'Is this truly a partnership or merely a nonprofit trying to get a competitive advantage?'
Connecticut flap points up partnership pitfalls
Connecticut Public Television and its president, Jerry Franklin, were among the first to champion nonprofit alliances to make programming for the extra airtime afforded by digital multicasting.
But months after a carriage deal with the cable industry spurred optimism that multicasts will have an audience, CPTV and Franklin are facing local scrutiny of the degree of editorial control they give their nonprofit production partners.
In the second of two front-page articles critical of CPTV and Franklin, Aug. 8, the Hartford Courant reported that three producers quit a women's health series earlier this year after station management ordered them to interview staff from the key funder and "content partner," Hartford's St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center.
"To just point-blank say, 'You're supposed to interview our doctors. . .' There certainly may be a doctor at Hartford Hospital or some physician at Yale who's better qualified, so how can they dictate that?" original series producer and pubTV vet Mary Ollie Newman told the Courant.
CPTV execs didn't deny that they told producers to interview the St. Francis doctors. But they told Current the article misrepresented the situation and that editorial control always lies with the station.
Regardless, the flap illustrates a gap in public understanding of the content alliances, who controls the content and whose purposesit serves. The Courant critique points up pitfalls of the nonprofit partnerships that work against the many potential benefits, including shared production costs and reinforced local connections.
Skeptics say the arrangements jeopardize the greatest advantage pubTV has over niche cable competitors: credibility and the trust of its audience. Even those in favor of such partnerships allow that when funders play a role in program content, stations must protect themselves from perceptions that their judgments were purchased.
"Our primary concern when we went into it three years ago was how do we do this and maintain integrity?" said Bill Hanley, Twin Cities PTV executive v.p., who supervises the station's Minnesota Channel. Aired on TPT's second analog frequency, the channel was created to air programs made in partnership with nonprofits in the region.
As the channel grows, with revenue doubling each year since launch, Hanley obsesses over credibility issues. "Now, all of sudden we have dozens of programs flying through, and I'm constantly scratching my head over how you monitor all that and maintain quality and control."
In Connecticut, the quality of CPTV's health series speaks for itself, says Jay Whitsett, programming v.p., taking exception to the Courant articles. But he said the network will experiment with new scheduling and formats to make the co-production relationships more transparent for viewers.
"If people are going to question these partnerships to this degree and put them on the front page of the newspaper," he said, "then obviously we have to pay attention to those concerns."
Sponsors warned: no influence
The roots of CPTV's partnership strategy lie with former PBS President and CPTV Board member Larry Grossman, who has long advocated an alliance of cultural institutions with pubTV stations, which become the "megaphone of their communities."
Beginning in 1999, CPTV received grants from the Ford Foundation and others for its Mapping the Assets initiative — the assets being potential program content and other resources from state institutions and nonprofits.
The grants stopped three years ago, Franklin said, and "at that point it was supposed to become self-sufficient." He and other station leaders have had hundreds of meetings with potential nonprofit partners, he said.
In the meetings, said Whitsett, "I'm the one who" tells potential sponsors that "they can give us resources but cannot influence content."
CPTV does generally use its nonprofit sponsors, identified as funders and "content partners" at the beginning and end of the programs, as resources within the programs, Whitsett says. "But their contribution has to serve the needs of the program, not their institution."
Roughly 50 percent of CPTV's local programming comes from co-productions, Franklin said.
The Courant articles, published Aug. 7 and 8, portrayed station management as bending over backward to appease nonprofit sponsors. The paper quoted current and former CPTV producers who said management suggested specific interviewees and content changes requested by sponsors. Few of the production professionals named in the articles responded to Current's requests for comment.
The articles also took CPTV to task for reducing its spending on local production while increasing outlays for fundraising. The Courant cast Franklin as an autocrat who intimidated staff and enjoyed financial perks in a strained economic environment.
Franklin said the characterization was not accurate and several Connecticut Public Broadcasting Inc. board members sent letters to the paper defending him. Grossman, who still advises CPTV, also wrote a commentary printed in the Hartford newspaper, reaffirming the value of partnerships between pubTV and other institutions. He told Current that it should be a nonprofit's expertise, not its funding contribution, that determines whether it is included in a program.
In the case of the controversial episode on women's heart disease, which aired in April, Franklin said that after a rough cut of the first episode included no doctors from St. Francis, he, through Whitsett, told the producers to shoot additional interviews.
"There were spokespeople from a competing hospital and not any from St. Francis," Franklin said. "It wasn't fair to the co-producer nor was it fair and balanced overall."
"It was a mistake [CPTV execs] made," he added. "We assumed the producers knew there had to be variety of voices."
The producers saw things differently. Newman and Associate Producer Alison Mead quit the project in January, protesting what they regarded as funder meddling, according to the Courant. Another production team member, freelance TV reporter Carolee Salerno, withdrew in March for similar reasons, the paper reported. CPTV staff producer Jennifer Boyd finished the series.
Although none of the producers involved responded to Current's request for comment, others affiliated with CPTV suggested that such management interference is not uncommon.
"When I first came into public TV, we'd get money from an agency or whomever and we'd say, 'It's very nice that you're giving us a grant but we have editorial control,'" said Roynn Lisa Simmons, a senior producer for national programming at CPTV who also works on local projects. "That type of editorial control is now being shared and there's a lot of pressure to include [funder representatives] as spokespeople on the programs."
Others question the entire premise of partnerships, noting that tax status doesn't give every nonprofit a white hat or make it immune to self-interest and competitive pressures.
"Is this truly a partnership or merely a nonprofit trying to get a competitive advantage?" asked Rich Hanley, an independent producer and communications professor at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn. Hanley, who has produced roughly 12 docs for CPTV and helped with its web development, said nonprofits compete with one another for "eyeballs, traffic and in the case of hospitals, patients."
When stations partner with such institutions, they "put themselves into a competitive situation and use their credibility to favor one over another," he said.
"What do we have to sell besides the integrity of our programs?" Simmons wondered. "If that starts to look compromised . . . will viewers trust us like they do now?"
Franklin understands the criticism but he doesn't accept it, he said.
He draws a distinction between news and the co-productions or community service programming, though he repeatedly insists that CPTV retains editorial control in all productions.
"We would never take money for news content, as in when we're reporting on an event," he said. "If there's a scandal at the hospital, that's one thing. But if we determine that women in Connecticut need more information about their health," then Franklin sees no problem working with a hospital to produce a program about the subject, he said.
What if? Why?
At Twin Cities, there are different standards for Minnesota Channel content and TPT's public affairs shows, Hanley said. But "even public service programs need guidelines."
The station gives a one-page list of guidelines to prospective partners "before we break out the cameras," said Keith Parker, senior partner manager for the channel. The guidelines state that the programming will never mislead audiences and will always "provide full disclosure of partner interests." Partner information is stated at the beginning and end of Minnesota Channel programs.
The guidelines also state that programs "will not be used primarily for simple self-promotion" or "for lobbying purposes," among other conditions. The rules get "everyone in lockstep" from the beginning, Parker said, and should cover any disputes that arise during production.
In one case, a state agency wanted to omit an interview remark from a program that it didn't agree with, but TPT refused, Parker said. The project was abandoned. The network has refused other proposals that were clearly self-promotional.
CPTV lacks the luxury of an additional channel for its co-productions. They have been scattered throughout the broadcast schedule until now, but Whitsett said the station might create a permanent scheduling block for them, use a host to explain the difference between co-productions and regular CPTV programs or otherwise make the distinction clearer for audiences.
As for those who must work on the projects, Franklin said some staffers "within our own building" will never accept that funders can contribute to programming in an ethical manner. But station leaders have failed to properly explain to the staff "why this is important to the community," he said.
"We're in the communications business, but we are the world's worst at it within our own walls," he said.
The Mapping the Assets initiative, which station leaders renamed Connecting the Assets in an intermediate phase, will now be called Connecting with Communities in the wake of the Courant articles, Whitsett said.
Web page posted Sept. 2, 2005
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