System/Policy

CPB details how budget cuts will work, corporation-wide

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After automatic spending cuts required under the Budget Control Act of 2011 took effect March 1, CPB received confirmation that its 2013 appropriation was trimmed to $421.4 million, a 5 percent reduction in the original amount, $445 million. CPB, which had anticipated deeper cuts, revised its budget for the fiscal year, and notified stations of the changes in a March 4 memo. Local stations’ Community Service Grants will be slightly higher than those calculated last fall. “Reflecting our continued concern about the potential for additional budget actions in FY 2013,” CPB President Pat Harrison told station execs, CPB will base this fiscal year’s second Community Service Grant payments on an appropriation level of $421.4 million, which will incorporate a recalculation of the first CSG payment at $421.4 million. CSGs should be ready by April 1, she added.

About Public Media

Drop the stuffy presentation style for classical radio and the format will thrive

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To the Editors,

I read Ben Mook’s Feb. 11 piece about the de-commercialization of classical radio with a mixture of sadness and muted happiness. The fact that the attrition has slowed is indeed a positive, but the stubborn misconception that classical music cannot be a successful commercial radio format is simply wrong and quite depressing. The problem lies not in the music — for, indeed, properly programmed classical music on the radio has been, and can be, commercially viable — but in the music-academy approach to presentation that dooms any attempt to draw in new listeners. Classical music can be day-parted and made accessible, probably more so than almost any other genre of music.

System/Policy

NFCB board dismisses president; v.p. calls decision “a huge mistake”

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The board of directors of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters has dismissed NFCB President Maxie Jackson as of March 4. He had led the organization since January 2010. Neither Jackson nor Sue Matters, chair of the NFCB Board, would discuss the reasons for Jackson’s dismissal, due to terms of a severance agreement. NFCB Board Treasurer Janis Lane-Ewart is acting as interim president of the organization. The board plans to start a nationwide search for a new leader.

Development

Panel urges IRS to revisit its ‘antiquated’ nonprofit rules

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Delays in conferring 501(c)3 status to startup nonprofit news organizations have stymied development of new models for producing community-based journalism, exacerbating the shortage of locally produced news coverage, according to a report released March 4 by the Nonprofit Working Group of the Council on Foundations. The group was created by the Council on Foundations with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to study the impact of the Internal Revenue Service’s approach to granting nonprofit status to media organizations. The report described the IRS’s methods of granting tax-exempt status as outdated and criticized the agency for hobbling efforts to establish new local newsrooms.

“Our main finding is that the IRS is relying on antiquated rules — rules that were created in the 1960s and 1970s to determine whether groups should be given tax-exempt status,” said Steven Waldman, chair of the Nonprofit Media Working Group. “Not surprisingly, they don’t match modern realities.”

The group recommended several fixes to the IRS, including that it revise its criteria determining nonprofit status to qualify news and journalism as “educational” under tax-exempt rules. It also recommended that the IRS prohibit nonprofit news organizations from sharing ownership with shareholders or investors.

Jazz

Pittsburgh Public Media acquires W.Va. FM station for jazz programming

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The FCC has approved the sale of a West Virginia college station to Pittsburgh Public Media, a jazz webcaster run by former employees of the city’s defunct WDUQ-FM. PPM will pay $135,000 for the 1,100-watt WVBC-FM, currently operated by Bethany College in Bethany, W.Va. It plans to switch the station at 88.1 MHz to a jazz format starting in April, says Chuck Leavens, PPM president. The station now airs music and college sports. PPM was established in 2010 in a bid to buy WDUQ, which broadcast both NPR News and jazz to southwestern Pennsylvania.

System/Policy

Two Native tribes are first to benefit from FCC rules favoring tribal applicants

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Native tribes in New Mexico and Arizona are the first to benefit from the FCC’s Tribal Radio Priority, a provision created by the commission to help tribal entities start new radio stations. The FCC announced March 1 that it set aside FM allotments for Navajo Technical College in Crownpoint, N.M., and for the Hualapai Tribe in Peach Springs, Ariz. Allotments serve as placeholders for future FM stations; the tribes must now wait until the FCC opens a filing window and accepts their applications for construction permits. The commission created the Tribal Radio Priority provision in 2010, establishing standards by which Native tribes could be given priority in securing licenses for AM and FM stations. “The need for Tribal radio stations is clear,” wrote Geoffrey Blackwell, chief of the FCC’s Office of Native Affairs and Policy, in a blog post announcing the allotments.

People

One ouster leads to another at Iowa Public Radio

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When the board of Iowa Public Radio voted to remove Mary Grace Herrington as c.e.o. Feb. 25, the directors were responding to mounting evidence of declining staff morale at the state network. Dissension over Herrington’s leadership was sparked at least in part by her decision to fire a popular news director last year. The sole “no” in the IPR board’s 6-1 vote was cast by a newly appointed director who was attending his first meeting. Herrington had been chief executive since 2009, leading IPR through a signal expansion and format differentiation that created two distinct public radio channels for Iowans.

System/Policy

CPB details how automatic budget cuts will work, corporation-wide

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This item has been updated and reposted. CPB on Monday sent a memo to public broadcasting stations detailing the 5 percent sequester of its $445 million 2013 appropriation. “Reflecting our continued concern about the potential for additional budget actions in FY 2013,” CPB President Pat Harrison told pubcasting executives, CPB will base this fiscal year’s second Community Service Grant payments on an appropriation level of $421.415 million, which will incorporate a recalculation of the first CSG payment at $421.415 million. CSGs should be ready by April 1, she added. By statute, Harrison said, the 5 percent cut will be allocated across all CPB functions (numbers  rounded): System support, a total $26.7 million appropriation, will receive a $1.33 million cut; administration, $22.3 million, drops $1.11 million; television station grants, $222.8 million, drops $11.1 million; television programming, $74.3 million, drops $3.7 million; radio station grants, $69.3 million, drops $3.5 million; radio programming acquisition grants, $22.8 million, drops $1.1 million; and radio programming, $6.9 million, drops $347,000.

Programs/Content

Report: IRS needs to change “antiquated” approach to nonprofit news startups

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Taking too long to confer 501(c)3 status to startup nonprofit news organizations not only undervalues journalism but also has stymied new approaches to community journalism when they are needed most, according to a report released today by the Nonprofit Working Group of the Council on Foundations. The group was created by the Council on Foundations with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to study the impact of the IRS’s recent approach to granting nonprofit status to media organizations. The report cites the IRS’s “antiquated” methods of granting tax-exempt status as hobbling efforts to create new media outlets. “Over the last several decades, accountability reporting, especially at the local level, has contracted dramatically, with potentially grave consequences for communities, government accountability, and democracy,” said Steven Waldman, chair of the Nonprofit Media Working Group, in a prepared statement. “Nonprofit media provides an innovative solution to help fill this vacuum, but only if the IRS modernizes its approach.”

The group pointed out five problems with how the IRS currently handles tax-exempt requests, including taking too long, undervaluing journalism and failing to “recognize the changing nature of digital media.”

The group recommended that the IRS address the problems by counting news and journalism as “educational” under tax-exempt rules.

People

White House sends two nominations for CPB Board to Senate for confirmation

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The White House has sent two nominations to the Senate for confirmation for openings on the CPB Board, it announced Wednesday. President Barack Obama has nominated Maryland educator Jannette Lake Dates to replace former Board Chair Ernest Wilson, whose term expired in 2010; and put forth Los Angeles attorney Bruce Ramer for a second term. Ramer left the board in 2012.

People

President Obama chooses Ramer for second term on CPB Board

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President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced his intent to nominate Bruce Ramer, former CPB chair, to serve another term on the CPB Board of Directors. Ramer is a partner at the Los Angeles entertainment and media law firm Gang, Tyre, Ramer & Brown, and counts among his clients Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood. Ramer served on the CPB Board from October 2008 to December 2012, and chaired the group during his final two years. This will be the board’s first appointment since Patty Cahill, former g.m. of KCUR-FM in Kansas City, Mo., joined the directors in 2009. Ramer must be confirmed by the Senate for the four-year appointment.

System/Policy

APTS congressional champion delivers ‘tough love’ to pubTV leaders

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A radio broadcaster-turned lawmaker who chairs a key House subcommittee with oversight of CPB delivered a pointed critique to public TV station execs about their prospects for preserving federal aid in the 113th Congress. During a Feb. 26 breakfast hosted by the Association of Public Television Stations at the Library of Congress, Oregon Rep. Greg Walden (R) warned a roomful of station executives that they face an uphill battle in rebuilding bipartisan support for the field. Republican views of public broadcasting are colored by negative baggage carried over from the 2010-11 political scandals over NPR, and the notion that increased competition from cable and digital channels has made public TV less relevant to television viewers, Walden said. The event, part of APTS’s annual Public Media Summit, celebrated Walden as a “Champion of Public Broadcasting,” and the lawmaker used the occasion to deliver what APTS President Patrick Butler later called “tough love.”

Walden referred to recommendations of a 2007 Government Accountability Office report on public TV’s financing to make his point.

FCC

Speculators betting big on FCC TV spectrum auctions

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For the last few years, three well-funded buyout firms have been quietly picking up licenses to commercial and noncommercial TV stations in a gamble on big payouts from next year’s FCC incentive auction of television spectrum. Current’s research of FCC license applications filed since 2010 found at least 25 separate deals involving three firms: OTA Broadcasting, NRJ TV and LocusPoint Networks. The stations they’ve acquired to date are on the peripheries of major markets, primarily ranging from Boston to Washington, D.C., in the eastern U.S. and from Seattle down to Los Angeles along the West Coast. The three firms are all owned or funded by private equity firms that command billions in assets. Due to vagaries in the FCC’s reporting requirements, it’s likely that the commission’s records provide an incomplete picture of the companies’ purchases.

Development

Looming sequestration cuts complicate CSG payments

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With the increasing likelihood that budget cuts once thought to be too big to take effect will slash spending across the federal government March 1, CPB is planning how to handle its payments to stations in the event that its $445 million 2013 appropriation is altered again.

Programs/Content

Putting more public service into public media at 2013 APTS Summit

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Representatives from four sectors of the public service community made a case for more partnerships with public television during the opening session of the Association of Public Television Stations’ 2013 Public Media Summit Feb. 24 in Arlington, Va. Jane Oates, assistant secretary of employment and training administration with the U.S. Department of Labor, was the most vocal of the panel as she urged public television to collaborate more with local and state government workforce-training programs as a way of sharing key information to the nation’s legions of unemployed workers. “Think how much better we could do if you joined with us. Everybody listens to you,” Oates said, pointing to the proven workforce-training success of Vegas PBS as an example of what other stations could accomplish.

System/Policy

Supervisor of Pacifica elections points to flaws in system

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The elections supervisor for the boards of Pacifica’s five radio stations has recommended that the network revamp its process for selecting board members because the current system is “too costly, time consuming, factionalized and factionalizing.”

In a report on the latest round of elections, which concluded in January several months behind schedule, Pacifica National Elections Supervisor Terry Bouricius described numerous flaws in a process that’s been in effect for nearly a decade. Pacifica’s elections favor “ego-driven individuals,” he wrote, and bring in votes from roughly 10 percent of the total membership of the five stations. The small percentage of those who do vote are likely not representative of the whole. In addition, station staffers complain that on-air programming required for the elections is unpopular with listeners; stations must broadcast statements by local candidates and call-in shows featuring the candidates. The stations’ donor records are not adequately maintained to support the election process, Bouricius wrote.

System/Policy

Pacifica policy to keep enemies off boards draws ire

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The Pacifica National Board passed a resolution barring individuals who have clashed with the network’s leadership from election to the boards of its five stations, a move that critics decried as a political witch hunt. The resolution, which passed Jan. 24 by a vote of 11–10, denies seats on Local Station Boards to three classes of people:

“Individuals whose actions have been declared by a court of law to be breaches of fiduciary duty, or breaches of the duty of loyalty or the duty of care;”
“Individuals who have been separated involuntarily from foundation employment for cause;” and
“Individuals who have been banned from station premises due to threatening behavior or creating an unsafe environment for others.”

Anyone denied candidacy for board service can appeal to the PNB. Such measures are common among other nonprofit boards, says Bill Crosier, vice chair of the PNB. “I can’t imagine any other nonprofit letting people in one of those categories be on their boards,” he says.

Programs/Content

Delmarva Public Radio gets potential new lease on life from Salisbury University

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Maryland’s Salisbury University  is backing away from a consultant’s plan to farm out operations of its two Delmarva Public Radio stations. A proposal unveiled Feb. 14 would provide funding to WSDL in Ocean City, Md., and WSCL in Salisbury for at least three years. The proposal calls for the Salisbury University Foundation, Delmarva Public Radio’s license holder, to transfer the license to the school, said Salisbury University President Janet Dudley-Eshbach in a statement.  Salisbury would maintain current operations  for three years,  but would require that WSCL and WSDL hew even closer to the school’s agenda. At the end of three years, the university would reassess the situation.

Programs/Content

A growing push for data-driven documentary filmmaking

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Wendy Levy, the director of arts consultancy group New Arts AXIS, called for documentary filmmakers to embrace big data tools as a permanent part of their storytelling process during the keynote address at the Media That Matters Conference, held Feb. 15 in Washington, D.C.