Spokane North Notes
 
A weekly bulletin of the Spokane-North Rotary Club
May 23, 2016
 
Editors: Chuck Rehberg and Sandy Fink
Photo: Sandy Fink
Program Coordinator: Brad Stark
 
          No meeting: The club will not meet on Memorial Day, May 30, but of course will gather Thursday night, June 2, at The Backyard, 1811 W. Broadway, for the annual fund-drive dinner.
 
          Names, please: Each club member is asked to bring 4-5 guests to the fund-drive dinner.  To facilitate quick check-in, please e-mail your guest list to Nancy Hanson or Jon Heideman.  The club hopes to have 140 attendees.  As of May 23, only 42 names were registered.  Fund-drive coordinator Jodi Harland said another $1,000 corporate gift has been received, adding to last week’s total of $18,000.  The fund goal is $25,000.
 
          When we meet again for lunch: A luncheon meeting is scheduled June 6 to hear GU political science professor Blaine Garvin. 
 
          Future leader: Chris Lynch reported that the club will sponsor Abby Colestock, a North Central valedictorian, at the District 5080 Rotary Youth Leadership Academy (RYLA) at Selkirk College in British Columbia in July.
 
          Fore!-play:  Team captain Dave Hayward reported that the club’s team in the big Spokane Valley Rotary Club golf tournament May 17 at The Trailhead in Liberty Lake finished the 9-hole event with a three-under-par score of 30 – seven pars, one birdie and an eagle on the team’s last hole.  Hayward was joined by Chad Haverkamp, Steve Boharski and Chuck Rehberg.  The winning team finished at 7 under par.
 
Most listeners still ‘touch that dial’ every week
 
          The setting was picturesque – the main ballroom at The Lincoln Center, with the club’s Rotary banners hanging proudly over the main stage.
 
          So the luncheon topic May 23 was a non-photogenic medium…radio.
 
          Dianah Brubaker Ellis, senior multi-media strategist for the seven-station KXLY Radio Group, discussed how strongly radio still matters in a digitized era awash with syndicated consolidations and personalized music streaming services.
 
          Ellis, a Havre, Mont., native, has had a 27-year marketing career, 24 years with KXLY in sales and promotions director prior to her current assignment.
 
          She themed her talk “Perception Vs. Reality,” noting that while nation-wide surveys show that advertisers think radio “reaches” 64 percent of all Americans weekly, Nielsen research puts the number at 93 percent.
 
          Ellis said the 93 percent total also holds for “millennials” – ages 18 to 34 – who also are targeted with streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify.  “They continue to listen to radio,” she said, adding that the local listener totals “are pretty close to the national” and the numbers hold “fairly steady from year to year.”
 
          Also, “while up at the lake cabin,” or in times of disaster, like last November’s wind-caused power outages, many people still rely on transistor radios, she said.
 
          Ellis described the family of KXLY stations, ranging from news and sports on AM affiliates, to country music and several genres of rock music on FM.  North Idaho residents even have a “Kootenai” station focused on Coeur d’Alene and environs.
 
          One measure of listener loyalty, she said, is how many fans show up when stations do live, remote broadcasts.
 
          One pitch advertisers is affordability.  “You can get a whole week of morning drive time” for a pretty low price, Ellis said.
 
          She sums up her theme on perception vs. reality by saying “there are a lot of misconceptions on how effective radio is.”