| MURRAY: | Mr. Corriveau. Please identify yourself and your organization for the record. |
| CORRIVEAU: | I am Phil Corriveau, General Manager of Sacramento's public radio station, KXJZ. Assemblyman Murray and members of the Legislative Black Caucus, we really appreciate this opportunity to share our thoughts on the role of radio in keeping jazz alive. KXJZ is a noncommercial jazz station which signed on the air with 50,000 watts of power on june 29, 1991, approximately 13 weeks ago. KXJZ features a mainstream jazz format and is the result of a six-year effort with FCC (Federal Communication Commission) licensing and raising the $750,000 required to construct the station. Phone and mail response have been tremendously positive. We raised over $56,000 from over 1,000 new listener members during a two-day fundraiser last month. I am extremely pleased to report that just this morning we received our first arbitron ratings, which showed that after only 12 weeks on the air, KXJZ is already serving nearly 70,000 listeners each week, an extraordinary number for a new station. |
| MURRAY: | At 50,000 watts, you can cover approximately what kind of radius? |
| CORRIVEAU: | Approximately a 60-mile radius. At KXJZ we feel that in order to preserve jazz as an art form it, of course, has to be heard. To provide maximum flexibility and availability of jazz, KXJZ uses the medium of radio. Virtually every Californian owns at least one radio and has access to nearly 100 hours of jazz music every week over the airwaves of KXJZ. KXJZ music director, Gary Vercelli, a long-time veteran of the world of jazz, has been convinced for years that Sacramento could support a jazz station. Although we've had a small amount of jazz on our sister station, KXPR, since 1979, i must admit that we entered the full-time jazz arena with a certain amount of trepidation. Some national statistics show that less than 3 percent of the population is interested in pure jazz--authenic jazz, not fusion or rock... |
| MURRAY: | What percent of the population is interested in classical music? |
| CORRIVEAU: | 7 Percent. The number of commercial jazz stations in this country now numbers exactly one--KJAZ in the bay area. That's the only commercial jazz station in the whole country. Public radio attempted to fill this void for many years. Successful public jazz stations like WBGO, Newark in the New York area and KLON in Long Beach, the only source of jazz for Southern California, are rare exceptions to the seemingly pervasive view that the vast majority of the population is simply not interested in jazz. Despite the statistics previously noted, I am confident that we have created a special situation in the communities of the Sacramento region with a great many "special" listeners who are able and willing to financially support a true jazz station, the first one in Sacramento since KXRQ (now KZAP) abandoned its jazz format in 1967. Jazz is truly america's indigenous art form. I must admit I am more than occasionally intimidated by it. But I find that the more I learn about it and the more I know about the jazz idiom, the more I enjoy it. We try to educate our audience about the music that we play on the air, not just play it. We interview people and have programs that describe jazz. Maybe the staff at KXJZ, which is a very talented staff, has a lot to do with my personal progress in this area. But I feel that jazz has become a more significant force in the Sacramento region because of KXJZ. I do not profess to be a jazz expert, but after managing and working at stations that have played some jazz for the last 20 years, I feel I have learned something about it and its listenership. I am proud to be associated with it. There are 23 public radio stations in california and 15 of them broadcast a significant amount of jazz as part of their program schedules. KXJZ, which is financially supported primarily from individual donations, is committed to preserving, promoting, and presenting jazz as an art form in California's capitol. Any legislation enacted in this state that supports public radio will also support jazz since noncommercial public stations are the primary outlet for jazz broadcasting. If there are no questions at this point, I would like to introduce Gary Vercelli, KXJZ's music director, who has had a 20-year career in commercial and public broadcasting which was recognized when he received the highly prestigious 1991 Gavin Award of Jazz Radio Person of the Year. |
| MURRAY: | Before we go to Mr. Vercelli, what do you think could be done, or what are you doing, to increase your listenership? |
| CORRIVEAU: | When we signed on with KXPR in 1979, we had jazz starting at 10:00 pm, and it was a small amount of jazz. During the past six years, we worked to put the second station on the air in order to devote it primarily to jazz during daytime hours when most people are awake and able to listen to it. The capability built by having a classical station and a jazz station has increased the visibility of jazz. We do a lot of cross promotion between the two stations ... |
| MURRAY: | Do you have any way of measuring your listenership? |
| CORRIVEAU: | Yes, we received this morning our first arbitron rating for the jazz station, which showed a weekly listenership of nearly 70,000 people. |
| MURRAY: | How do they measure that, like the Nielson's? |
| CORRIVEAU: | Yes, it's like the Nielson's; they use the diary method by sending out at random a form for people to fill out. It's what all the commercial stations use. |
| MURRAY: | Before you started the pure jazz station, you had a jazz segment. Were you able to measure the ratings of that? |
| CORRIVEAU: | Yes, we were. It was very skewed, however, because fewer people listen to radio at midnight than at noon. For example ... |
| MURRAY: | When you compare midnight to midnight did you see it going up or going down, staying the same, or were you able to measure it? |
| CORRIVEAU: | We see it go up because of the greater presence of jazz ... |
| MURRAY: | Outside of simply the presentation, are any efforts made to promote it? Advertising? |
| CORRIVEAU: | Unfortunately, we have no advertising budget for the station, but we do try to get the word out as much as possible. We've had stories in the Sacramento Bee. We've sponsored jazz concerts and helped co-promote jazz concerts by getting the word out. We just recently had a banner made up so that we can have that out ... |
| MURRAY: | Would it help if you had an advertising budget? |
| CORRIVEAU: | It would help tremendously. Virtually every commercial station has an advertising budget which is roughly in the area of 10 to 15 percent of their total budget ... |
| MURRAY: | Do any PBS (Public Broadcasting Stations) have an advertising budget? |
| CORRIVEAU: | I would say that some do, but on the whole it's a much, much smaller percentage than commercial radio stations. |
| MURRAY: | Do you receive any support from governmental entities? |
| CORRIVEAU: | Approximately 22 percent of our budget comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which are federal funds. We receive no direct state funds. Indirectly we receive about 5 percent from California State University, Sacramento, which is our host and our licensee for both stations. |
| MURRAY: | You don't receive any county or city funds? |
| CORRIVEAU: | We apply for county funds through the civic and cultural programming awards and through the metropolitan arts council. Some years we are successful and some years we are not. |
| MURRAY: | Do you ever have an opportunity to apply to the California Arts Council? |
| CORRIVEAU: | We have, i believe. About 5 or 6 years ago, we did receive some funding for the broadcast of the New American Music Festival and, yes, they do have a media program that we can apply to. |
| MINICUCCI: | I'm Paul Minicucci with the Joint Committee on the Arts. Do you suppose that if the Public Broadcast Commission, which had its demise in 1982, were still around you could receive funds from that source? Is it your opinion that we should seek to try to re-establish such a commission? |
| CORRIVEAU: | Very much so. Public radio stations did receive funding from the state up until 1982. Forty-two states provide some sort of direct state support for public broadcasting. California is one of eight which does not. I feel it would be very, very important that some state funding be available for public broadcasting if only, as was pointed out by Assemblyman Murray, to get the word out. We could have some dollars for marketing and making people aware of the product that we're producing. |
| CARRILLO: | On your survey--the 70,000 weekly listeners--do you have any sense of who in the community is listening? Any profiles? Are there young people listening? |
| CORRIVEAU: | We don't have a sense statistically yet because we only have what's called the "top line" information. In two weeks we'll get the very detailed information. My personal, informal sense--from the comments we receive at fundraisers (we had one two weeks ago), call ins, and comments on the pledge forms--is that the audience for KXJZ is younger and more ethnically diverse than the audience for KXPR. |