System/Policy

Appropriation cuts lead to layoffs and furloughs throughout CPB

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CPB has laid off 12 employees and eliminated three vacant positions in a downsizing prompted by the federal budget sequestration and other cuts to its appropriation. The job cuts, announced today, extend across all departments and range from administrative to vice president levels, said Michael Levy, executive v.p. of corporate and public affairs. Taken together, the downsizing reduces CPB’s workforce by 11 percent. CPB will also trim its payroll by requiring all senior vice presidents and executive officers to take one-week furloughs before Sept. 30, the end of CPB’s fiscal year.

System/Policy

Deadlines to relocate, raise money weigh on Pacifica stations

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The Pacifica radio network rarely enjoys a drama-free moment, but with two of its five stations on a tight schedule to find new studios, tensions among network leaders and local volunteers are even higher than usual. Last week Summer Reese, interim executive director of Pacifica, took a redeye from the West Coast, where Pacifica is headquartered, to appear in court in Washington, D.C. The landlord of WPFW, Pacifica’s Washington station, is selling the building that houses the station’s studios to a developer who has plans for a new hotel on the site and needs WPFW to move out of the way. Reese and WPFW leaders have been searching for a new location for months, but the site on which the station had already paid rent has prompted a backlash among station volunteers: The studios are located outside the District of Columbia and shared with a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications. Some WPFW volunteers have gone to court to block that move, and Reese is sympathetic to their cause. Meanwhile, Pacifica’s debt-burdened New York station, WBAI, is also on the hunt for a new home and faces an equally pressing deadline to find one.

System/Policy

Friendly takeover of Spokane’s KSPS

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When the Spokane Public School District was considering selling its PBS station, KSPS, it did not have to look far to find an interested party. On April 10, the school board voted to sell the station for $1 million to the Friends of KSPS, its partner in raising funds for the station since its founding in 1972. The transaction is expected to close in September pending FCC approval. The two groups had been discussing a possible license transfer for about six years, said Mark Anderson, assistant superintendent for the school district. Dwindling state support over the past year expedited a final decision, he said.

Development

A digital revolution for public radio fundraising

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Marketing consultant John Sutton has been forecasting what public radio will look like in 2018, and his predictions, published on his blog RadioSutton since February, have been provocative. Sutton is among the pubradio analysts who believe that federal funding “will be sharply reduced or gone in five years.” He also believes that digital listening will fragment the audience enough that eventually NPR will have to raise money directly from listeners or the current public radio economic model will collapse. Below, he lays out a proposal for overhauling public radio fundraising and how it makes both dollars and sense. Imagine a future in which listeners donate 26 percent more money to public radio at half the cost. Imagine that NPR has nearly $60 million more to invest annually in world-class journalism and development of new programs.

Is this imaginative exercise making you uncomfortable?

System/Policy

PubTV urges commission to drop ‘OET-69’ proposal

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CPB, PBS and the Association of Public Television Stations are jointly opposing a proposal by the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) to use a new software program to analyze television coverage and interference data. The proposal was floated by the commission in February and intended to update the analytical tools the commission will use in preparing for the 2014 broadcast spectrum auctions. In a letter filed with the FCC early this month, the three pubcasting organizations said the proposal would adversely affect many public TV stations by reducing the size of their service areas. Pubcasters were responding to a request for comments on “OET-69,” an FCC bulletin that described the methodology used by TVStudy, the software that the commission proposes to use to analyze coverage and interference among full-service digital and Class A television stations. The current software was implemented in the 1990s for use as stations transitioned from analog to digital broadcasting.

System/Policy

NEA announces 2013 media arts grants; OVEE and AIR projects among recipients

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The National Endowment of the Arts announced $4.68 million in funding to 76 media-arts projects April 23, including new grantees such as the Online Video Engagement Experience (OVEE) developed with CPB funding, a new initiative from the Association of Independents in Radio called Spectrum America and Sonic Trace, a multimedia production at KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., that was created through AIR’s recently concluded Localore project. For a second year, the NEA will continue to support projects that use digital technologies to go beyond traditional broadcasting platforms. In its announcement, the endowment highlighted a $100,000 grant to OVEE, a digital platform that allows web users to interact while watching PBS and local station content. The Independent Television Service developed the technology with support from CPB. AIR also received $100,000 for Spectrum America, a project that will pair media artists with public stations as they experiment with “new approaches to storytelling.”

Sonic Trace, a co-production at KCRW initiated through AIR’s 2012–2013 Localore initiative, received a direct NEA grant of $75,000 to continue exploring the experience of Latino immigrants. NEA also backed digital media projects at NPR, providing $100,000 for music programming and multimedia content.

System/Policy

CPB accepts policy revamp proposal from radio CSG panel; first changes since 2005

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The CPB Board on April 22 unanimously approved changes to its Radio Community Service Grants program for fiscal 2014, including phased-in hikes in nonfederal financial support (NFFS) requirements for most stations, pubradio’s first transparency requirements, qualification changes for minority-status stations and $9 million in financial incentives over five years for mergers and collaborations. Current CSG policies, which govern distribution of some $90.6 million in radio grants for fiscal 2013, were last updated in 2005. Since then, “shifts in technology, audience behavior, demographics, competition, and the economy have dramatically changed the landscape for public media,” said Oregon Public Broadcasting President Steve Bass, a CSG panel member who spoke at the CPB meeting. “That environmental reality was the backdrop for our discussions and influenced our thinking about the CSG program policy that would best serve the interests of stations and better align our system for the future.”

A 20-member CSG panel, more than half of which was made up of general managers from stations, has been crafting the update over the last 14 months. Bruce Theriault, senior v.p. of radio, told the board that more than 200 stations gave feedback on the document.

System/Policy

CPB study to examine public policy implications of spectrum auctions

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CPB has initiated a six-month research project on the upcoming broadcast spectrum auctions that will culminate with publication of a white paper. Mark Erstling, s.v.p. system development, told board members at headquarters April 22 that the paper will have “the same scale and importance” as CPB’s 2012 report to Congress on alternative funding for the system, which it delivered last June. The study will examine multiple complex issues surrounding the auctions, such as preservation of universal service of public broadcasting to all Americans; the role of Community Service Grant policy in spectrum discussions; how much noncommercial spectrum may be necessary in large and overlap markets; the financial implications for individual stations as well as the system as a whole; and station responsibilities to their communities. The intended audience for the paper, Erstling said, will be the CPB Board, station boards and management “who are making the tough decisions” regarding the future of their spectrum; policymakers in state and federal government and other key stakeholders; and the public. The Association of Public Television Stations is assembling a board-level task force to conduct market studies on the auctions, and PBS is undertaking engineering studies and operational assessments, Erstling told the CPB Board.

System/Policy

Kansas City pubTV buys Triple A music station

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A new kind of public media signal expansion will rock Kansas City, Mo., under a license transfer agreement announced April 19 by KCPT. The Missouri-based community licensee is purchasing KTBG-FM, a split-format NPR News and Triple A music station licensed to the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg. KCPT will pay $1.1 million in cash to the university and provide $550,000 worth of in-kind services, according to Kliff Kuehl, KCPT c.e.o.

“I’m a big fan of the station and love what they’ve been doing,” Kuehl said. “We want to make it a place to go for live, local music, the arts and culture of the nonprofit community in the Kansas City area.”

KCPT’s plans for its new station include an $600,000 engineering project to boost the KTBG’s signal and reach. The station’s transmitter will be relocated to a site 20 miles closer to Kansas City.

System/Policy

Arizona radio stations ask FCC for looser underwriting rules

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The licensee of KJZZ and KBAQ in Phoenix has asked the FCC for temporary permission to sidestep the agency’s rules governing language in underwriting announcements in a test of whether “enhanced” sponsor messages could boost income. In a March 18 letter to the FCC, the Maricopa County Community College District proposed a three-year trial window “to conduct a limited and controlled demonstration project to test a modified loosening of the Commission’s enhanced underwriting policies.” Under the looser rules, KBAQ and KJZZ would air announcements that include:

“factually accurate information concerning interest rates available at underwriter banks, credit unions, automobile dealerships, and other local businesses”;
notification of sales and special events such as discounts and promotions; and
qualitative adjectives based on factual data, such as “certified,” “accredited,” “award-winning,” “experienced” or “long-established.”

During this experimental phase, the stations would monitor listener satisfaction and revenue resulting from the enhanced announcements. If sales rose and listeners accepted the new language without complaint, other public radio stations could adopt the looser rules as well, the college district suggested. In the letter, submitted by communications attorney Ernie Sanchez, the college district cited the need to experiment as stations grapple with cuts in state funding, declines in underwriting revenue and the possible elimination of federal support for public broadcasting. “Could public radio stations remain financially viable, even with diminished federal funding, if the guidelines were simply relaxed or — expressed another way — enhanced somewhat more than previous levels?” the letter asked.

Programs/Content

PBS FY14 draft budget has $11M content hike, no dues increase, thanks to income influx

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PBS’s year-to-date financial results show a net income of $22 million instead of the estimated $100,000 net loss anticipated in its fiscal year 2013 budget, the PBS Board of Directors heard at their meeting April 9 at headquarters in Arlington, Va. “I may never get to say this again, but that’s pretty impressive,” said Molly Corbett Broad, finance committee chair. Thanks to the influx, PBS’s FY14 budget contains an increase of $11 million for National Program Service content without a hike in dues for member stations. The draft budget, unanimously approved by the finance committee and full board, will arrive at public television stations in the coming weeks for comment. Total member assessment is $185.5 million, the same as FY13.

Programs/Content

New talking point on Capitol Hill: PubTV’s role in education

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Public television’s strongest case for preserving tax-based support for stations and CPB centers on informing political leaders about the full range of public-service work that stations deliver to local communities, particularly in the field of education, according to the field’s lead advocates in Washington, D.C.