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Two New England public television stations are moving to sever their ties to state and university licensees, cutting loose to become community-based nonprofits as they adapt to new business models and learn to live without state subsidies.
A committee of Maine’s legislature unanimously voted April 5 to reject Gov. Paul LePage’s bid to eliminate funding for the state’s public broadcasting network. The bipartisan 13-member Joint Standing Committee on Appropriations and Financial Affairs agreed to keep the Maine Public Broadcasting Network’s $1.7 million appropriation in the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Unless the governor vetoes the budget before April 26, the spending plan will take effect with MPBN’s funding intact. The appropriation is 13 percent less than last year’s state subsidy for MBPN, but President Mark Vogelzang told an MPBN reporter that he was happy with the restoration of funds. The legislative committee also directed Maine’s government to determine how much MPBN spends on emergency broadcasting services and to survey other ways in which the network might be able to provide services to the state.
Pubcasting networks continue to deal with the uncertainties of state funding in economically and politically precarious times, closing offices, facing possible cuts and bracing for the consequences. Rhode Island: Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s latest budget, unveiled Jan. 31, proposes eliminating state funding to Rhode Island PBS by fiscal year 2014. Support would fall from around $933,000, about a third of the station’s budget, to $425,000 next fiscal year, then zero out. “He’s basically given us until Dec.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has proposed zeroing out the state’s $7.2 million in state funding for Virginia’s public television and radio stations and their educational telecommunications services for the next two years. Pubcasters hope to convince McDonnell to restore some funds by arguing for the value of the educational services they provide. The state’s system does more for public schools than pubTV in many states. WHRO in Norfolk/Hampton Roads, for example, has created 22 online high-school courses that are available to schools for much lower annual fees than the roughly $5,000 per-student charges of commercial vendors, according to Bert Schmidt, WHRO’s president. The governor’s office denied pubcasters’ request for a meeting, but Schmidt and his colleagues are still pursuing “creative solutions,” he says, such as channeling money through appropriate entities to assure politicians that it’s used solely for educational purposes.
In four years that include the deepening recession, fiscal 2008 through 2012, public broadcasting stations in 24 states have lost a total of $85 million in financial support from state governments, according to a study released last week by Free Press, a progressive media-reform group. Those states reduced spending on public media by 42 percent of their 2008 amount. Free Press, which has joined the defense of federal and state aid to public media, gave the study a timely release date, one week before the congressional Super Committee’s Nov. 23 [2011] deadline to cut vast sums from the federal budget and deficit. “As federal lawmakers are considering making further cuts to public broadcasting nationally, we wanted to make sure they understood the full picture of public broadcasting in their states,” said Josh Stearns, co-author of the study and associate program director of Free Press.
South Carolina ETV avoided steep funding cuts last month as the state’s Republican-controlled legislature thwarted Gov. Nikki Haley’s attempt to eliminate two-thirds of state support for the pubcasting network. Haley had proposed cutting about $5.9 million of the $9 million that the state provides for SCETV, which makes up about half of the network’s budget. But lawmakers in both the House and Senate overrode Haley’s request in nearly unanimous votes June 29. In the end, only about 6 percent of the network’s budget was cut, according to SCETV spokesperson Rob Schaller. House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham angrily criticized Haley in a speech on the floor.
The campaign to throw Idaho Public Television out of the state budget seems to have run out of oomph. On Feb. 20 [2001], the legislature’s Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee okayed IPTV’s funding requests almost without change — without raising the privatization issue. And five days earlier, the state Board of Education, licensee of the state network, voted 5-2 to advise the legislature against privatization. “I am fairly certain the issue is dead for this year,” says Jennifer Gallagher Oxley, who reported on the struggle for Boise’s Idaho Statesman.
Idaho’s state legislature has imposed extraordinary restrictions on the state public TV network, in delayed reaction to its broadcast last September of the gay-friendly documentary “It’s Elementary: Talking About Gay Issues in School.” The state House of Representatives passed the restrictions March 27 [2000] by a vote of 50-16, as part of an appropriations bill that gives $2 million for DTV instead of the $3.9 million requested by the network. And the same legislation passed the state Senate April 4. It will order the State Board of Education, licensee of the network, to monitor “programs expected to be of a controversial nature,” and to reject any program that “promotes, supports or encourages the violation of Idaho criminal statutes.” In a state where sodomy is illegal, the bill could be interpreted as forbidding Idaho Public TV to rebroadcast “It’s Elementary,” a program about classroom treatment of the subject of homosexuality.
When the governor emerged from the sub shop, Susan Farmer was waiting by his limo.