System/Policy

Gingrich wants to ‘zero-out’ federal funding to CPB

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House Speaker-designate Newt Gingrich said on his weekly cable TV show last week that he wants to “zero-out” CPB funding this year. Remarks by Gingrich (R-Ga.) and new Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) fit perfectly into a dire scenario described in newspaper columns by commentators from Linda Ellerbee on the left to New York Post critic John Podhoretz on the right. Anticipating a coming legislative struggle, presidents of the public broadcasting’s national organizations have joined a task force convened by CPB President Richard Carlson. The leaders aim to “generate a full positive and informative picture of … what public broadcasting does and what it is that CPB funding buys,” said CPB spokesman Michael Schoenfeld.

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.

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.

Development

Twentieth Century Fund panel seeks more federal aid for PTV, but would halt CPB grants to stations

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With the warning that public television must “reinvent itself” if it is to “meet the needs of the American public in the 21st century,” a task force appointed by the Twentieth Century Fund recommended fundamental restructuring of the existing public television system in a report issued [in July 1993]. [Task force members included former PBS President Lawrence Grossman; Ervin Duggan, soon to be appointed to head PBS later in 1993; and other prominent national-level figures in media and finance.]

Completing what task force members characterized as a reexamination of the basic purpose and principles of public broadcasting on the 25th anniversary of the field’s creation, the 21-member group envisioned a significant role for public television in the multichannel environment of the future — one that calls for an expansion of educational programming, strengthening of its mission at all levels, and a redirection of federal funds toward diversified national programming. Most controversial among the panel’s recommendations is a proposal to cut off federal funding to local stations within three years and aggregate those dollars for national programs.
“A feeling of ‘entitlement” is rampant within the system,” wrote Richard Somerset-Ward. “There are 351 local stations to be accommodated, and they (or their 175 licensees who receive [grants] from the CPB each year) effectively hold most of the purse strings.” That would mean the end of the Community Service Grants (CSGs) to public TV stations, which consumed half of CPB’s federal appropriation in 1992 and amount to 13.5 percent of the public TV system’s total income, according to the report.

System/Policy

PTFP policy review prompted by station with Sunday mass

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The public radio station at a Catholic university has applied for a Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP) grant after being told the agency is reexamining a policy against grants to stations that carry religious programming. Ralph Jennings, g.m. at Fordham University’s WFUV in New York, told Current in December [1991] that PTFP had discouraged him from applying for a grant to upgrade its tower and studio facilities because the station airs a one-hour Catholic mass every Sunday. He said that PTFP Program Officer Richard Harland had stated flatly that federal funds could not be used to purchase or upgrade equipment that would broadcast religious programming. However, in an interview earlier this month, Jennings said that Harland had called him several months ago and told him that PTFP was ”taking a fresh look” at its policy toward religious programming on otherwise nonsectarian stations. He added that Harland had made it clear that WFUV would not automatically receive a grant just by applying for one.

System/Policy

Palm Beach station staff pushes out chairman

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In a series of dramatic events covered avidly by local news media, the staff of Palm Beach’s public TV/radio licensee last month chased out the lawyer who was both its board chairman and chief executive officer for the last eight years. Chairman Lewis “Dusty” Sang resigned the unpaid positions two weeks ago after WXEL employees went public with complaints about his high spending and autocratic ways. President Sam Barbaro and development Vice President Anita Kirchen, who were suspended by Sang’s executive committee, are back at work at the Florida station, along with Cameron Harris, the assistant development director who was fired for acting as staff spokeswoman. The major effect of the affair, Barbaro says, is that “we have opened the window and let the fresh air in.” Though he now estimates the station faces a $174,000 shortfall, in part because of donor desertion during the strife, Barbaro is optimistic that WXEL will catch up.

First Amendment

What does it cost to air a Sunday Mass?

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At WFUV-FM, a public radio station licensed to Fordham University in the Bronx, the 25-year-old studio soundboard needs to be replaced, and the tower and other transmission facilities could use a major overhaul as well. General Manager Ralph Jennings says he’d like to get a grant from the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP) to defray at least half of the estimated cost of $2.5 million to $3 million, but that he hasn’t bothered applying because PTFP, a Commerce Department grant program, has told him informally that his station is ineligible for federal funds. The reason is an hour-long Roman Catholic Mass that WFUV has been broadcasting from Fordham’s campus chapel every Sunday for the last 42 years. Jennings estimates that the program has an audience of between 5,000 and 10,000 listeners, many of whom are shut-ins or others who can’t attend regular services. Richard Harland, senior program officer at the PTFP, says it’s simply a matter of following the regulations that govern the distribution of federal funds.

People

Scholar comes from Right to diagnose public TV

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A scholar working with the right-wing Heritage Foundation is looking into ways to improve public TV, privatizing it if necessary. Laurence Jarvik, a new Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles, made his Washington debut

System/Policy

Independent TV Service and CPB finally sign accord

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The Independent Television Service and CPB signed a long-delayed contract that will pass $23 million of federal money to the St. Paul-based organization through December 1992. ITVS, mandated by Congress in 1988, will give grants to and promote independent PTV productions. John Schott, executive director of the group based in St. Paul, Minn., said the contract guarantees ITVS “its proper autonomy” and provides for CPB’s oversight responsibilities.

Programs/Content

Consultants advise spending shift to strengthen national PTV programs

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A bold strategic study for public TV, commissioned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, recommends that stations spend less on local program production and more on achieving high quality in national and instructional programs.If PTV fails to “invest fully in national programming,” it will see a “downward spiral” in program quality, audience and revenues, according to the report by Boston Consulting Group, a business strategy firm. The study, whose earlier drafts have been discussed for months in high-level meetings, was presented publicly for the first time at public TV’s Pacific Mountain Network and Central Educational Network annual meetings earlier this month. “Most of the managers say, ‘It’s terrible news, but I’ve known it’s there — I’ve felt it,”‘ says Joseph Zesbaugh, president of PMN, who devoted a day and a half of his annual conference to discussions related to the study. Despite the bad news, the consultants’ presentation won “far and away the highest marks” given by attendees in their evaluations of the PMN meeting, Zesbaugh said. The consultants gave public broadcasters an unfamiliar profit/loss sketch of their major functions.

System/Policy

ITVS taps head

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The Independent TV Service, the organization established by Congress to distribute $6 million in production grants to independent television producers, has selected John Schott executive director. Schott who will leave his job as executive producer of Alive from Off-Center, produced by KTCA-TV in St. Paul-Minneapolis, Minn. Schott, who will be the first director of the fund that opened for business last October, said his duties will include overseeing the organization’s day-to-day operations, helping develop program direction and realizing “the mandate and philosophy” of the ITVS. The ITVS has a “specific mandate to produce TV programs independent of corporate desirability, independent of an insistence to be broad-based, large number-oriented,” Schott said.

System/Policy

Larry to the third power

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Lawrence Daressa, Laurence Hall and Lawrence Sapadin are the collective mind and spirit behind the Independent Television Service, designed this year to provide independent producers with new opportunities to air public TV documentaries. The three Larrys attribute their success in developing the ITVS — endowed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with $6 million ordered by Congress — to being prepared when congressional hearings about the state of public broadcasting came to a head in 1987. “Instead of simply complaining and decrying the degeneration of public television from its original public service orientation, we actually had a solution and an answer,” Daressa, 43, explained from his office in San Francisco, where he serves as co-director of California Newsreel. Daressa, a 15-year veteran of Newsreel, one of the nation’s oldest nonprofit media centers, said the “solution and answer” was to give the opportunity to independent producers to come up with programming “independently of the priorities of the stations.” We’re different aspects of one urge, kind of a collective personality — for the field, for independents and for the public interest in public TV.

System/Policy

CPB ends dispute with ITVS

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The new Independent Television Service and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have settled their differences over CPB’s financial support of the organization. Independent producers and CPB engaged in a running dispute over what the Public Telecommunications Act of 1988 requires CPB to pay for the operation of ITVS. The corporation’s “voluntary commitment to provide these funds to the service under its annual budget process reflects CPB’s commitment to the success of this service,” CPB President Donald Ledwig wrote Nov. 1 [1989] to Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif. The letter was made available by Waxman’s office.

System/Policy

Quarrel kicks off new ITVS

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Independent producers and officials of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have established the new independent television service with another quarrel. The two parties have negotiated — often heatedly — for nearly a year over establishing the service, which will distribute to independent producers $6 million of CPB funds ordered by Congress last year in federal legislation. At the long-awaited first meeting of the ITVS board of directors Oct. 17 [1989] in Washington, board members listened politely to CPB President Donald Ledwig pledge support to the new service but sharply criticized him in interviews following the session. The corporation will provide “overhead expenses” for the ITVS, Ledwig said.

System/Policy

Producers, CPB name fund panel

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The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and independent producers have agreed to an 11-member board of directors to head the Independent Television Service. The two organizations announced the formation Sept. 15 [1989]. Called the independent production service during negotiations, the board was renamed. During the talks, participants said the new agency would not be confused with the Interregional Program Service, which has the same acronym.

Development

GAO statement on NPR financial crisis, 1984

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NPR was shaken, President Frank Mankiewicz and other top managers toppled and some 60 staffers laid off in the network’s 1983 financial crisis. NPR, then largely dependent on federal aid through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, had expanded activities to generate nonfederal money. But those efforts contributed to NPR’s near-collapse. The U.S. Government Accounting Office found that revenues lagged behind budget, expenditures exceeded budget and management lacked systems to monitor the situation, resulting in a $6.4 million deficit in fiscal year 1983. In this statement, Frederick D. Wolf, director of GAO’s Accounting and Financial Management Division, reviewed factors in NPR’s fiscal crisis and cutbacks that barely enabled it to break even at that point.

Programs/Content

JFK: facilities act will help lower barriers to education, 1962

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Statement by President John Kennedy, May 1, 1962, upon signing the Educational Television Act, Public Law 87-447 (76 Stat. 64), which provided federal aid for educational broadcasting facilities — precursor to operational funding through CPB. This marks a new chapter in the expression of federal interest in education. One hundred years ago, with the enactment of the Morrill Land Grant College Act, higher education was made a matter of national concern while, at the same time, state operation and control were retained. Today, we take a similar action.