Quick Takes

Noncom groups file comments on FCC’s third-party fundraising proposal

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NPR, PBS and the Association of Public Television Stations are among broadcast organizations weighing in with the FCC on its April proposal for a change in policy to allow pubcasters to raise money for charities and other nonprofits on the air without first obtaining a waiver. All three are opposed. Other pubcasters filing comments include New England Public Radio and the University Station Alliance, which also oppose the change, and North Carolina’s UNC-TV, which “generally supports” the change. Several religious organizations, including the National Religious Broadcasters, also back the proposal. Joint comments from PBS and APTS, filed Monday (July 23), urge the FCC to limit any rule change to licensees that do not receive a CPB community service grant.

APTS

APTS combats latest bids to defund CPB

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Two of pubcasting’s chief critics on Capitol Hill have revived their bids to end CPB funding. Republican lawmakers Rep. Doug Lamborn (Colo.) and Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.) circulated letters last week asking colleagues to help them “permanently defund” CPB. They are targeting the $445 million advance-funded appropriation proposed for CPB in 2015. CPB’s requested appropriation “represents no reduction from its prior year appropriation level,” the lawmakers wrote. “While so many Americans are making sacrifices around the country to make ends meet, CPB appears unwilling to do the same.” They said the country is more than $15 trillion in debt, and ending support of CPB “should be one of the easier decisions to make.”

The lawmakers point to compensation of two top pubcasting execs to bolster their political case.

People

Mundt to NPR, APM lays off Alvarado, Pulitzer-winning cartoonist joins WHYY, and more…

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NPR has hired Todd Mundt as editorial director for NPR Digital Services
In his new position, Mundt will help stations develop digital content strategies and oversee news training offered to them. He now serves as v.p. and chief content officer at Louisville Public Media in Kentucky, p.d. of the licensee’s news/talk station and its local host for Morning Edition. Before joining Louisville’s three-station complex, he was director of content and media at Iowa Public Radio, chief content officer for Michigan Public Media in Ann Arbor and host of an NPR-distributed talk program, The Todd Mundt Show. Mundt is chair of the Public Radio Program Directors Association and has served on the Public Media Platform advisory council. Bob Kempf, g.m. of the Boston-based NPR unit, said the hiring completes the Digital Services management team, which also includes Stephanie Miller, director of station relations; Steve Mulder, director of user experience and analytics; Doug Gaff, director of technology; and Keith Hopper, director of product development.

System/Policy

At APTS summit, public TV remembers which way ‘up’ is

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“What a difference a year makes,” Patrick Butler, president of the Association of Public Television Stations, told the crowd at the group’s Public Media Summit on Feb. 27 in Arlington, Va. Last year at this time, the House of Representatives had just voted to eliminate all federal funding for public broadcasting. Since then pubcasters have notched several victories, including protecting the fiscal 2011 appropriation for CPB to $445 million. In recognition of Butler’s performance during his first year, the APTS Board of Trustees gave him an extended standing ovation.

System/Policy

APTS operating without dues from 1/4 of stations

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A drop in dues-paying members over the last three years has diminished the resources of the Association of Public Television Stations at an especially critical time for the Washington-based lobbying organization. APTS’ membership has fallen to 75 percent of public TV licensees from a high of 85 percent in 2008. With dues from fewer of the 170-some station licensees, APTS is short about $1 million in annual membership revenue and unable to fill several key positions, including vice presidents for government relations and communication and a regulatory counsel, in a year when the recession, anti-deficit worries and political opposition are bearing down on pubcasting funding. “This is a problem,” APTS President Patrick Butler said in a session at public TV’s National Educational Telecommunications Association Conference last month in Kansas City, Mo. “If we could get to a point where everybody was in this boat and supporting our efforts in Washington, it could have a transformative effect.”

Will Glasscock, an APTS director of government relations, cautioned that “the very challenging environment continues” on Capitol Hill and “the partisan atmosphere has never been quite this bad.” Just last week, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said in a USA Today op-ed that if elected, CPB will be one of his targets for “deep reductions in subsidies.”

The situation poses a dilemma: APTS needs resources to fight for federal appropriations on Capitol Hill, which has been one of the most stable sources of revenue during the recession despite the ongoing partisan fights over it.

APTS

Public Media Association: NPR and APTS form ‘unified’ lobbying effort during NPR’s troubles, February 2011

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Memos to public radio stations’ Authorized Representatives (AReps) from NPR and APTS about the Public Media Alliance, a new combined TV and radio lobbying effort, Feb. 15, 2011
From NPR’s chair and president
To: AREPS
Fr: Dave Edwards, NPR Board Chair
Vivian Schiller , NPR President & CEO

As you well know in light of this weekend’s news from the House Appropriations Committee, the elimination of federal funding for public broadcasting is a serious threat to the future of over 900 locally run radio stations and 360 television stations — and to the entire public broadcasting economy. To succeed in the face of this challenge we need to make our case forcefully, and use our limited resources wisely. Over the past several weeks, NPR and APTS executives and board members have discussed how we might mount an even stronger advocacy effort. We’ve concluded that our interests and those of the 170 million Americans that rely on public broadcasting each month will be best served by joining forces.

People

Soon off to war for APTS: new president, Pat Butler

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Patrick Butler, public TV’s new chief lobbyist, wrote speeches for President Gerald Ford, was a founder of the Pew Research Center, and helped provide Ken Burns with funding for his acclaimed Civil War documentary series. Butler starts work as president of the Association of Public Television Stations Jan. 1. The APTS leader has represented major media firms in Washington — the Washington Post Co. for 18 years, and before that Times Mirror Co.

History of public media

Adrift, mute and helpless

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Why everyone but public broadcasters is making federal policy for public media

The FCC’s recent National Broadband Plan and its Future of the Media initiative have highlighted a chronic problem in U.S public broadcasting: The system has no long-term policy planning capacity, and therefore it always has had great difficulty dealing with the periodic efforts by outsiders to critique and “reform” it. Public broadcasting ignores most media policy research, whether it originates in academia, think tanks or federal agencies, and it often seems out of touch with major national policy deliberations until too late. That disengagement is highly dangerous because it allows others to set the national legal and regulatory agenda for communications without assuring adequate policy attention to public-service, noncommercial and educational goals. Such policy initiatives also can negatively affect the funding and operating conditions of every public licensee. This article, the first of two, examines the history and recent serious consequences of that disengagement.

People

APTS Awards for 2009

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The Association of Public Television Stations thanked advocates beyond
the D.C. Beltway

APTS gave its David J. Brugger Grassroots Advocacy Award to Dr. Louis Sullivan, board chair of the Atlanta Educational Telecommunications Collaborative Inc. and former U.S. secretary of health and human services. The Brugger Award, named for the former APTS president, recognizes an individual who has shown “exemplary leadership in advocacy on behalf of public television,” APTS said. APTS’ National Advocacy Awards for 2010 saluted individuals or stations that exemplify effective advocacy for pubTV. Recipients were: Malcolm Brett of Wisconsin Public Television, Molly Phillips of Iowa Public Television, and Rob Shuman of Maryland Public Television. APTS said Brett’s “understated style but dogged determination” were evident last year as he worked with his congressman, Rep. David Obey, to win fiscal stabilization funds for stations.

Development

Emergency infusion: Rx for fiscal hemorrhage

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Public television is asking Congress for a $211 million supplemental appropriation for fiscal year 2010 on top of the usual CPB funding, presenting it as disaster relief rather than another bailout.

System/Policy

APTS preps proposals for ‘American Archive,’ copyright legislation

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While the Association of Public Television Stations and its member stations’ activists will be busy enough fighting off the cutback of more than $140 million just proposed by the White House (separate story), the group is working on a slate of new longer-range proposals to take to Congress. ¶ Notably, public TV will seek additional funding for an American Archive project that would preserve and catalog programs and clear rights for long-term public access, APTS President John Lawson said in an interview. ¶ APTS will also ask for changes in copyright law to ease clearance and expand rights for educational uses, he said. ¶ Lawson spoke with Current editors in APTS’ offices in downtown Washington. Current: By Feb.

Public Media Policybase

APTS warns Tomlinson that it will oppose CPB interference with public TV

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APTS sent this letter to CPB Board Chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson on June 7, 2005, after media reported that he favors the appointment of former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Patricia Harrison as CPB president. The letter refers to an earlier letter from the Iowa Public Broadcasting Board to the CPB Board. Dear Mr. Tomlinson:

The Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) is a nonprofit membership organization established to represent the interests of its members — the nation’s public television stations. APTS works closely with individual station representatives to produce effective national policies and strategies that allow stations to fulfill their individual local missions. In fulfilling their missions, public television stations are committed to firm principles of editorial integrity and programming diversity, which are enhanced through digital service.

APTS

Thumbs up for APTS digital-only strategy

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With a show of hands, all but a few public TV station chiefs attending an APTS Capitol Hill Day meeting Feb. 24 [2004] said the lobbying group should keep developing its “digital-only broadcasting,” or DOB, strategy. [APTS went public with the plan in a press release March 18.]

Instead of continuing to use analog TV channels for the next decade or more, the strategy goes, public TV would make a concerted effort to speed viewers’ move to digital over-the-air broadcasting, cable or satellite reception. The government, pleased to earn billions from early auctions of the channels, would give public TV special assistance in exchange. Public TV would not only save transmitter power bills but could also win mandated cable carriage and an endowed trust fund from Congress, APTS President John Lawson told station execs.

Why public media?

Show me a better deal than public TV

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Two years after the CPB funding crisis began to subside, public TV’s assigned public-policy representative, the president of America’s Public Television Stations (APTS), was giving variations on this stump speech at meetings of pubcasters. This is an edited version of David Brugger’s remarks to the FirstView instructional TV screening conference in August 1998. One of the important revelations to station professionals and lay volunteers during our last Capitol Hill Day was that their members of Congress often fed back the message they had heard from the more than 85 percent of their constituents in your home towns who said they wanted continued or increased federal funding — this, in many cases, from members of Congress who had been ardent opponents of federal funding just 18 months before. Last summer’s Roper survey showed that Americans see public radio and public television as their second- and third-best values in return for tax dollars spent. This is even higher than during the 1995 funding crisis when we were No.

Public Media Policybase

Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) Bylaws, 1998

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These are the bylaws of APTS, as of June 1998, a District of Columbia nonprofit corporation that represents public TV in Washington. At that point, the group was calling itself  the Association of America’s Public Television Stations, or America’s Public Television Stations for short. ARTICLE I. OFFICES AND REGISTERED AGENT. Section 1. Registered Office.

Tech

Set-aside of DBS capacity for noncommercial use upheld by appeals court

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A federal appeals court has upheld the little-noticed 1992 law setting aside 4–7 percent of direct broadcast satellite capacity for “noncommercial programming of an educational or informational nature.” The Aug. 30, 1996, decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., overturned a 1993 District Court decision that ruled the set-aside had violated DBS operators’ First Amendment rights. If the decision isn’t appealed successfully to the Supreme Court, the set-aside means that a DBS operator with 175 channels — that’s how many DirecTV claims — will have to offer 7-12 channels of noncommercial fare on its menu. The ruling provides ‘a great basis’ for arguing that broadcasters airing multiple digital channels be required to provide some noncommercial programming, says Sohn.