System/Policy

At 10, Station Resource Group has more for Tom and Terry to do

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You seldom hear that members of an association are voluntarily doubling their dues, but that’s about what the Station Resource Group is doing. Ten years after an informal group of station managers, the Dallas 15, hired Tom Thomas and Terry Clifford, the stations are raising their commitment and buying more of the consultants’ time. When Thomas and Clifford return home from last weekend’s annual SRG retreat — Aug. 18-22 in Park City, Utah — they’ll bring back a “to do” list and authorization to spend full time on it. Until now, SRG has taken about two-thirds of their time, Thomas estimates.

Programs/Content

Arts on public television: signatures of past, present and generations to come

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Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein wowed a lunchtime audience at the Public Television Annual Meeting in June 1994 with her personal testimonial for public TV, relating her experience in terms far more vivid than the bland, generic phrases usually used to describe and defend the medium. Wasserstein received the Pulitizer as well as a Tony and other awards for her play The Heidi Chronicles in 1989. From the podium at the PBS conference, Wasserstein looked out on a vast dark room full of noshing broadcasters … When WNET invited me to speak to this intimate little luncheon in Orlando today, I jumped on a plane because I had nightmare visions of an imminent merger, and Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse hosting the MacNeil/Lehrer Report and Charlie Rose opening his show by singing, “Be my guest, be my guest . .

System/Policy

Court backs NTIA in Fordham case

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When the new administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration drew a “bright line” against equipment grants to a station that broadcasts a weekly religious service, that was okay with the Constitution, a federal judge has ruled. Larry Irving’s decision to make WFUV-FM ineligible for NTIA grants was “within the bounds of the law,” said Judge Charles R. Richey of the District Court for Washington, D.C., in a summary judgment June 29 [1994]. WFUV’s long struggle with NTIA took an unexpected turn last year when Irving, a new Clinton Administration appointee, reversed a previous NTIA ruling and told the Fordham University station that it was ineligible because of the Mass that it airs every Sunday morning. The rest of the Bronx station’s schedule is secular. Fordham, which took NTIA to court last October, has not decided yet whether it will appeal Judge Richey’s ruling, according to WFUV’s Washington attorney Margot Polivy.