Local with Kevin Kelly, airing from noon-1 p.m. weekdays, promoted the artists’ upcoming concerts and

introduced their music to many people who couldn’t attend a live performance. The show made available the work of central Illinois musicians to a broad au-dience of radio listeners and Web users.

Kevin gently queried the artists for insights into their music. He offered music of the renowned Irish band Chulrua and the red-hot bluegrass band Henhouse Prowlers who were in town to perform, as well as a number of local performers including Sandunga, Bossa Nuevo, Mean Lids, Darden Purcell, the Arcadia Chamber Players, the Cham-paign-Urbana Theatre Company, the Pacifica Quartet and musicians from Illinois Summer Youth Music Festival.

Most of the in-studio performances were archived on the Web, and we be-gan to videotape some of the pieces per-formed for our website, including those of singer and multi-instrumentalist Tim Eriksen and guitarist Russel Brazzel.

Kevin Kelly with Chulrua

Rachel Barton Pine

With fewer and fewer media outlets providing in-depth journalism, and with cutbacks in staffing in some existing media organizations, can citizen journal-ists step in to help provide reporting on our community? During IPM’s Pub-CampChambana in September, about 50 participants from central Illinois got together to brainstorm ideas for how citizen journalists might be able to help.

Representatives from smilepolitely.com, the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center and cu-citizenaccess.org discussed how they cover local news and culture, and talked with Illinois Public

Media representatives about combining efforts to report on the community.

“We recognize that we all have a stake in how media serves the interests of our community—and we suspect many peo-ple have good ideas on how traditional media organizations like WILL can involve citizens and community partners in making public media truly public,” said Jack Brighton, director of new me-dia and innovation for IPM.

PubCampChambana was co-sponsored by One Main Development and CCNet.

Putting the “Public” in Public Media

On Prairie Performances, host Roger Cooper allowed people at home to hear the best of central Illinois classical con-certs, including much of the music from the 2010 Allerton Music Barn Festival. Sinfonia da Camera, the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, the U of I Wind Symphony, the Illinois Symphony Orchestra and the U of I Symphony were among the groups featured.

Community Music continued

Julie and Nathan Gunn

Illinois Radio Reader Thanks to the help of about 80 vol-unteers, more than 350 Illinois Radio Reader listeners across central Illinois keep up-to-date on world, national, state and local news, as well as advertised prices found in newspaper supplements, via special radio receivers they receive free of charge.

IRR listener Dianne “Dee Dee” Adams told the Decatur Herald & Review, “I love the Illinois Radio Reader. Listening

to the lady who reads the coupons, it’s like I have a hold of the cart and we’re walking around the store together.” Ad-ams, blind since just after she was born, enjoys hearing a volunteer named Alice, who says she reads the supermarket in-serts by systematically working her way around the store shelves in her mind’s eye, giving out the code numbers for any required coupons so her listeners can order them online.

“I feel like I am taking them by the hand and I am walking them through,” Alice told the Herald & Review.

This year, a $2,800 grant from the Com-munity Foundation of East Central Illinois enabled the service to purchase radios for 80 more listeners. And our Vintage Vinyl sale raised $16,075 to support the service. Donors dropped off more than 100,000 vinyl recordings and 2,500 CDs for the sale.

Pryde, public health administrator for the health district, said it was important to have many ways for people to get timely and accurate information about H1N1. “I always feel that WILL speaks with authority and it helped me speak with authority when I addressed an is-sue of public health,” she said.

Kimberlie Kranich, community engage-ment director for Illinois Public Media, said the Champaign-Urbana commu-nity made a great coordinated effort to deal with H1N1. “WILL wants to be another source of credible, timely infor-mation for health concerns,” she said.

H1N1 Flu UpdatesWILL-TV, WILL-AM and WILL-FM aired H1N1 flu updates presented by Julie Pryde from the Champaign-Ur-bana Public Health District. The one-minute spots, produced at WILL, pro-vided up-to-date information including availability of vaccine and prevalence of flu in the community.

Updates were also posted to the Web and to the WILL Radio TV Online Facebook page.

Photo: Stephen Haas, Decatur Herald & Review

Jeremy Hobson got his start at WILL Radio, first as one of the children creating Treehouse Radio and then producing a 1996 award-winning documentary on Holocaust survivors and other programs when he was an Urbana University High School stu-dent. Now the host of public radio’s Marketplace Morning Report with an audience of 5 million people, Jer-emy came back in December to help celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Uni-WILL collaboration. He shared his experiences with Uni students, parents, teachers and community members. “It set me on a career path and I’m so grateful,” he said.

learning...

In the Uni project, students interview community members about a topic or issue, and edit the interviews into an oral history program that airs on WILL-AM. Two student documenta-ries aired this year, one about the expe-riences of Asian Americans in Cham-paign-Urbana and the other about the legacy of Tim Nugent, whose creativity and tenacity enabled thousands of dis-abled people to graduate from college at the U of I, providing a model that transformed the way colleges around the nation treated disabled students.

WILL’s Uni High Project Celebrates 15-Year Anniversary

Nugent was honored at the 15-year cel-ebration, saying he had been impressed by the Uni student interviewers. “These young people asked such strong ques-tions, such insightful questions. I some-times felt I was on the witness stand,” he said.

Uni High teacher Janet Morford and Il-linois Public Media’s Dave Dickey direct the Uni High radio project.

Student producers Katherine Floess and Sheela Gogula with Nugent.

Ernie Westfield is a Champaign busi-nessman and a former player in base-ball’s Negro Leagues. When Champaign 8th grader Jay Milles sat down to inter-view him for a Youth Media Workshop (YMW) video story, Jay discovered that Westfield is also a poet. As it happens, young Jay is a budding poet himself.

Their shared love of writing poetry, along with Westfield’s passion for letting

The Illinois Public Media news team began a formal collaboration with stu-dent journalists from the University of Illinois College of Media and com-munity journalists from C-U Citizen Access. Students report and research stories in the community and WILL news staffers help them produce and edit their stories for broadcast on WILL and for the Web. We prepared to wel-come the students into our newsroom during the first part of 2011 when the cu-citizenaccess.org project will relocate to WILL’s Campbell Hall to encourage more sharing of news and information among WILL staff, the project staff and U of I journalism students.

young people know it’s okay to express their feelings through poetry, turned his interviews into a different kind of learn-ing experience for Jay. At first, Jay was reluctant to tell Westfield that he wrote poetry, too. “But during the second in-terview, he asked me, and I told him I did,” Jay said. “A lot of people who love poetry are afraid to come out with it, but he’s not.”

The project is funded by the Stevick and Knight Foundations and the U of I, and overseen by two journalism faculty mem-bers, Brant Houston and Rich Martin, who have extensive newsroom experience. The C-U Citizen Access Project began two years ago, and its staff and journalism students have produced dozens of stories on poverty and other socio-economic is-sues in Champaign County.

WILL and CU-Citizen Access expect to see both formal and informal collabora-tions that will benefit the students with practical experience and produce more community information and editorial content for WILL.

Youth Media Workshop Student Connects with “Poet on the Mound”

“Many of the students found something that took their interview 180 degrees from what they had planned,” said Hen-ry Radcliffe, outreach producer at IPM, who served as mentor and videography instructor to some of the students.

Champaign Jefferson, Edison and Franklin middle school students partici-pating in the seventh year of YMW in-terviewed older people in their commu-

nity. The after-school program, which teaches media production and life skills to African-American teens, is a collabo-ration between Illinois Public Media and William Patterson, associate direc-tor of the African American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois, and is supported in part by the Adobe Youth Voices Fund and the Unit 4 Champaign School District.

U of I Students Join the Newsroom

Illinois Public Media’s news and pub-lic affairs effort grew in breadth and depth in 2010, making use of new technologies and acknowledging that more and more people are getting their information online as well as through public broadcasting.

As national and local attention focused on the outcome of critical congressional, state and legislative elections, Illinois Public Media hosted a Republican gubernatorial primary debate and focused on issue-oriented coverage of candidates. We placed a new emphasis on online access to information, developing a site that incorporated text, audio and video to offer in-depth interviews of legislative candidates and their stands on issues ranging from Il-linois’ budget deficit to funding for education. Many of our news stories were posted to Twitter and Facebook to update users of social media.

That multi-platform emphasis was also in evidence as Illinois Public Media reporters produced retrospec-tives on the 25th anniversary of the Farm Aid concert in Champaign and

the baseball scene in eastern Illinois. Both features included websites for people to view video, hear recollec-tions and share their own experiences and comments.

Illinois Public Media also covered other events that made news, from the trial and conviction of former Governor Rod Blagojevich to the selection of new University of Illinois President Michael Hogan.

Illinois Public Media is also moving toward stories that are more directly driven by community needs and desires. Reporters are participating in “community conversations” with small, diverse groups of people across central Illinois. Those discussions are leading to stories that address residents’ concerns expressed in those conversations. For instance, worries about the community im-age of Danville prompted reporters to give special coverage to a visit by the Walldogs, a group of artists who portrayed Danville’s cultural heritage in wall murals throughout the down-town area.

...ideas

In October, WILL-TV presented the television premiere of God Is Not on Trial Here Today, a documentary that told the personal story behind McCol-lum v. Board of Education, one of the most important First Amendment cases in U.S. history. Champaign mother Vashti McCollum took her fight against religious education in public schools to the U.S. Supreme Court and won.

WILL-TV is the presenting station for the national broadcast of the documen-tary on public television stations around the country in March.

Producer Jay Rosenstein, a U of I jour-nalism associate professor, recounted what Vashti McCollum later described as “three years of headlines, headaches, and hatred,” as she was ostracized and vilified for her stand.

Documenting Historic First Amendment Case

Enhancing News and Public Affairs

Republican gubernatorial candidates

As the city of Champaign cel-ebrated its 150th anniversary, a new WILL-TV-produced series, Illinois Pioneers, premiered in March and looked at the creation of the city after the Illinois Cen-tral Railroad arrived in 1854. In subsequent months, the program, hosted by John Paul, examined the history of the city’s theaters, schools, media, department stores

Agriculture It was a year for diversifi-cation for Illinois Public Media agriculture. We continue to develop new platforms for providing crucial market information, most nota-bly a phone text service that gives users key figures on USDA reporting days. But we also diversified our agricultural programming, offering six months of lengthy and in-depth interviews on a wide range of subjects of concern to food security in a series of shows called “The Farming World.”

We also initiated what has become a popular program, “In My Backyard,” which features commentary by Lisa Bralts (above) and looks at non-row crop agriculture and food issues. And we celebrated our 20th All Day Ag Out-look Meeting in Covington — a crowd of more than 425 attended as we hon-ored those who helped shape our agri-cultural service. “Further development of our willag.org website, designing ap-plications for cell phone technology, and creating programming offerings for tele-vision are all important as we continue to look for ways to serve our agricultural community,” said Dave Dickey, Illinois Public Media agriculture director.

and transportation. It also looked at vice and bootlegging in the city, U of I history and visits to the city by U.S. Presidents.

Funding for Illinois Pioneers – Champaign @ 150 was made possi-ble, in part, by the Noel Foundation, and by donors to the Champaign 150th Anniversary Celebration Fund.

“Illinois Pioneers” Highlights Champaign History

Documenting Historic First Amendment Case

Chai-Town, an all-male Hindi-English group from the University of Illinois, triumphed in the first ever A Cappella BEATdown—Live!, winning over seven other groups during WILL-TV’s March pledge drive.

WILL-FM’s Kevin Kelly, who was one of three judges offering critiques of the performances during the show, said Chai-Town had the total package—sol-id harmony and an entertaining visual performance on the stage.

enjoyment...

Chai-Town won both the phone and online votes in the competition, as well as the judge’s decision. Tone Rangers, a male Millikin University group, placed second.

In December, WILL-TV produced and aired Winter Voices: An A Cappella Holiday featuring barbershop and a cappella groups from Decatur, Cham-paign-Urbana, Springfield, Danville, the University of Illinois and Millikin Uni-versity performing holiday music during the Winterfest pledge drive.

A Cappella BEATdown and A Cappella Holiday

In April, Vic Di Geronimo’s weekday classical music program moved from early morning to mid-morning, offering WILL-FM listeners great music special-ly selected by Vic and interwoven with stories about the music and the compos-ers. In his new Classic Mornings, Vic invites listeners to have a most enjoyable time, no matter how much they know

about classical music. He also makes connec-tions with that music and people’s everyday lives. “It’s also impor-tant for me to be a companion,” Vic said. “I want to be there with people as they listen to the music. We’re listening together.”

Words in the Wind

A fundraising event for Illinois Public Me-dia’s Book Mentor Project, featuring actors from The Station Theatre, Parkland Col-lege Theatre and the University of Illinois Department of Theatre, brought to life children’s books in a concert-style perfor-mance in September.

The event, similar to a successful benefit performance last year, raised more than $500 for the Book Mentor Project. The evening was organized by Tom Mitchell, interim head of the U of I Theatre depart-ment, and Parkland Theatre instructor Joi Hoffsommer. Local musicians provided vocal, piano or guitar accompaniment for several selections. “These are the most cre-ative actors in town and it’s fun to see what they bring to this imaginative and colorful material,” Mitchell said.

Viewers who miss the newest episode of WILL’s weekly gardening program, Illinois Gardener, are now able to watch online at illinoisgardener.org. And the show is streamed on the In-ternet as well as broadcast on WILL-TV every Thursday at 7 p.m.

WILL-TV followed up each night of Ken Burns’ new baseball series, The Tenth Inning, in September with short stories produced by IPM’s Jeff Bossert about amateur baseball in central Illinois.

In the first video piece, Jeff looked at the East-ern Illinois Baseball League, which celebrated its 75th anniversary this past summer. More than 51 communities have participated in the league, but only one community, Buckley, has fielded a team all 75 years. After taking in a Buckley Dutch Masters game for his report, Jeff said the Buckley field made him think

of Field of Dreams. “It’s right up against a cornfield,” he said. “People sit in lawn chairs or in the back of their pick-ups to watch. In the second piece, he told the story of the Danville Dans, drawing col-lege players from across the nation.

Illinois Public Media combined all of its baseball stories and interviews that aired on radio and television on a Central Il-linois Baseball website, will.illinois.edu/baseball, and asked baseball lovers to contribute stories and photos about their own experiences.

Host Dianne Noland and other panelists are blogging on the Web site, as well, as the program ex-pands Web-only features.

Focusing on Central Illinois Baseball

Illinois Gardener Episodes Go Online

Launching “COVE” Illinois Public Media’s website added a new video player from PBS, custom-ized with our own local content in ad-dition to PBS programs and programs from other PBS stations. It’s a one-stop location for accessing full-length videos of PBS shows. Viewers who miss an episode of Masterpiece Mystery! or NOVA can go to the COVE player, select the program and watch it later at their convenience. Or if teachers are searching for video content on a partic-ular subject, they can search by subject and find related videos.

American Archive Project Illinois Public Media took part in the American Archive Pilot Project funded by the Corporation for Public Broad-casting to find and make available local TV and radio programs related to the Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1975, and local productions related to World War II.

“Using our grant from CPB, we found and digitized a great deal of material in the University of Illinois Archives,” said Jack Brighton, director of new media

and innovation at IPM. “Among the hundreds of hours of WILL record-ings we found were a 1956 talk by Thurgood Marshall on human rights, a 1968 talk on racial discrimination by Dr. Benjamin Spock and a program on the Chicago Seven Trial featuring lead counsel Howard Kuntsler.” In addition, we located recordings from a 1972 con-ference on women’s rights with Gloria Steinem and a 1973 conference on the changing status of women with Betty Friedan.

These and many more pieces of history join some 100 hours of content pro-duced during WILL’s Central Illinois WWII Stories project. All of these materials were digitized, catalogued and submitted to the American Archive Pi-lot Project, and are also now available at will.illinois.edu/americanarchive.








College of Media


Illinois Public Media Logo with Copy— CMYK—Small

Note: When the IPM logo scales to this size or smaller, all type is 100% Black

Orange = 59% Magenta, 96% Yellow Black = 100% Black

Photo: Courtesy of Corbis

Format Change for WILL-FM WILL-FM became a dual-format radio station April 1, adding news programs from National Public Radio to its classical music line-up, while expand-ing classical music on the weekends and retaining its locally produced music programs.

With the new dual format, WILL-FM still airs classical music, but also simul-casts the NPR news magazine pro-grams being broadcast on WILL-AM 580, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, both of which contain local Illinois Public Media newscasts.

In part, the FM format changed to provide NPR’s signature news pro-grams and local news to areas west of Champaign-Urbana where the signal for WILL’s news and information station, WILL-AM, doesn’t reach.

To make sure classical music lovers could still wake up to the music they love, WILL-FM began airing music on its HD2 service and on its 101.1 Champaign-Urbana translator. The new program stream airs the C-24 clas-sical music service, along with WILL-FM’s locally produced music shows.

Improving Signal Quality We took steps during the past year to improve the quality and reliability of our radio and TV signals. We installed a new generator at our FM and TV trans-mitter site, and will soon move electrical lines from overhead to underground at the AM transmitter site and replace guy wires on our AM tower, all steps to minimize signal interruptions.

Generous gifts from Anna Merritt, and Rob and Dot Beldon of Champaign, supported purchase of the generator at WILL’s Monticello transmitter site. WILL-TV and -FM were sometimes knocked off the air when power lines went down because of high winds or ice.

The gifts enabled Illinois Public Media to match a federal grant for a new gen-erator and install a new 250-kilowatt diesel generator. It allows for up to three days of uninterrupted broadcast of all Emergency Alert System messages, weather and news from WILL’s studios.

“A source of backup power for our FM and television transmitters has been a long time goal for WILL,” said Illinois Public Media general manager Mark Leonard. “With this standby generator in place, WILL-FM and television are able to continue providing essential pro-gramming and services during our area’s times of greatest need.”

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awardsIllinois Public Media News reporter Jim Meadows won a 2009 Illinois AP second place award in the “Best Hard News Feature” category among down-state Illinois radio stations. His winning story was a feature on the Safe Haven tent community, a group of people who ran into conflict with neighbors and lo-cal officials in Champaign-Urbana when they tried living outdoors in tents, as an alternative to homelessness and home-less shelter programs.

Illinois Public Media received the Award of Distinction in the Film/Video-History/Biography category from the International Academy of the Visual Arts in this year’s 16th Annual Communicator Awards for its By the People: A Lincoln Portrait television interstitial series.

Illinois Public Media received a bronze 2010 Telly Award in the television documentary category for the 2009 season premiere episode of the Prairie Fire series.

Illinois Gardener host Dianne Noland was the recipient of a 2009-2010 U of I Campus Award for Excellence in Public Engagement.

uupdates continued

fiscal 2010 financial report

During fiscal 2010, Illinois Pub-lic Media cut expenses to remain economically sound in a time of decreased state Illinois Arts Council funding and a downturn in the econ-omy. Federal funding was up because of one-time grants, among them partial funding for an emergency generator, Adobe Foundation funds distributed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for a Youth Media Workshop project, and funds for our American Archive project. Direct and indirect support from the University of Illinois remained strong, despite the university’s own financial challenges. Financial sup-port from the community through membership and underwriting also stayed strong, even in a struggling economy.

Through staff reorganization, we made reductions in administration and man-agement to help preserve broadcasting and programming. However, the savings weren’t large enough to offset the losses in state support. To balance the budget and position ourselves to absorb po-tential further funding decreases, IPM eliminated nine staff positions, including the weather staff.

Although 74 percent of public television stations in the country are vulnerable because they operated with a deficit in fiscal 2010, WILL-TV and Illinois Public Media were able to remain in the 26 percent operating without a deficit. We’re making plans for the long term so we can stay financially strong and be good stewards of contributions from our donors. During the past year we

added NPR news programs such as Morning Edition to our WILL-FM schedule so this programming could reach new audiences to the west, and we made investments in new media, the area where we’ve seen the most audience growth and revenue.

1.99% Other

24.55%

33.38%

6.24%

4.15%

29.69%

CPB and OtherFederal Grants

StateGrants

ProgramUnderwriting Membership

Contributions

UniversityFunding

University Funding* .............................................................................1,930,429 .................. 1,762,362 Membership Contributions ..............................................................2,170,069 .................. 2,295,502 Program Underwriting .......................................................................... 405,440 .....................397,493 State Grants ............................................................................................... 270,040 ......................398,712 Community Service Grants and other Federal Grants ............1,595,759 .................. 1,093,309 Other Income ............................................................................................ 129,228 ......................214,230 Total operating revenues ...............................................................6,500,965 .................. 6,161,608 Non-operating revenues: Indirect Support ....................................................................................2,390,362 .................. 2,248,967 Other ............................................................................................................ 351,338 .................. 1,155,817 TOTAL REVENUES .............................................................................9,242,665 .................. 9,566.392

OPERATING REVENUES 2010 2009

Other

Local Programmingand Production

Broadcasting

Promotionand Development

Managementand General

9.68%

14.57%

25.56%

4.57%

45.62%

OPERATING EXPENSES

Local Programming and Production ........................................ 4,139,502 ..................3,397,917 Broadcasting ...................................................................................... 1,321,981 ..................2,076,238 Promotion and Development ...................................................... 2,319,705 ..................2,382,867 Management and General ................................................................878,506 ..................1,311,772 Other .........................................................................................................415,002 ......................240,000

TOTAL OPERATING EXPENSES ......................................9,074,696 ..................9,408,794

2010 2009

* In this year’s report, on-behalf payments have been moved out of the Non-operating Revenues and into the University Funding category in Operating Revenues to provide a truer reflection of the contribution from the University.

UNDERWRITERS WILL thanks the underwriters who make our programs and outreach projects possible. These businesses contributed more than $5,000 during the past year.

AgriGold Archer Daniels Midland Company Bevier Cafe and Spice Box Busey Bank Common Ground Food Coop C-U MTD Farm Credit Services of Illinois First Midwest Bank Heel to Toe Hickory Point Bank & Trust Illinois Times Kirby Foods Krannert Center for the Performing Arts Lincoln Square Village Meredith Foundation Rental City State Farm Subaru of Champaign Supervalu Tate & Lyle

GRANTS

WILL AM-FM Corporation for Public Broadcasting Stabilization Grant: $41,885 Illinois Arts Council: $7,850

WILL-TV Corporation for Public Broadcasting Stabilization Grant: $74,074

Illinois Public Media American Archives Pilot Program: $54,907 Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies: $11,582 Adobe Foundation for Youth Voices for Youth Media Workshop (awarded in fiscal 2009): $120,000 U.S. Department of Commerce for partial funding of emergency generator (awarded in fiscal 2009): $67,500

Illinois Radio Reader Illinois State Library: $29,232

Thanks to our Community Advisory Committee for their help during the past year in gathering information about com-munity issues and needs, helping heighten community awareness of Illinois Public Media and the WILL stations and their services, advocating for broad-based support of WILL, and identifying and encouraging new sources of funding for specific projects.

Lori Williamson, Champaign, chair Phyllis K. Dougherty, Danville, vice-chair John and Susan Adams, Atlanta Kevin Breheny, Forsyth Arthur Culver, Champaign Belinda De La Rosa, Urbana Joan Friedman, Urbana Dave M. Grothe, Savoy Maxine Kaler, Champaign Joe Lewis, Champaign Geoff Merritt, Urbana Kathy Munday, St. Joseph Allan Penwell, Champaign Gregory Ray, Mattoon George Richards, Danville Steve Rugg, Urbana Barbara Shenk, Urbana Patti Swinford, Decatur Maggie Unsworth, Urbana

2009-2010 COMMUNITY ADVISORY COMMITTEE

College of Education (Youth Literature Festival Community Day and Writing Contest) Student Advancement Group for Education, Student Education Association, Hometown Heroes, Graduate School of Library and Information Science (Book Mentor Project) Family Resiliency Center, Food Sciences and Human Nutrition, Department of Communication, College of Media Department of Advertising, Kinesiology and Community Health, National Soybean Research Lab, Recreation and Park Resources, U of I Extension (C-U Fit Families) Child Care Resource Service (Child Care Activity Kits) Bruce D. Nesbitt African-American Cultural Center (Youth Media Workshop) College of Media, Department of Journalism (C-U Citizen Access) State Water Survey, Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability (Environmental Almanac)

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PARTNERSHIPS

with appreciation

“WILL AM-FM-TV provides the best

‘continuing education curriculum’ avail-

able, and I get to choose the cost of

tuition. It keeps me up to speed on

everything from classical music, opera

and ballet to history, current events and

much more. What a bargain!”

Peggy Brayfield, Charleston

“Our son loves PBS Kids. Word World was

instrumental in helping him start to talk,

and now many of the shows are

helping him to spell and read.”

Chris and Tracy Taylor, Danville

“I absolutely depend on the PBS

NewsHour. It is my primary source of

news information and, sadly, the only

remaining light of integrity and ethics

in TV journalism. “

Michael Bekiares, Tokyo, Japan

“Public radio is the most reliable source

of news. Increasingly TV and print news

has become homogenized, sensational-

ized and dominated by 1-2 minute shorts

that fail to explain the important details

of events locally, regionally and globally.

WILL and public radio have always sup-

ported me, and I am proud to support

them in return. “

Robert Boyer, Champaign

members in their own words

“Thank you for the evening about baseball

on WILL-TV. At the age of 91, I was really

interested and nostalgic! “

Imogene Brown, Decatur








College of Media


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Campbell Hall for Public Telecommunication 300 North Goodwin Avenue Urbana, IL 61801-2316

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WILL photos by Michael O. Thomas

illinois public media annual report 2010

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