CPB adopts rules shifting CSG funds among public TV stations
Originally published in Current, March 25, 1996By Karen Everhart Bedford
Concluding lengthy deliberations over how future federal monies will be distributed to public TV stations, the CPB Board on March 11 [1996] approved a policy that reduces funding to stations in overlapped markets and state networks that receive multiple base grants.
The policy goes into effect for fiscal year 1997, which begins this October.
"Our job is to help take the money available and best serve the American people, not to serve stations and institutions,'' said Jeff Clarke, president of KUHT, Houston, and a member of the task force that recommended the policy.
A powerful senator and at least two affinity organizations made last minute appeals to the board prior to its vote on the reforms. In a letter faxed to CPB Chairman Rita Jean Butterworth during the meeting, Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), chairman of the Commerce committee with jurisdiction over CPB, asked the board to "consider carefully'' the policy's "impact on small states like South Dakota.'' Last year, Pressler led the charge of congressional Republicans who advocated privatization of CPB.
In addition, Southern Educational Communication Association and the Organization of State Broadcast Executives asked board members to postpone voting on the plan until stations had received and reviewed the task force's final recommendations, according to Skip Hinton, SECA president.
Butterworth called a brief recess for the board to consider Sen. Pressler's request in executive session, but went ahead with the vote after task force members urged the board not to delay.
In an interview, Butterworth said the board had already considered the policy's impact on rural stations as Sen. Pressler requested. "It was somewhat ironic to have Sen. Pressler plead for his own station when his attitude was quite different a year ago,'' she said. "We did consider the matter already and asked that question of management and staff. We were assured that smaller stations would be given every possible assistance.''
Reslicing the pie
The revised policy responds to criticism from Congress that the public TV system is overbuilt and inefficient. It attempts to encourage consolidation and collaboration among stations with overlapping signals by targeting public TV licensees in 15 markets for substantial funding cuts over the next three fiscal years, and redirecting a projected $9.6 million to a "market fund'' that will support such activities. At the end of the transition period, overlapped stations that continue to operate separately would equally split a single base grant to their market.
Two new policies shift funding from certain larger station licensees by eliminating their base grants--the flat $286,000-per-station portion of the Community Service Grant that CPB's appropriation would otherwise provide to all stations. (In addition to the base grant, the CSG includes an "incentive'' grant that is proportional to the station's nonfederal fundraising.)
Small stations will benefit from these policies in two ways:
- A Robin Hood-like provision eliminates base grants for the system's biggest stations, WGBH, Boston, and WNET, New York--each of which raises more than $55 million in nonfederal income--and distributes the monies to an estimated 40 stations whose nonfederal support is less than $2 million. Neither big station spoke up against the transfer; WGBH had a representative on the task force.
- Another provision closes a loophole in previous CPB policy that allowed multi-station state networks to apply for separate grants for individual stations. During the three-year transition, an estimated $4.2 million in savings from the reduced "multiple base grants'' will go to a "transition fund'' that helps small, rural and sole-service stations--and state networks for which the lost income creates undue financial hardship--move toward economic self-sufficiency.
Inevitably, the complex formula creates some quirky results. Another provision changes the CSG formula to make more monies available for incentive grants, but it has an unfair impact on small overlapped stations, according to critics. It is intended to encourage stations to reduce their reliance on federal funding, and also has the effect of ameliorating the financial impact of the new policy on large stations in overlapped markets.
In Los Angeles, for example, the revised policy will reduce big station KCET's total CPB funding by a total of $343,909 over the next three fiscal years. But, at the end of the transition period, when CPB stops redirecting money to collaboration-encouraging market funds, KCET's total CSG will bounce back, increasing almost $20,000 over its projected 1997 grant, according to a CPB financial model of the policy's impact. Meanwhile, KOCE, the smallest station in the market, will see its total CSG cut in half.
One dissenter
Several members of the Public Television Issues and Policies Task Force addressed the board before the vote, but only one offered a dissenting view. Ted Krichels, g.m. of KBDI, Denver, argued forcefully that the reduced funding to overlapped stations would reduce diversity within the system. Minority-controlled stations such as WHMM, Washington, and WPBA, Atlanta, would be treated just like every other overlapped station under the policy.
"One thing this task force did not do was really discuss the issue of diversity within public television,'' said Krichels. He noted that the task force included no representatives of minority groups.
State networks that receive multiple base grants, meanwhile, "feel they are being penalized for their efficiencies,'' Krichels added. During its 15-month evaluation of CPB's grants program, the task force endorsed state networks as the "model of efficiency'' it hoped to promote throughout the system, said Krichels. "I'm not sure the message we're sending here is consistent with what we're trying to get.''
Most public TV state networks receive only one base grant and "do very well,'' responded another task force member, David Liroff of WGBH, Boston. If the board did not change the policy, he warned, other networks would apply for multiple grants and reduce the CSG pool for all stations. The change addresses the "fundamental inequity of those who took advantage of the policy, and those who didn't.''
"There is no approach that will spare all stations from some negative impact,'' said Liroff. He urged the board not to delay the vote. "We don't claim to have achieved a perfect set of recommendations, but if we delay implementation in pursuit of that, we will literally never come to closure on this issue.''
The CPB Board peppered task force members with questions, and requested that CPB management closely monitor the policy's impact on stations. But when it came time to vote, there was no debate. The board voted unanimously, with one abstention.
Board member and former chairman Henry Cauthen, who abstained from the vote as well as the discussion, heads South Carolina ETV, which now receives several base grants for stations in its system. Under the new grants policy, SCETV will lose a projected $1.2 million in CPB funding through 1999.
Four CPB Board terms expiring
In an unrelated development, the board also voted to transfer $717,137 of its uncommitted monies from fiscal 1997 to CPB's mission and goals fund.
The expiration of three members' terms on the CPB Board March 26 was not acknowledged during the meeting. President Clinton is considering reappointments and appointments to fill four expired board terms, according to a White House spokeswoman. Martha Buchanan, the only Democrat whose term expired, has resigned from her directorship. Republicans Honey Alexander, Carolyn Bacon and Sheila Tate will continue to serve until reappointed or replaced, according to CPB spokesman Mike Schoenfeld.
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