Current Online

They anticipate DBS imports of PBS programs
Stations to PBS: protect us from Schedule X

Originally published in Current, Nov. 1, 1999

By Karen Everhart Bedford

In what may be the closest thing to consensus that's possible in public television, station executives last week resoundingly called on the PBS Board to "substantially differentiate" the Schedule X feed delivered to direct broadcast satellite subscribers who can pick up PBS local stations over the air.

Station execs voted 89-14 to endorse a petition that directly challenged the DBS strategy recently endorsed by the board's New Technologies Committee. DBS subscribers who live in "served" areas theoretically are not offered PBS's Schedule X or other network feeds that stand-in for local stations. But that will change with passage of the Satellite Home Viewers Act, now being completed in Congress. When the legislation takes effect, PBS member stations want DBS viewers in "served" areas to recognize the difference between their local schedules and the national feed assembled by PBS.

The stations are also looking a little further into the future when DBS companies begin beaming local stations into many major markets -- the so-called "local-to-local" service. They want PBS to take a hard line for local-to-local carriage of stations on the satellites, and they want the Satellite Home Viewers Act to give them "must-carry" protection on DBS, similar to their status on cable.

"DBS providers are not interested in carrying PBS stations because PBS programs are already available to their subscribers through Schedule X," said Tom Howe, executive director of North Carolina's UNC-TV and a PBS Board member. He initiated the petition on Schedule X differentiation, and introduced it at the annual PBS Members Meeting [earlier article].

Before the meeting convened, the New Technologies Committee decided to withdraw its recommendations on DBS in served areas -- which essentially would have kept Schedule X as-is for the time being. "The policy is now as Tom has requested in the petition," said Dennis Haarsager, chairman of the new tech panel, during the floor debate. But he urged station leaders to leave the committee some "wiggle room" to craft a DBS policy during a period of uncertainty.

"It is your franchise we are trying to protect, ... it is our franchise as well," Haarsager added, reminding those assembled that the PBS Board and its committees are comprised of "lay and professional representatives of stations."

Something confusing in the air

Much of the uncertainty derives from the pending re-write of the Satellite Home Viewers Act, expected to give DBS providers the right to deliver "local-to-local" signals of stations. But the satellite companies, citing their limited satellite capacity, don't want to be compelled to carry all local stations in a market -- "full must-carry." If they could have their druthers, DBS companies would like to cherry-pick the four local network affiliates for local-to-local and leave most local public TV stations off their satellites. DirecTV, the largest DBS company, expects to offer local-to-local service in as many as 30 markets.

America's Public Television Stations and PBS have lobbied Congress to specify that DBS must-carry requirements apply to both commercial and noncommercial stations. To assure that DBS subscribers have universal access to PBS services until must carry takes effect in 2002, PBS also wants Congress to give it copyright "compulsory license" to allow Schedule X to be offered in served areas. Present law allows delivery of network signals, such as Schedule X, only to viewers who can't receive an over-the-air signal.

It is this element of the satellite bill that makes station leaders nervous. Howe contends that DBS viewers will object in 2002 when Schedule X is replaced by local PBS stations in served areas. "My experience is, it's very difficult to take things away from people," he said in a recent interview. "People who become accustomed to finding PBS as a national network will be very angry when it's taken away."

"The ability to receive PBS direct from satellites undermines stations' relationships with their viewers" and the local/national mixture of services that define public television, Howe said in his speech to PBS members. During the debate that followed, several managers described Schedule X as a bargaining chip in pressuring DBS companies to include public TV stations in their local-to-local line-ups. "What we are trying to achieve here is the fastest possible local-to-local carriage of stations," said Steve Bass, g.m. of WDCN in Nashville. Since Schedule X now is nearly synonymous with the National Program Service, DBS providers have no incentive to uplink local public TV stations.

Haarsager said the New Technologies Committee favors minimal differentiation so that DBS companies will carry Schedule X instead of exercising their right to beam a selected local station nationally, making it a "superstation." In negotiations with PBS, satellite companies have said they will drop Schedule X if it is substantially differentiated. APTS and PBS have asked Congress to prevent DBS companies from unilaterally creating superstations.

Jeff Clarke, president of KUHT in Houston and a member of the New Technologies Committee, was the only other station exec besides Haarsager to speak strongly against the petition. He described it as "redundant" and based on "misinformation," and cautioned his colleagues that their ire toward Schedule X was misdirected. The national feed "will go away if we prevail on must-carry," he said. "We are not sending a strong enough signal on must-carry" and prohibitions on superstations.

"I had it all figured out when I was in the office," said Dale Ouzts, g.m. of WOSU in Columbus. "There's something about the air in Washington -- you get confused."

But the final vote count indicated clearly that PBS's member stations favor differentiation of Schedule X, whatever the risks. When the votes were tabulated according to each station's size (program-buying power), the outcome was even stronger than the 89-14 one-station/one-vote result: 92 percent endorsed the petition and 8 percent opposed it.

During the PBS Board's annual meeting, which followed the Members Meeting, Haarsager said the New Technologies Committee will take up the petition at its next meeting, Dec. 8. "Clearly, there's concern about served area coverage." The committee, he said, got out "ahead of the membership" on the issue. The board did approve a formula to split DBS revenues from the PBS Kids channel between member stations and producers. Seventy-five percent of the net revenues will go to stations, and the remaining 25 percent to producers.

 

Seasonal plea: shelter from DBS

Originally published in Current, Oct. 18, 1999

By Karen Everhart Bedford

In an autumnal ritual, public TV station executives gathering in Washington for PBS's Fall Planning Meeting and Members Meeting next week will wrangle over direct-to-home broadcasts of PBS programs. They want to make sure viewers can tell the difference between the PBS offerings of local stations and those from PBS's Schedule X that direct broadcast satellite services beam into their homes.

DBS is a lightning-rod issue for local broadcasters who fear being bypassed as viewers increasingly hang dishes on their rooftops. Legislation to prevent this from happening is in conference committee on Capitol Hill, and delivery of distant network signals into homes within broadcast range of local stations -- so-called "served areas" -- is a crucial provision yet to be negotiated.

Broadcasters eagerly anticipate the day when they can join the DBS party, with the eventual roll-out of "local to local" DBS services, along with pending requirements that DBS providers deliver the signals of local stations -- including public TV -- to their subscribers in the same market. But until the legislation is enacted and its must-carry provisions kick in -- most likely in January 2002 -- the PBS Board's New Technologies Committee must craft a place-holding policy that balances these conflicting interests: assuring wide distribution of PBS programs to people beyond the reach of stations, without undercutting the stations' relationships with people they can reach.

DBS talks are scheduled for several forums in the upcoming round of g.m. meetings. The Fall Planning Meeting, Oct. 24-25, an annual closed-door conference at which station leaders discuss PBS services and policies, includes a 90-minute session on DBS. The annual Members Meeting, Oct. 26, will take up a petition on differentiation of DBS programs. And, that afternoon, the PBS Board will hear from its New Technologies Committee on two pending DBS recommendations.

Other highlights of the Fall Planning Meeting are a keynote speech by America Online executive Bob Pittman, a panel of the field's digital leaders discussing new technologies, and a presentation by John Wilson, PBS's acting program chief, on plans for the National Program ServiceGrowth Fund..

Protecting the local franchise

The petition on program differentiation, which last week hastily gained the requisite endorsements to be formally debated during the Members' Meeting, was initiated by Tom Howe, executive director of North Carolina's UNC-TV and a PBS Board member. It calls on the board to adopt policies ensuring that PBS programs distributed via DBS are "substantially differentiated" from the PBS programs airing on local stations in served areas. "It's not saying, 'don't provide any PBS services into served areas,' it's just saying 'differentiate the service,' " elaborated Howe.

Howe described his reason for offering the petition as a principled effort to protect local broadcasting. "I'm a believer in local television in this country. National network services are the franchise on which local broadcasting has been built and supported. It would be difficult for local broadcasting ... to survive without that franchise," much less deliver important services such as local news and weather.

The petition counters a recommendation that the New Technologies Committee plans to bring to the PBS Board on Oct. 26. The committee recently agreed to propose that the board keep the current differentiation policy in force, pending further analysis of whether the availability of Schedule X through DBS has a positive or negative effect on local stations' audiences, according to Dennis Haarsager, committee chairman and g.m. of KWSU in Pullman, Wash. Schedule X already differs from the National Program Service in its children's line-up and in certain time zone feeds, he explained. In addition, "there's a large amount of variance in what Schedule X is carrying and the programming practices of local stations."

The "majority view" among managers is that greater differentiation will be less competition for stations, Haarsager acknowledged. But other "thoughtful people out there" share the view that more differentiation of Schedule X would bring more competition.

There's evidence from stations in overlap markets that differentiating their schedules makes them more competitive, he explained. "We'd like to pull that information together and reevaluate the policy when we get the data analyzed in nine months or so."

The committee also plans to recommend a formula for distributing revenues from DBS subscribers in served areas. Local stations would receive 75 percent of those monies, and 25 percent would go to producers.

This proposed formula also has drawn criticism from some managers who say there's no reason to share revenues from served areas with producers, because stations have all ready acquired the rights to deliver PBS programs within their local markets. The committee endorsed a 25 percent share for producers in "an attempt to be fair to everybody," Haarsager said.

"Nobody wants these satellites out there serving our customers by bypassing our stations," he commented. "But the reality is that they are there and PBS programming will probably find its way up there-on Schedule X, or on other cable channels, as it's already doing, or by the DBS companies designating a superstation, which nobody wants to happen."

"We're just trying to make the best out of a bad situation," he added.

Dual lobbying

America's Public Television Stations and PBS are both lobbying for changes in the Satellite Home Viewers Act, a re-write of which recently went into House-Senate conference. Their efforts have been coordinated, but split according to their own in-house expertise. APTS lobbied for must-carry requirements that came under jurisdiction of the House and Senate Commerce committees, while PBS worked on the Judiciary side, seeking a compulsory license to deliver a national feed into served areas until the must-carry provisions come into effect.

"PBS has a long history of working with the Judiciary Committee because of its work on copyright issues," explained Mary Dewhirst, APTS legislative services director.

In a memorandum that APTS and PBS submitted jointly to the congressional conference committee, public TV asks conferees to insert a finding in the must-carry provision specifically requiring carriage of "local noncommercial educational stations." The memo also recommends:

"The original purpose of Schedule X was to substitute for superstations, because [PBS member] stations preferred a feed that they owned and shared revenue from over one from a distant market," explained Greg Ferenbach, PBS general counsel. Stations found it "troublesome" that the satellite would bring in local pledge drives from another city.

He acknowledged that the compulsory license to deliver Schedule X into served areas has been "debated endlessly," but without it "there isn't going to be universal access to some kind of public TV service on DBS." The menu of programs available to DBS subscribers offers "hundreds of channels" and only a "vestigial public television presence" of Schedule X in unserved areas. "As one board member said, 'We're training people not to watch PBS'."

Long pole in the tent

Much is riding on the final must-carry provisions worked out by House and Senate conferees, but it seems unlikely that local-to-local DBS services are going to fulfill broadcasters' expectations.

Once satellite reform is enacted, DirecTV -- the largest DBS carrier, with 7.4 million subscribers -- plans to begin rolling out local-to-local services to the top 20 markets. Requiring "full" must-carry protection -- carriage of every local broadcast station in a given market -- "will limit our ability to offer local-to-local in smaller markets," said Bob Marsocci, company spokesman. Depending on the final rules, DirecTV could extend local services into the top 30 markets, at most.

"We do have a limited capacity. We cannot serve every market. We cannot carry every station in every market across the country. It's just not feasible. The long pole in the tent is the must-carry provision."

Moreover, DirecTV's subscribers are most interested in receiving local affiliates of the big networks, said Marsocci. PBS stations and the fledgling networks are less of a priority. "That's what we'll start with -- the big four -- and look at it on a market-by-market basis."

DirecTV also hopes to extend the deadline for must-carry enforcement to "a minimum of three years" from enactment of the new law.

 

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