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We are a nation reeling from natural disasters, a great recession we struggle to turn around, wars, budget cuts in the public sector and significant loss of private sector jobs. These challenges can sink us as individuals and as a nation or bring us opportunities, opportunities to become an even stronger force for humanity than we imagine. While I realize this is not easy to accomplish, I believe it is more important now than ever to unite for the survival of humanity. We need to place our egos aside and look to each other to develop partnerships that will impact us all.
As I reflect on this year, I have been witness to community partnerships focused on creating more jobs in the Central Valley, partnerships focused on strengthening access to health care, partnerships focused on opportunities for better education, partnerships working to improve communication between diverse cultural groups. These partnerships may not be perfect, but there exists a strong common bond between them, to want to improve the quality of life for the Central Valley. Rather than criticize the imperfections, we need to celebrate their beginnings and encourage their progress. Many of you are engaged in these projects and partnerships and because of you our community is becoming a better place to live, work and play. It takes time and trust, as these are not challenges that can be alleviated overnight. What is your role when it comes to creating more jobs, better education, improved health care, etc? Each of us can make a significant difference, not just in this community, but for the world at large. Your civic engagement becomes a lasting legacy.
As the landscape for the nation and the Central Valley changes, so does the landscape for public radio. In order to maintain our competiveness, local stations need to develop more local content valued by the community and content reshaped by technology. The decline in journalism and the massive demographic changes, give way to new listener habits and program content. Valley Public Radio must thoughtfully and reasonably navigate through these challenges to become an even greater and more important community resource. This may mean reallocating resources to support the creation of greater local news, information and music content.
What does this mean for FM89? You may have already noticed that a few of the most popular programs, such as Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Rick Steves, Concierto and Intersection, are rebroadcast in the program schedule. The goal is to maximize the audience for these programs, with greater efficiency. Valley Edition was created this year to focus on a more produced news format, with a greater variety of talk elements. Listeners may also hear both on broadcast and the internet more local reports during Morning Edition and All Things Considered. In addition, news on changes in the programming schedule and special programs are delivered promptly to followers of the station via Facebook and Twitter. If you are a part of these online communities, we hope you’ll consider following FM89 there as well, in order to stay abreast of changes in the fastest way possible. These represent a few of the intentional strategic moves we have implemented not only to improve efficiency but to attract and engage greater audiences and ultimately to better serve our community. Simultaneously this enables the organization to dedicate greater resources for local content, which helps create our uniqueness and importance as a community resource.
As the year comes to a close, we celebrate your important partnership and valuable contributions to our community. I invite you to enjoy the Holiday Specials that have been thoughtfully selected for your listening pleasure. On behalf of everyone at Valley Public Radio, I wish you the best in the coming year and may you have the courage to create a legacy that will not only make others smile, but enrich the lives of many.
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