It took many years and a lot of work to turn it around.
I'm going to skip the details of how we got to today, other than that I purchased the company in 1991. Suffice it to say that what we did to grow our little company out of bankruptcy in 1983 is not much different from the way we operate the company today. It takes hard work, a dedicated staff, fiscal patience, and a strong community involvement.
Local radio reflects retail. When retail is down, as in this past year, then radio revenues are down. That means cutting expenses and staff. In small markets, there are not a lot of staff to begin with; we live very close to the profit-loss line. Add in the extra expenses this past year for new and retroactive copyright tariffs and there was no profit.
Our small main office is in Hamilton Township. We are one of the largest employers, with about 25 staff for our two stations there. Our new Peterborough studios have about 15 staff.
We desperately need more staff, but with the state of the marketplace we can't afford to add. Yet when I have to figure out how much to pay in copyright fees for each of our stations, we are classed as bigger than a typical medium-sized station.
I can tell you that we are small and that the “small” classification should be closer to $2 million than to $1.25 million.
Before I get to talking about copyright, I'd like to spend just a minute to explain how a small-market radio station survives.
We build loyalty. Not only do we daily talk about the community and promote the activities of community groups, but the staff become personally involved in the community. We talk on air about what matters. If it is snowing, we talk about what school buses are cancelled; if council voted to limit garbage to two bags, we put the mayor on; if the 401 is shut down, we tell the best detour to use and give a toll-free number to call to update us.
We do not subscribe to a costly national news service. Most days, each of our newscasts is 100% local. We are part of the disaster plan for the various municipalities. When the two water pumps went down recently in the town of Port Hope and an emergency was declared, the town coordinator called me at home to set up airing messages to residents.
Local emphasis extends throughout our programming. The Community Booster Club twice an hour promotes community events at no charge. We put community groups on air to discuss their event. This is not just a casual relationship. Their success helps build loyalty to our brand and ultimately helps build a better community.
For example, the Northumberland United Way supports 16 member agencies. We promote the United Way itself and each of its member agencies, and each fall we air a weekly update with the campaign chair.
The Canadian Blood Service.... Since my leukemia marrow transplant in 1987, we do live broadcasts every month from the blood donor clinic.
Our stations were instrumental in the success of the first annual anti-bullying awareness event sponsored by the Northumberland Youth Advisory Council. Through an on-air campaign and interviews with those involved, we brought county-wide awareness to the issue of bullying.
Relay For Life is the Canadian Cancer Society's largest fundraiser in Northumberland County. Our stations have sponsored this event every year, and in 2011 alone the event raised over $270,000.
There are many community initiatives that our stations support financially and through on-air campaigns. I could give you a list of community groups that we've worked with in the past year, but in the interests of your time, I'll not read them here.
All our staff walk the talk. We are all directly involved in many community groups. I myself am past chair of the United Way campaign, the United Way board, the Hospital Foundation board, the Waterfront Festival, and the Cobourg Rotary Foundation Committee, amongst others.
In addition to many charitable organizations, Northumberland has a large arts and music community, and our stations make their time available to help promote their activities. For example, Summerhouse, a local rock band: our station was the key supporter of the release of their debut CD, and they are interviewed and perform on air regularly. Zack Werner and his band Haymaker: our station hosted studio live performances and interviews with Haymaker during the release of their debut album and subsequent fundraising efforts with the ALS Society of Canada. For Blue Sky Revival, our concerts to raise environmental awareness featuring an all-Canadian line-up of established musicians and emerging artists, we provided an on-air campaign as well as on-site support with organizational assistance and an emcee.
We have developed a great relationship with people in the music industry over the years. They understand that our stations want performers to be successful and that we will do what we can to promote those artists.
Community extends to our high schools and our community colleges. Each semester we provide co-op training for three to four students from the four high schools. Each spring we also provide co-op training to students taking various radio courses at Loyalist College in Belleville and others. Our staff sit on various advisory boards at Loyalist College.
Pineridge Broadcasting is not some big corporation with a head office in a lofty office tower. We don't have vice-presidents. We don't have unlimited funds for staff. We are community folk not afraid to get our hands dirty. We want to be a good promoter. We would like to do even more in our communities. We want to be a good employer. We'd like to hire more staff. We believe in supporting the artists who make the songs that allow us to put a product on the street. But we believe in fair play, and I don't think being forced to pay multiple times for the same thing is fair.
In the past we received music from the record labels on 45s, and then, even up to four years ago, on CD. We've always had the music from the labels and we've never had to pay for it. It doesn't make sense that because they now force us to download digital tracks we have to pay for them. In each of our stations the music is downloaded to the very same computer that then plays it back over the airwaves. The only other time a clip might be copied is to create a promotional ad to tell listeners about the artist.
If anything has changed in the 39 years I've been in radio, it is that we have reduced to almost nil any need to copy music. I told you of our shortages of staff. Is it fair play, then, that you would pass a bill that requires our company to reassign one of our very busy staff members to erase and re-record every piece of music in our library every 30 days? You're just adding prohibitive costs to our operations. Let's say I have 3,000 songs in our musical library and let's say they average three and a half minutes. That's 10,500 minutes. When re-recording the music, we'll have to do it in real time, which would take, let's say, 175 hours. If a person works a solid seven hours each day, they're going to take 25 days to re-record that library and they're going to have to do it every month.
I'm asking you to remove the requirement that music be deleted every 30 days. The resources required to do that are just beyond the scope of possibility for a small operation like ours. Simply put, the 30-day limit doesn't make sense, nor does the fact that we should be paying any reproduction tariff.
Folks in the music industry know how important radio airplay is. That's why they've always worked with us to get performers on the air. We know how important music is. That's why we pay our core copyright fees for broadcasting; that's why we promote the artists. It's a fair balance.
To conclude, we're a small private broadcaster trying to make our communities better. We're trying to be good corporate citizens, we're trying to be good employers, and we're trying to grow our business. We promote the music and the artists we play. We pay the copyright royalties. But ever-increasing tariff payments are threatening our ability to do all of these things.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I'm happy to answer any questions you have.