This is the RBR TVBR Coronavirus In Focus podcast.
Here's your host, Radio and Television Business Report Editor-in-Chief, Adam R. Jacobson.
Well, hello again and welcome to the RBR and TVBR Coronavirus In Focus podcast.
This limited podcast series shines a light on the local heroes of radio and TV who are working hard
to protect and serve their communities while also ensuring the safety of their news team.
Today we're talking to Bill Prescott. He's the General Manager of Lost Coast Communications
in beautiful Humboldt County, California. He oversees a group of radio stations that
includes a heritage adult alternative station, K-HUM. There's also Alternative K-SLUG.
There's The Point at 100.3 and 102.7 and something very unique, 94.1 The Lounge.
There's also The Lost Coast Outpost, which is an online news organization. And we'll talk a
little bit about that later in the podcast. Welcome, Bill. Thank you, Adam. Good to be here.
You have a unique situation. You are in Humboldt County. And for those that aren't familiar with
the area, it's about a four hour drive north of San Francisco, about six hours south of Portland,
Oregon. It's very rural. It's very beautiful. And it's very much a forgotten area when it comes to
national advertisers and to some extent, people in California who don't really look at that area as
one of economic growth aside from some of the greener industries, if you will.
What can you say about where your group of stations were prior to the COVID-19 outbreak?
And a little shelter in place rules that were put in effect by Governor Newsom. And then we'll get
into just kind of where things are right now. Sure. We finished up 2019 with record year for sales,
just really holding strong. And then we started off pretty soft in 2020. And then once COVID hit,
it was just let's throw out the rule book. We got to pivot and adjust. Things are changing daily.
And it's been, I'll say it's been hard, but honestly, right now looking at here on May 1st,
we're happy with where we are, all things considered.
We did record this on Friday, May 1st, and it was roughly seven to eight weeks after the shelter in
place rules went to effect in California. Myself being on the central coast was witness to a lot of
rapid shutdowns. In the Arcata, Eureka, McKinleyville area, you're probably relying
a lot on local business for your advertising because A, you're not in a nationally recognized
market when it comes to radio. I don't see any Nielsen or Eastland ratings coming out of your area.
Yeah, we get some national money, but it is small.
So what does that mean when all of a sudden all of the local businesses that you rely on
are relatively stopped from doing what they normally do every day?
Well, that really, we took it right back to our sales reps and we went out and reached out to
everybody and said, hey, business owners, how are you changing? What are you doing? How can we help?
And we dug in like we found as an example of one of a classic business in old town Eureka in the
cute little part of town called Bell Star. They went from never not even knowing how to operate a
website. And within a couple of weeks, they built a website and are now selling their clothes online.
And so we were able to, their budget got a little smaller, but they also said, hey, we've just
transferred from being a retail store to an online store. We need to advertise. We need to let the
community know this. So a lot of people have maintained their advertising dollars because
they've changed their business model. They're changing, like our restaurant customers are now
doing curbside takeout. They need to let people know that. We did have some hard hits. Some of
the businesses that just closed down completely, like there's some casinos up here. They're good
dollars. And they said, hey, we have to close completely. Ironically though, they came back
and maybe they closed down at the beginning of March. But then they came back and said, hey,
we want to support the community. We want to let the community know that we're here for them. So
they actually put in buys that were decent to let the community know, hey, we're still here,
even though we're closed right now, we want to support the community and we're supporting our
first responders and all our medical people and all that sort of thing. So it's been pretty,
pretty cool that people have come back after being taken a couple of weeks off and they're
adjusting what their business is. And we've been very flexible as far as
how we can support the essential businesses going. Like say your hardware stores, they're still
doing a pretty good clip because everybody's stuck at home gardening like never before.
And so some of them have come in big saying, hey, we're doing good. We're going to keep going. So
it's encouraging. Another part is we are a small community. Everybody kind of knows each other in
that sense. And so it's really been a powerful part of radio because right when this started
happening, the phones are just ringing off the hook on the four stations. The DJs were like
exhausted from talking because so many people were calling because people, they couldn't get this
experience on Spotify. They can't get this on YouTube. I mean, they were listening to the radio
to hear what's going on in their town. And even with our sales plummeting, we were able to get
that experience. And so as a community organization, we're just, I felt like we're just crushing it.
We were really doing the real work. Hearing that is awesome. And you did mention two key words,
pivot and adjust. But at the same time, there could be a real difficult financial situation.
And while you're serving the community, you still have to keep the lights on and pay your employees.
Have you looked into the PPP? Are you getting any government assistance? Or are you at a comfortable
position where against an NBC affiliate that's very strong in the marketplace, against the local
newspaper and against other radio stations serving at least the Eureka Arcata area,
are you doing well? Are you doing better than you thought when this first started in March?
I definitely think we're doing better than we thought we'd be doing. That said, we have applied
for a PPP loan. No word yet. I'm not thinking like we would have to do layoffs or anything.
And then the other part that spikes to the Lost Coast Outpost part of our business plan,
which is the online news source. And that's got enormous traffic right now. And we can go to
anybody who's open, who wants to be open, who wants to keep their face out there and say,
the traffic on this website will knock your socks off. So I think we're really diverse. And the
offerings, we can walk into a business or someone and offer them. So that's, I think, really keeping
us, you know, it's keeping the money flowing in. I'm looking at some server statistics that you
had shared with me. I'm just blown away. I mean, we're looking at local sessions and the numbers of
300,000, 400,000 during the period where people were pretty much in a lockdown shelter at home
position. I think that speaks volumes for what you can do aside from what you do on the air.
And I'm wondering if this is a great opportunity for others in some of the smaller, unrated markets
to pretty much tap into. Yeah. I mean, the traffic is built organically over the last,
that web site or the Lost Coast Outpost has been in existence nine years. And, you know, it just
has become, it's got five full-time journalists, and it's become the most trusted news source,
you know, like many small communities, we've had a lot of media consolidation, a lot of corporate
big guys coming in, buying up the TV stations, your newspapers, this and that. So this independent
website is the most trusted news source in the community. And the traffic, I mean, we only have
an all-Pumble County way of 135,000 people. But we're seeing, you know, this huge amount of
page views of unique users are to the roof. And we're even pulling, you know, people from Sacramento
are keeping an eye on what's happening in Humboldt through the Lost Coast Outpost. So, you know, it's
really been a great resource for sales and for our community. I want to talk a little bit about the
four on-air brands, because you did mention Spotify. And one of the arguments that I've been very
vocal in making is that while my audio use is certainly up when it comes to my listening to
whatever I choose because I'm home, it's not necessarily to a radio station on my radio,
which I actually have on my home office desk or through the Alexa device in the living room and
kitchen area. It could be Spotify, but there's a certain limit to what you would get from that.
And I liken it to replacing a five CD changer or, you know, a jukebox of your favorite record albums.
Radio does something different, and you certainly do something unique and different that speaks to
your communities across Humboldt County in your four brands. How would you define your
stations and why they're a unique draw and why even in this time of urgency, in this COVID-19
period, they stand out like no other stations in your marketplace?
Well, a big picture, you know, kind of all of them together are, you know, we are live and local DJs,
you know, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. Well, not the weekends, but Monday through Friday.
And even, you know, the other no one else really does that around here. They have a morning DJ till 10,
and then they just put it on, you know, on the computer. So and stuff is happening in our community
in the afternoon, you know, people are still calling in. And, you know, there's the opportunity
to share knowledge again, you know, it's a small community. So like in the last two weeks, we've had,
we interviewed the head of community development for the town of Arcata, and they were very
excited about that. And so we've had a lot of interviews with the city of Arcata. We've interviewed
the head of the Chamber of Commerce for the city of Eureka. Just yesterday, we had our county
supervisor, Rex Bone, interviewed, I mean, like long, like a 35 minute interview that you're not
going to get that anywhere else, you know, they're going to put out a press release, they're going to
put a little sound bite on the Channel 3 news. But nobody's going to sit down with this guy and just
think all our stations are capable of bringing to the community. You have some unique programming
and one of these stations 94.1 the lounge. I don't think I've seen anything like it in any market,
you know, alone in part of rural California. What exactly is that? And if it's such a unique
station, well, in a normal economy, would it be difficult to sell and try to bring advertising
in let alone now? Right. It's actually kind of the brainchild of our he used to be our K-Hum,
which is like an adult contemporary station kind of hippied out. And but he was the afternoon DJ,
he was getting burned out, wanted to do something different. And he loved kind of swing music,
the music you'd hear in like an old school lounge in the 50s, you know, like your crooners like
Sinatra, Dean Martin, and then the female vocalists of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. But then he
took that kind of genre, but then mixed it with more modern music, like I say, TV corporation,
or even more stuff like Diana Carl and things that have a, you know, they have like, it's like old
style music, but it has a techno beat behind it. And it is just unique. And it's so funny as I go
to, you know, I go to chamber mixers or whatever, and I'm like, who here listens to the lounge,
and you're always surprised that all these people love the station. However, it's so hard to sell,
because I can walk into another business say this is a station, the point I can say this is a classic
rock station, they say I love classic rock, here's, here's my ad, you know, so trying to
explain it. And the only way to do it is just to say, Hey, man, put this when you're driving
home from work, but I've been 94.1. And give me a call, what do you think, you know, and it's really
interesting. The demographic is there's lots of parents who listen to it. There's like, I have
little kids, they love to listen to this old kind of, you know, kind of funky music compared to
they're like, Oh, no, I don't need to hear AC DC ever again, dad, you know, so it's really, it's
just a fun eclectic thing. And that's what Humboldt's about is people, people who live in Humboldt
generally don't fit in most other places, you know, so we kind of how it goes, you know,
but you know, we can talk for hours about what life behind the Redwood curtain is all about.
But this is a good point to conclude this podcast. So before I do, I just wanted to ask in terms of
just the overall state of affairs, as we are in the first week of May, most people may be familiar
with some of the microbrews that come out of Humboldt County, they might be familiar with
Humboldt State University, what can you say about life today and where things are going in the next
month and how Los Coast communication has really intertwined itself as being a community member
that cares about his community and is also delivering the things that they need to move forward?
Well, you know, first and foremost, we are a rural and resilient community, you know, people are up
here are tough as nails. You know, if you're if you ever come here in the winter, I hope you like
rain like it just pours. It never gets hot. You know, if we ever see 80 degrees, that's like a
miracle, but it also never freezes. So it's just a unique place. And the people who've made this
their home are really here to help each other. And, you know, like right now, we're running all this,
you know, obviously, the food bank has taken a big hit because there's a lot of people out of work.
So we I literally called up the head of the food bank and say, what can we do? How can we
run some PSA's for you guys? Like, we're just going to we got an inventory, right? Let's promote
you guys and get some get some help, you know, and I think that's what everyone's doing across the
board and the people who have resources are sharing them. Actually, Humboldt State University
mentioned they they're doing a big kind of COVID health awareness thing and they're they're buying
ads, you know, and you're like, OK, this is good. So we're it's I think we're actually really well
positioned so far. We've had 51 cases confirmed out of 135,000 people, which we're thinking is
pretty darn good. We're fairly isolated. And yeah, like up here, people are pretty hippied out.
People have gardens. They have kind of we're used to having power outages. We're used to having
earthquakes. So people have supplies and stuff. So, you know, I think like overall, we're pretty
well positioned as a community to to kind of get through this. And, you know, I think it's all just
like when people are getting their their checks from the government, their the stimulus checks,
there's a huge push like don't just take that money and, you know, go to a national big box store
and spend it. No, go to these local businesses that are open, the restaurants that you love,
go there. You know, the people at the local hardware store, go spend the money with those guys.
And that kind of idea is so strong here, you know, so I think we're going to be OK.
Well, I'm really glad to have spoken with you. Why don't you take a drive and go to beautiful
Humboldt County, California, tune to one of the four Lost Coast Communications radio stations
while you're there. Thank you very much, Bill Prescott, General Manager.
Well, thank you very much, Adam. I appreciate it. And I got to say, all four stations are streaming,
so you can you can listen anytime. Take a little bit of Humboldt home with you.
And thanks. Thanks to you for listening to the RBR and TV VR Coronavirus and Focus podcast.
We invite you to visit the Radio and Television Business Report at RBR.com each business day
for the freshest media news from Washington to Wall Street and your street. I'm Adam R.
Jacobson in Delray Beach, Florida. Have a great day and stay safe.