NORTHERN CALIFORNIAKQED members opt out of voting for board5 other measures on ballot pass by 90% majority- Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff WriterFriday, October 27, 2006 By 2 to 1, KQED members gave up their right to vote for the public television station's board of directors and influence the nonprofit's major corporate decisions Thursday, as the Northern California public broadcaster became one of the last big media institutions where viewers had a vote in an outlet's direction. Despite frequent on-air entreaties to vote over the three-week voting period this month, only 15 percent of KQED's 190,000 members exercised their democratic right -- slightly higher than the 10 percent who cast ballots in past KQED elections station officials said. The last vote was in 1998. KQED's board voted 15-10 to ask members if they wanted to revoke their voting privileges. It is rare that a nonprofit's membership holds such voting power, and business and media experts say that Thursday's result bucks a current trend toward more corporate transparency. "The membership has essentially voted to put itself out of business," said Nora Silver, director of the nonprofit and public management program at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. "With all of the corporate scandals there have been recently, the trend is towards corporations and nonprofits offering more transparency to their constituents." Five other measures on the ballot passed with a 90 percent majority, including changing the name of the organization to Northern California Public Broadcasting to reflect its recent merger with two South Bay stations; extending the term of board members three years beyond their six-year terms; allowing the board to expand, if necessary; enabling the organization to explore more new media avenues; and permitting technical changes in the bylaws that, for example, will allow the board of directors to be notified about meetings by e-mail. "What this told us was that people don't join KQED to vote, they join to support good programming," board president Nick Donatiello said Thursday. He pledged that the board would cast an "even wider net" to attract new board members, and would try to ramp up efforts to involve members. The station has no current plans to expand its board, he said. Only 1 in 10 viewers is a member. "This is a sad day for media democracy and for accountability and the use of our public airwaves," said Jeff Perlstein, executive director of Media Alliance, a San Francisco watchdog organization. "There is now no check on the board. There's no teeth to the member's power. Even if a lot of them didn't use those teeth before, at least they were there." Voting had become too cumbersome and expensive, particularly in mailing ballots to members, a majority of board members said. Modeled after a Berkeley co-op and founded 52 years ago, KQED has evolved into a $60 million enterprise that Donatiello said is too complex to put major corporate decisions to a vote, especially in the new media era where business decisions must be made quickly. Conducting the recent election cost KQED $250,000, or roughly the cost of six months of KQED-FM's "Forum" program hosted by Michael Krasny. Members could vote online, but the station has e-mail addresses for only about 40,000 members, and station leaders felt obtaining the rest would be too expensive. The station recently merged with fellow public TV stations KTEH in San Jose and KCAH in Monterey, forming one of the most-watched public TV enterprises in the nation, with an estimated 2 million viewers. It had been the last major public broadcaster in the country to elect its board members. The public will still be able to attend -- and comment -- at board and committee meetings, and can offer input through the station's community advisory panel. Now, however, board members will select their new colleagues. Anyone can suggest potential board members through the board's nominating committee. Given that disenfranchised members could withhold their financial contributions to the station, nonprofit expert Silver suggested that "this board must over-communicate to its membership. Provide a lot more ways for them to get involved." E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli at sfchronicle.com. Page B - 7URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/27/BAGL2M0VM71.DTL -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20061027/d107d226/attachment.htm>