By Peter Dominowski

Executive Director, University Station Alliance

The University Station Alliance believes that it has never been more important for stations to strengthen their relationship with their licensees. Many universities are under considerable political and/or financial pressure. In that spirit, we asked managers to answer two questions:

  1. What is your organization doing to strengthen your relationship with your licensee university?
  2. Have you started any new relationship-building efforts in the past year or so? Respondents were promised anonymity, and comments have been lightly edited for clarity.

When U:SA asked what stations are doing to strengthen their relationship with their licensee university, content-related activities were often cited. These primarily include:

  1. using university faculty and staff as subject experts,
  2. showcasing student work when appropriate, and
  3. utilizing faculty and student musical performances on music-formatted stations.

University-licensed public media often expand the reach of teaching, research, and civic

engagement. Stations connect scholarship to real-world audiences and position the

university as a convening force on critical public issues.

Clear academic benefits are demonstrated to the licensee by providing:

  • Structured internships and real-world newsroom experience.
  • Training in media production, storytelling, and digital platforms.
  • Opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration across journalism, engineering, data science, and public affairs.

For faculty, stations offer a respected venue to share research, serve as expert sources,

and engage with public audiences beyond academic journals.

Station responses include:

  • Helping the University President produce a monthly 30-minute radio show/podcast where he interviews a current instructor/staff member in part one, and the second half is devoted to interviewing an alumni.
  • Positioning our station as a platform for university voices — utilizing faculty experts as news sources, university events as programming content, and providing student engagement opportunities.
  • Aligning our editorial and community work with university priorities, including regional storytelling that reflects the University’s land-grant mission.
  • When we need an expert for a news story, we try to use a university professor from our licensee if possible.
  • We’ve started doing more coverage of stories from our university licensee (that we think would still make sense for our coverage area).  Things like when doctors on campus take part in rural health initiatives, clinics, etc. or when faculty/staff get nominated to state boards/positions.  If it’s newsworthy and we can get an expert from our university that makes sense, we try to go for it.
  • We take every opportunity to showcase student intern content and college partnerships in our broadcast and digital programs.
  • Our university is very big on community outreach, so we call ourselves a community outreach of the University at least once per hour and in any marketing info that has a university audience.
  • We are putting on faculty concerts on campus that are part of our regular lineup, utilizing the unique opportunities and faculty found in our university.
  • In the past year or two, we’ve definitely tried to strengthen our ties through increased internships – beyond just our typical 4-5 student newsroom positions – including music business interns, bringing more classes through to train in non- profit/leadership, etc.
  • We instituted a Radio 101 program; any student who’s interested can submit a music show proposal and sample playlist. We pick a few new ones each semester and help train them on how to create a show, then they produce them for our HD-3 (All-Music) Channel. They have to commit to 10 episodes a semester, but most of them have stuck with us through the full 3 semesters we’ve been doing it (and even beyond graduation). We also put the episodes on-demand on our app. It’s a great way to engage students and their peers who may listen in. We can make the program better by offering official internship credit, making it an actual course, and marketing more on campus.

Stations reported a wide range of other activities separate from broadcast or digital content to strengthen their relationship with their licensee university.

Hiring students – present and past – was a common practice at many stations which
responded to this question.

  • We recently hired a university graduate (for an open position) – hiring from the university is a plus!
  • We are increasing amount of work study and interns in our office across all parts of the organization. Using more unexpected parts of the university such as the design students to create logos or run our social feeds and more. Other activities centered around services performed or courtesies extended to the licensee:
  • When we bring in NPR talent, I give good tickets to the licensee’s advancement office so they can invite donors and prospects (and I don’t charge them).
  • When the licensee has a donor or prospect that is interested in the station, I give personal tours to their prospect to assist them in “impressing” their prospect.
  • Station personnel are speakers in the licensee’s Speaker’s Bureau.
  • We speak to university classes when asked and give tours to students in the communication department.
  • Some station staff sponsor student clubs
  • Staff help students with their events on campus
  • Staff members read the names at commencement
  • We partner with an arts magnet school and allow them to “take over” our Arts Today feature once per semester
  • I work closely with the Director of University Community Engagement to be sure our information is in all materials
  • Our station manager and news director spend 25% of their contracted time working as practicum faculty in the communications department, training and supporting student and faculty-led programs to be distributed through our
    station’s statewide network.
  • We partner with as many community organizations as possible. Arts orgs such as the symphony and the opera, but also the Food Bank, Fontenelle Forest, Community Playhouse – legacy organizations that distinctly represent our community. 

Comments also included strategic communication and cooperation in station activities:

  • We created a document that itemized how the station fulfilled a number of objectives in the University’s strategic plan. This was shared up to the VP level in our reporting structure.
  • Over the last 18 months, we have initiated and maintained periodic meetings with the University’s CFO. We have discussed the station’s short- and long-term revenue outlook and how the university may be able to increase its support for the station.
  • We are now providing quarterly reports to him as we track our fundraising and overall budget. The university vice president who is the supervisor for (our station) has been part of these discussions, which have resulted in additional funding for the station to help with the loss of CPB funding. We have made the case that we have been seriously underfunded by the
    university for many years, but hopefully that is starting to change, due in part to the loss of CPB funding and these ongoing conversations.
  • We ensure the chancellor’s office has multiple copies of our annual report.
  • Communicating proactively with university leadership about our financial position, strategic direction, and community impact — including transparent reporting on our audit results and sustainability planning
  • We Provide our college dean and university board of trustees with data from our yearly Greater Public survey.
  • Our college dean includes us in monthly leadership meetings.
  • We Invite our college dean and other university administrators to our community engagement and donor events.
  • We work with university advancement to establish endowments and planned
    giving.

Is your station involved in similar activities? Do these comments give you any new ideas on how you might forge a better relationship with your institution?

U:SA will be presenting a session at the Public Media Growth Conference in Chicago in July to delve more deeply into this topic. We hope you can attend. U:SA is always interested in learning about ways stations are strengthening their relationship with their licensees. Please share those with us – executive.director@us- alliance.org.