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Governor Asks MAB to Join Complete Count

By: Karole L. White, President/CEO
Michigan Association of Broadcasters

The Census is not just important to the state, its citizens and your audience, it is vital to broadcasting. Market rankings are determined by Nielsen using the census in part. Getting a strong and complete count may help you maintain or improve your market rating and your advertising dollars. So, to help promote a complete count is actually helping your station and company.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer has asked the members of the Michigan Association of Broadcasters to help Michigan get a Complete Count. The Governor appointed me as your representative on the Complete Count Committee.

We are asking every station to help in their own way. If you have daily news, a weekly news program, on-air personalities or if you do editorials please feature different stories about the census count. Some project ideas will be provided on the MAB website shortly. Your station could work with others in your community and have a call center where experts can answer the census question from citizens. You could sponsor a Stand Up and BE Counted day at a local library to answer questions. Get your creative people on this. I know you can and will do something unique to your station. You will receive a survey electronically in the next few days. Fill out and return it with you the name of your Complete Count team leader. We will be reporting participation back to the Governor. This is why we will be asking you to estimate the cash value of your activities.

This year more than every we need to show the value of Michigan Broadcasting to our state as they look for ways to solve road funding. The Governor and some of the lawmakers have mentioned expanding the sales tax. They say nothing is off the table. We need to continue to prove our worth. Promoting a complete count helps tell the story.

Some of you may get an advertising buy from the Federal Census Bureau. It will be focused in certain hard to count areas. Whether you get a federal buy or not, we all need to pitch in for our own good. The Michigan Census Committee is separate from the Federal Census Bureau and operates under separate budgets.

National and regional marketers plan their media based in part by DMA. To move from your ranking to a lower one cause some of your to loose advertising dollars. More info to come.

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