Fields asks support for his bill — or he'll give away vacant channels

Originally published in Current, April 8, 1996
By Steve Behrens

With a nudge from Rep. Jack Fields, and without better alternatives, public TV managers are rallying behind his trust-fund bill as "a foot in the door" of Congress.

If public broadcasters haven't developed a consensus behind his bill later this month, Fields (R-Tex.) warned them in a speech March 25, he will drop the legislation and recommend auctioning of all vacant reserved noncommercial educational TV channels — to reduce the federal deficit, not to endow a pubcasting trust fund.

As of last week, there were still sharp divisions within public TV over aspects of the legislation that Fields proposes to replace 25 years of appropriations to CPB. Fields' staff postponed a scheduled April 3 meeting with pubcasting reps so that public TV could work toward greater consensus.

Though pubcasters may not be able to keep Fields as their champion--and some may not really want the help he offers--public TV leaders were encouraged by what they heard from other members of Congress during lobbying visits after the APTS meeting.

Capitol Hill's reaction to their visit changed completely since the last APTS Capitol Hill Day in early 1995, says Marilyn Mohrman-Gillis, APTS vice president. In 1995, they got either a cold reception or no reception at all in many offices, she reports. This year, most got warm receptions.

The trust fund idea was well received, too, and legislators typically agreed that annual CPB appropriations should continue until the trust fund is adequately capitalized, according to Mohrman-Gillis and station reps.

That is also what the station reps support, they told APTS unanimously at its Washington meeting last month. They back the trust fund concept, but think the Fields bill, which would initiate the trust fund with a maximum of $1 billion, couldn't adequately replace CPB appropriations.

The greatest divisions among the stations now concern two issues, according to APTS and station leaders:

whether stations should be permitted to accept payment for airing programs, as the Fields bill proposes, and
whether to go with the Fields bill and give up the idea of generating trust-fund capital from excess ATV channels, as the station-based national organizations propose.

To clarify its reading of stations' views on these issues, APTS polled its members by fax last week. Results were not available at Current press time.

Selling airtime

Stations split almost equally on the bill's paid-programming provision in a show of hands at the APTS meeting, according to Mohrman-Gillis. (The meeting was closed to the press.) About half opposed the provision while the other stations wanted to amend it to assure that the paid programming abides by FCC underwriting guidelines. Several days later, the PBS Executive Committee voted 15-1 to oppose the idea, but it remains somewhat intangible as a business opportunity.

No one has gone public with an offer to pay stations for broadcasting programs, though all eyes are on the operators of the Discovery Channel cable network. Discovery Communications execs have talked privately with several stations about providing programs to public TV stations, or even entire schedules to overlapped PTV stations, says Hal Bouton, g.m. of WTVI in Charlotte, N.C. Bouton is a member of the Earned Income Group, a group of stations that has been active in lobbying Fields and other members of Congress for marketplace revenue opportunities.

Discovery Communications spokeswoman Katherine Urbon confirmed that Discovery execs have been talking with some public TV stations about giving them programs at no charge, and airing underwriting credits as part of the deal. In recent years, Discovery has publicly proposed program-sharing deals in which PBS would pay Discovery, not the other way around.

American Program Service also has had "really preliminary and general" talks with Discovery, at the behest of several public TV stations, but the idea of payments to stations has not come up, says APS spokeswoman Jan Goldstein.

Mike Hardgrove, president of KETC, St. Louis, and a leader of the Earned Income Group, says airing paid programming for an appropriate cable network could be a "win-win" situation: stations would get good programming, and the cable network and its advertisers would get extra exposure for their ads (toned down as underwriting credits).

What about fears that public TV's viewers and donors would find it harder to distinguish between public TV and commercial channels if both carry Discovery Channel programs, This Old House and other shared programs?

"The horse is out of the barn," says Hardgrove. "It's started ... there's no way to turn back."

To Nebraska ETV's Ron Hull, the idea of paid programming is anathema. "I'm totally for non-market-driven programming," he says. "If you're going to start selling time, then you give up your editorial chairmanship, and it puts you right smack in the commercial ranks. You just become a venue, nothing more."

Should they pursue the ATV option?

On the question of how to capitalize the trust fund, station views were blurred considerably at the APTS meeting by failure of an electronic keypad system that was tallying the straw polls, as well as by the complexity of options put forth.

Malfunctions of the keypads, which APTS and PBS have used successfully in similar past meetings, was a "big disappointment," says Mohrman-Gillis. Votes on some questions registered only two-thirds or half of the station reps present. APTS began calling for votes by hand as it became clear the keypads weren't working.

In keypad votes, majorities favored seeking improvements in the Fields bill, and rejected the earlier APTS/NPR/PBS/PRI proposal to Fields: that the trust fund would take control of all but one ATV channel assigned to public TV in multichannel markets and capitalize itself with revenues from those channels. Consultants advised APTS that the plan would generate capital most quickly, after the turn of the century, if the trust fund could sell a string of ATV channels in 29 major markets as a package to a fledgling commercial network.

This rejection puzzled APTS, Mohrman-Gillis said, because stations had been heavily favoring the APTS/NPR-endorsed proposal based on "mandatory" use of selected ATV channels. The number of stations backing that proposal shrunk suddenly from 134, before the meeting, to 18, in the keypad vote. Instead, the majority was now favoring was a new option, a "voluntary" approach to the ATV spectrum, which Fields has indicated he could accept: overlap stations could voluntarily donate their ATV channels to the trust fund.

"Clearly, we believe, a number of managers did not understand what 'voluntary' meant," says Mohrman-Gillis. APTS officials give the "voluntary" option very little chance of economic success. No station has signed up to donate an extra ATV channel, and doing so would be tantamount to going out of business a few years later, if Congress doesn't give public TV an exemption and permit public TV stations to keep their existing channels at the end of the ATV transition period, says Mohrman-Gillis.

Fields has opposed that exemption so far, in order to treat commercial and public broadcasters the same, but Jeff Clarke, president of Fields' hometown station, KUHT, said last week that the congressman might be willing to look at an exemption for 30 public TV stations in major markets.

Fields himself opened another possibility involving ATV spectrum during his address to lunching pubcasters March 25.

Forcing some stations to give up their ATV channels for a while--the "mandatory" proposal--is "a difficult philosophic reach for me," Fields said. "On the other hand, we had a base-closing commission," he added, referring to the process that the government used to determine which military bases were surplus and could be closed. "And if you wanted to come up with some type of commission that would decide what licenses would be put into auction, it would be something we would look at."

Perhaps of more immediate importance, Fields indicated he'll consider reinforcing his bill's proposal to capitalize the trust fund by auctioning off vacant public TV channels. APTS and others have questioned whether the vacant channels would bring anywhere near $1 billion at auction. But Fields said he's confident the auction will raise more than $2 billion.

Would he be willing to guarantee to capitalize the trust fund with at least $1 billion?, APTS President David Brugger asked the chairman of the House telecom subcommittee.

"Personally, I would," Fields replied during a brief Q&A period, but he would have to get okays from Speaker Newt Gingrich, House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley and subcommittee members before committing himself to a guarantee.

Fields' ultimatum

Fields got to his main point much earlier in his remarks, which were fed to the APTS meeting via satellite from Dallas.

"I have to share with you that when I come back after Easter recess, I'm going to have to do an evaluation," Fields said, "and if I think the issue is not going to go anywhere this year, I have a responsibility to go to the Speaker and to [House Budget Committee Chairman] John Kasich, and say, 'This spectrum is available, I think it should immediately go into the auction process, because we do have a number of different commercial entities that are interested in it.' "

If public broadcasters don't seize the opportunity to use that spectrum to capitalize the trust fund that he has proposed, Fields said, he'd would be negligent not to turn in the spectrum for auctioning to help reduce the deficit. He noted that he has less than 30 days left in this legislative session, after which he retires.

Fields indicated he would not stick his neck out for pubcasters unless they developed a consensus among themselves. "There's got to be consensus," he told them. "If there's not consensus, someone on the other side of the aisle [Democrats] can delay [legislation]."

Concerns for rural service

Fields' remarks immediately preceded those of Pressler, chairman of both the Senate Commerce Committee and its communications subcommittee.

Pubcasters had hoped to hear that Pressler was introducing a trust fund bill using ATV spectrum as capital, but though he indicated interest in the idea he had no such news. All ATV issues appear to be held up in the broader question of whether any TV station should get temporary channels for the transition to ATV — an issue that Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) is taking into the presidential arena, and which is the subject of complex hearings in Pressler's committee.

But Pressler did raise rural-vs.-urban issues that are sure to come up in his rural-dominated communications subcommittee, where Alaska's Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is a major voice.

Pressler said he's "particularly interested in reforms that will enhance the capabilities and creativity of small-city and rural broadcasters," where pubcasting is especially important.

"I would like to see public broadcasting be a self-sustaining operation," Pressler said, "but I will not forgo oversight responsibilities until I'm satisfied that there are legal and contractual safeguards in place that will protect the financial and programming interests of small-city and rural broadcasters." He said pubcasting should live by universal-access requirements similar to those that telephone companies must follow, that small stations should benefit from a share of enhanced underwriting revenues, and that pubcasting should encourage regional program production. Programming is now "disproportionately produced in the largest media markets," he said.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich also distinguishes between the small and big stations, Fields said earlier. Gingrich "said there should be a distinction between the urban/suburban/big-city broadcaster and the rural broadcaster, and we should find a way to make sure that the rural public broadcaster is able to continue," according to Fields.

PBS opposes paid programming provision

The committee was meeting in executive session March 29 when it considered its position on Rep. Jack Fields' proposal that stations be permitted to accept payment for carrying programming, but released its resolution early in April.

Airing paid programming would jeopardize the noncommercial nature of public TV's programming, "and with it public television's reputation for independence and editorial integrity," said the resolution proposed by WGBH President Henry Becton. These consequences may also jeopardize traditional funding sources, the statement said. "Permitting the broadcast of 'paid programming' is no substitute for the funding public television may lose from reductions in federal and state appropriations."

The resolution passed 15-1, with Jim Pagliarini, g.m. of KNPB, Reno, voting nay. He said he dissented because the resolution was not on the committee's agenda and not introduced during the public session. "My role on the PBS Board is to represent the point of view of my colleagues on any issue that's fairly controversial," he explained. "I don't feel like I had enough time to adequately debate it with other managers."

Pagliarini is also cautious of tilting the "balance of power" within the system. As PBS "centralizes power and authority," he said, "we have to be extremely sensitive in not taking away authority from local stations." If PBS can be trusted to negotiate program deals with Reader's Digest that don't infringe on its independence and noncommercial values, "why do we assume that stations won't exercise the same level of wisdom if cutting a deal with Discovery or A&E?" he asked.

Bob Ottenhoff, PBS executive v.p., sent station managers a memo last week, inviting "comments and insights on this topic."