Fort Collins Youth Broadcasting

A bit overwhelming sometimes, don’t you think?

This blog is to keep track of the progress of FCYB as it grows.  The case lately, however, has been keeping track of FCYB as it slowly dies.  Life support does exist, though, it’s just expensive in the long-run.

In our plea for donations on the new Facebook Causes application, I stated that KLIK is the underdog when it comes to the media today.  We’re trying a new delivery method, we’re targeting a market that is highly “hit-or-miss” when it comes to new things, and a myriad of other reasons make KLIK the underdog.  If you are reading this, and still haven’t donated to KLIK, we need you to! Our goal is to show zero liabilities on our year-end balance sheet.  We can only do it with your help.  Please donate by clicking here.

I’m trying everyone: my family, our volunteers, the neighbors, anyone I can get to.

Other than that, not a whole lot of new development surrounding KLIK.  Just today I may have gotten us a new web designer, a junior from FoCo HS, but nothing is finalized yet.  She contacted me, and I got back with her, but nothing has been said since.

In about 16 days, I hear back from the schools that I applied to early.  If I get accepted, then hallelujah one stress-creating item from my life is gone!

Oh, I also confirmed that Mara will be our treasurer once I leave.  Assuming that she doesn’t go study abroad.  But, if she does, she’ll have to find herself a replacement! :D  Speaking of replacements, the search for my replacement isn’t going so well.  Mia believes she has found a replacement for herself, I’ve already found Antonia’s replacement, but Justina and Simone will have a good ‘ol time.

Coffee sales during PHS late starts?  It could happen to you.  Depending on the situation, KLIK may be selling coffee, donuts, and a few other lively breakfast-type items in the concession stand on Wednesday mornings.  Fortunately, the school is willing to support us, since we’re “competing with the cafeteria.”  Depending on how well the stuff sells, we may continue the coffee-selling program indefinitely.  Or, at least, until school ends.  P.S., everything will cost $1.

I once had an idea to have a birthday party for KLIK Radio on April 18, 2009.  Ironically enough, this date happens to fall on a Saturday, a great party day.  Unfortunately, that may be a little too close to prom to throw a huge dance rave party for a little radio station’s birthday.  On the other hand, I don’t remember when prom is!  One may also make the argument that KLIK’s real birthday is February 25, 2008, as this is the first day we collected statistics on our web site traffic.  Which probably means that was KLIK’s launch-date.

Not sure how well either date will work this year for KLIK’s birthday.  We might just have to have a Valentine’s Day Bash, since Valentine’s Day falls on a Saturday this year as well.

But that’s in the future!  For now, we have to make it through the end of 2008 and try to keep our head above water.

Ever since school has started, things have gone bollistic with my personal life, hence the reason I haven’t been able to post so much.

First off…grant applications.  We’ve turned in 3 foundation grant applications, and may potentially turn in a few more, and well be applying for a few $500 mini-grants this month.  Our total grants in 2009 should, in theory, equal $6,250.  So far…we’ve applied for:

• Bohemian Foundation – $6,250
• Sutherland Family Foundation – $5,000
• Erion Foundation – $2,500

Depending on how things work out, most likely the $6,250 will be divided among the contributing foundations, and we will return the appropriate amount so each foundation contributes an equal amount.

Our haunted house suffered a bit of a setback when the Bingham Hill Cemetery owner decided to not let us use her property for our haunted house.  However we’ve relocated the festivities to the Livermore Community Hall, for the purposes of spookyness and darkness and stuff.  A location in Fort Collins just doesn’t have the same effect.  LaPorte may have some other spooky places, but we’ve most likely gone too far with the community hall to back out.

I made an amazing discovery today!  Incredible non-profit office space!  It’s amazing! I had no camera or phone on me today so I couldn’t take pictures.  It’s 600 square feet, and I won’t disclose the price for the sole purpose that we’d like to keep our opportunity entact :)  However, needless to say, this will reduce the “Rent” category in our budget dramatically, and allow us to do some other cool things instead of rent payments.  Details on this to come soon.

We have a new mailing address for donations!  You can find it in our Contact page.

On the search for finding replacements: I have a potential replacement treasurer in mind.  She’s in my accounting class right now, is a junior, and the simple fact she’s in accounting shows she must have some mild interest in treasury business.

I don’t think Tyler has been successful in making any sales, unfortunaetly.  Someday we’ll succeed, though! 😀

The iPod marketing campaign is not going well! And I’m not really sure why.  Everyone loves free stuff, especially when it’s a free iPod.  Seriously…it’s brand new, it’s $150 otherwise…save yourself $150…and if you don’t want it, sell it! People are so confusing 🙁

My marketing campaign idea was to print out little sheets of fake iPods and leave them all over the school with some info on the “screen” about the contest.  Not sure if it would work or not…but it’s worth a shot.

As I think of more, I will definietly post!  Hopefully I’ll remember to post here more often from now on…

I’m getting really bad about keeping the world up-to-date on the intrecacies of KLIK!  Although…I’m not sure if anyone reads this blog…maybe for a cheap thrill, or if it’s my Capstone teacher, but that’s about it.  Though I have heard some volunteers read the entire blog before signing up.  That’s pretty intense.

So in August…nothing happened.  School started.  Listener counts haven’t gone up yet because we haven’t figured out a way to effectively advertise this year.  Secondly, we’re running out of money rather quickly.  That’s bad.  Tyler Johnson is our new Sales Manager, and Durrie is now going to manage Programming, which makes really good sense in my mind.  Tyler has some ideas for Sales, and Durrie will be a good PD.  Now we just need Marketing and Technical covered and we’re golden.

We’re having a Haunted House!  Details soon.

In the meantime….continue listening to www.klikradio.org.  I will post again when I don’t have so much homework.

March 2008 was the only month, other than this month, that I have only posted one blog entry during the entire month. Fairly impressive.

From a marketing standpoint, Silence for Sound did not increase our listener counts. While it did do a good deed for our bank account (a good $1000 deed), it didn’t do much for listenership. Furthermore, according to Facebook and Google Analytics, there seems to be a downhill slope of listener numbers and page views. Isn’t summer over yet????

This experience has opened up a new can of worms: how are we going to handle future summers? If we can’t produce more than 10 simultaneous listeners over the summer, how on earth would we get sponsors? One thought I had was that KLIK simply shuts down over the summer and we rent out the studio to voice talents by the hour or something.

Since late April 2008, we have served 1,101 unique listeners, had 2,572 overall tune-ins, and 9,108 connections.

That brings me to my next topic of interest: marketing. How can we market over the summer? We’ve tried Facebook Ads, recently MySpace launched a system of self-serve marketing (but it sucks!) We thought these would be the best avenues because they get people right where we need them: their computers. One thing I think we missed was the podcasting. We never got around to figuring out an intuitive podcast system, so people sort of gave up.

There is also the problem of our studio. Our lease is up in February, but I doubt we’ll want to renew. We don’t have any ventilation, and if I have to duplicate another front door key I will stab something with it. The method of getting people into the building we have now is not as good as it should be. And I can’t breathe when I first walk in because the air is so stale. Working with FCYB is hot, stuffy, and disgustingly uncomfortable. You really have to want to do it.

On the other hand, I’m fairly certain we lease the cheapest office in Fort Collins. However, I am actively on the look for other offices that may come up and appear to be a good rate. Which brings me to my next question: do we make our 2009 grant for general operating or a marketing campaign? I can’t decide.

I still have to finish writing my Bohemian Foundation grant report which is due next month (6 or 7 days depending on how you look at it.)

Any comments that don’t have to do with Viagra or free downloads?

Wow! I’m sure the people at the Public Service drive-up weren’t too happy with me when I had like $620 in cash to deposit as well as probably 30 checks which summed up to about $600-ish. I don’t remember the exact total of each kind, but I do know that we made $1,063. After expenses!

Extremely exciting!  That means we have like 4 months of expenses completely, 100% paid for.  So thanks to everyone who came out, bid on stuff, watched the bands, etcetera.  I’m guessing we’ll do another fundraiser of some kind this coming winter break, but we don’t know what it’ll be yet.  Until then, hopefully we’re good to go!

FCYB has recently been listed on GoodSearch! That means that, if you use GoodSearch, we get a penny every single time you search the Internet. 🙂 All you have to do to get started is click on the logo above. It will automatically set the charity to us, and we’ll receive a whole penny everytime you search. You can even add it to your Firefox search bar, download their toolbar, and if you use the GoodShop, we can make even more! 😀 So, if you want to support KLIKradio without lifting a finger, that’s the way to do it.

So today we got a check.  We do not want to say who from, because that would mean I would have to send my ridiculously-worded and incredibly-sarcastic blog posts for approval.  Yikes!

Needless to say, ’twas a sizeable check.  We spent $680 of it at Guitar Center today purchasing a Peavey PV10 audio mixer ($250), three Shure SM58 microphones ($100 a pop!…times three), a pack of windscreens ($10), and all necessary cables (yes, it is possible to spend $120 in cables.  We just proved it!).

I will post a picture in a separate blog post at some future date…and I would like to include a quote from one our DJs who instantly instant messaged me after seeing the stuff:

Okay Jake, what is this new $h*t on the table??

Apparently people don’t like change.

Tonight we have just come up with the title of our summer 2008 fundraiser: Silence for Sound!  :)  It was coined by our in-15-hours-volunteer-coordinator Elizabeth (the former president) and VP/auction organizer Justina.

I whipped up a web site for it.  While it’s not a stellar piece of web work, it gets the job done.  For the most part.  More information will be coming up on the blog as time goes by.  There are 18 days for us to get things lined up for this thing…so hopefully it will go over well! 😀

It’s been awhile since I’ve commented on a factual aspect of FCYB. So here goes!

Anyone who has paid any attention to the organizational structure of FCYB will notice that Marketing and Sales are two different divisions. In a normal company, both for-profit and non-profit, they are generally one in the same. Many are going, “I don’t get it! Why is FCYB different?” The simple answer: our age.

We have to adapt to our age in a lot of different ways. This is one of them. Being a salesperson generally means that you have to have a cell phone, be accessible, and chances are you have to have a car. That runs. And a license. Believe it or not, finding teenagers that are good salespeople and have access to their own transportation isn’t as easy as it sounds.

If you’re asking “Why do you need a car?” It’s simple. Business owners do not respond to e-mails or paper mail, any many of them barely pick up the phone. They do, however, respond to a personal visit. Thus, the need for a car.

Now, Marketing people do not necessarily need to be able to drive to successfully market the station. Many just do marketing within the schools, which they often get to by school bus, public bus, parent, or some other form of transportation. Some also do marketing on community bulletin boards and, of course, our fairly effective Old Town chalk spree.

Photo by Justina Cline

So…with all this in mind, it made sense to us to break up the Marketing and Sales groups. They still work very closely together (sort of, at least they should if anyone did anything :P)

Welp…that’s it for me for now 🙂 Hopefully our check came…and if Vic reads this…your check is in the mail as well.

Import Specialists officially is our second sponsor! They will be specifically sponsoring David Hodson’s show on Tuesdays from 4:30 to 5:30, as well as Power Hour on Fridays from 5:30 to 6:30. Congrats to those shows for picking up a sponsor! You will also hear some plugs for them throughout the day as well.

You can find Import Specialists at 2829 LaPorte Ave., just west of Poudre High School. Give them a call, 482-5774.