Consensus on rural aid: a long time coming, and often hard fought
Originally published in Current, Jan. 25, 1999
By Karen Everhart Bedford
Public broadcasters are on the verge of achieving a consensus on the need to boost aid to small and rural public TV and radio stations.
On the radio side, proposed revisions to CPB's grants policy, dubbed "LA2K" for Listener Access 2000, will direct an additional $6.1 million to rural radio services next year [earlier story]. For television, CPB recently has created new "special assistance" grants totalling $2 million for small and rural stations, and next year will double to $2 million the amount of assistance available to these stations through the Transition Fund, a competitive grant program that supports station efforts to enhance their fundraising capabilities and outsource their programming [earlier story].
Public radio and television developed these policy changes on separate tracks, but it's no accident that they coincide with CPB's anticipated $50 million federal pay raise next year. Rural public broadcasting allies in the Senate, particularly Appropriations Committee Chairman Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), have long pushed CPB to direct more federal monies to rural stations. It's taken the good part of a decade, numerous incremental changes, and this major infusion of capital to build the agreement that now exists.
Since passage of the Public Broadcasting Act in 1968, which established a mandate to achieve universal coverage, public radio and television have come a long way towards blanketing the country with their signals. A 1998 analysis for CPB estimated that public radio signals reach 90 percent of the population, up from 50 percent in a 1979 estimate. And, according to a Nielsen estimate for PBS, public TV coverage now hits 99 percent, when cable reception is considered, and 97 percent of noncable households.
Back in 1962, 64 educational TV stations reached 40 percent of the population. The expansion since then has been greatly assisted by matching aid from the Educational Television Facilities Program, created that year, and its successor, PTFP.
During the early build-out years, public radio was at a disadvantage to extend services because Congress left it out of the first facilities program, notes Jack Mitchell, journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin and former head of Wisconsin Public Radio. Radio didn't become eligible for federal aid until 1967, when it was added to the Public Broadcasting Act.
Public radio also lacked the support of the Ford Foundation, which provided leadership and funding to foster public TV's early development, adds Mitchell. "Public radio was kind of a Midwest state university idea that started in a much lower state of development than public TV. It has, in time, caught up."
But even by 1979, 34 of the top 100 markets didn't have public radio. The system worked to fill the big urban gaps in its coverage, says Rick Madden, CPB v.p. for radio. Priority for rural areas came later.
Now that universal coverage is nearly at hand, stations serving small and rural communities continue to face daunting challenges, especially public TV's impending digital conversion.
"It hasn't been an easy sell at all, and it still isn't," said Diane Kaplan, a radio consultant and former president of the Alaska Public Radio Network, of the push to aid rural stations. She's been at it since the late '80s and early '90s, working with rural advocates in Congress.
"We're all trying to keep our local presence but it becomes really difficult when you don't have the resources" to support digital conversion, said Joyce Herring, g.m. of KACV-TV, a university licensee serving Amarillo, Tex.
"In many rural areas, the core public TV service of national programming is the only link a lot of these communities have to arts programming, or drama or in-depth public affairs," adds Herring. "The need for the service and the appreciation of the service is on a different level than in some of the major markets."
Flow of federal funding
In the Senate, where rural interests are on equal footing with urban concerns, key legislators have sought to ensure that their constituencies are adequately served. In addition to Stevens, long-time observers of the Capitol Hill scene mention Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), West Virginia's Democratic Sens. Robert Byrd and John D. Rockefeller, retired Sens. James Exon of Nebraska and Dale Bumpers of Arkansas as pubcasting allies who pushed for rural expansion.
Both Senate authorizing and appropriations committees with jurisdiction over CPB have "very strong representation by senators from rural states," notes Tom Thomas, a radio policy analyst with the Station Resource Group. Thomas says a common refrain at Senate hearings goes like this: "Part of my support for public broadcasting is because of the incredible asset public broadcasting is for people in rural communities."
The movement to expand public radio's service gathered steam at the end of the Reagan Administration, which severely slowed the growth of federal aid to the field. To survive Reagan cutbacks, the field postponed expansion in a "batten-down-the-hatches effort to preserve what was in place," Thomas says.
By the late 1980s, "the climate was changing in Washington, and there were an array of new opportunities to move forward," Thomas continues. One of these, the public radio satellite system, "provided the technology to bring service to distant communities."
What Thomas described as the "first salvo" in what would become regular skirmishes over rural service came in 1988, when Congress reauthorized CPB with legislation establishing the first direct entitlement for federal aid to rural "sole service" stations, he recalls.
The Public Radio Expansion Task Force, which in early 1990 recommended policy changes to extend public radio services to rural and minority communities marked a "significant turning point," according to Thomas, because it recognized the need to acknowledge the diversity of public radio and be "more than a single-dimension service."
"What set it off was that a lot of federal money was flowing, and a lot of rural stations were not getting anything," recalls Lynn Chadwick, executive director of Pacifica, who in 1987 signed on as head of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters.
Chadwick recalls that she was "fresh out of public policy school" when she realized that the "smallest and arguably the neediest stations were not qualifying for support." About one-third of NFCB's membership at the time qualified for CPB aid. "I obviously had a constituency issue."
So did Diane Kaplan, who then headed Alaska Public Radio Network. "A lot of stations in Alaska received no federal support because they didn't meet CPB's criteria." And stations that didn't qualify for CPB aid were excluded from NPR membership.
On the eve of a CPB budget hearing one year, Kaplan received a call from an aide to Sen. Stevens who asked, "Have you got any issues?," she recalled. Her response: "Yes, we do."
Public radio expanded rapidly in Alaska beginning in the mid-1970s, according to Bruce Theriault, c.e.o. of Public Radio International, who managed KTOO in Juneau (1977-80) and KRBD in Ketchikan (1980-85). Many radio stations serving small towns were made viable by seemingly endless state funding. "Oil money was flowing and everything seemed possible," he explained. "There was no overall plan, and every year [there were requests] for more spending ... . Everybody wanted their own station."
Now Alaska has 25 public radio stations across its vast territory, serving fewer than 500,000 people, he says. "It wasn't the most efficient way to grow a statewide system, but that's hindsight."
Like pubcasting outlets that developed independently in other rural states--in Maine and West Virginia, for example--stations in Alaska responded to cuts in state aid by accepting consolidation.
Localism vs. efficiencies
While pubcasters embrace their mandate to achieve universal service as part of "the mission," the means of extending public radio and TV's reach--via local stations or repeater stations--has been a longstanding source of internal tension.
From its inception, public radio placed a high priority on localism--building stations that a local community coalesced around to build, support and control, notes Thomas. In comparison, public TV in many states was delivered by networks with many repeater stations.
Extending public TV service to rural areas and small communities helped win necessary funding from state legislatures, but in urban centers, stand-alone television stations were economically viable. "Nobody would come in to a place like Nebraska or Wisconsin without a statewide plan" for public TV, recalls Chalmers Marquis, retired lobbyist for APTS. "But in Chicago, we went on the air and didn't care about the rest of the state." Marquis helped start WTTW in Chicago.
This difference in expansion strategies explains "why public TV has gotten as far as it's ever going to get, while public radio has a ways to go," explains Thomas.
LA2K, the package of CPB radio policy changes under consideration, marks a breakthrough in resolving the systemwide tension between local origination and network delivery, according to Thomas. For the first time, CPB policies will recognize state networks such as Nebraska Public Radio and Wyoming Public Radio as rural stations, in addition to the stand-alone operations.
"Our sense is that we have reached the outer limits of what the community-initiated, locally controlled model is likely to yield in terms of further progress on first service and multiple services in smaller communities," explains Thomas, a member of the task force that crafted the LA2K package. "Having pushed very hard and accepted some sacrifices in efficiencies, what we now as a field are embracing is a complementary strategy."
Further ahead
To continue public radio's expansion, LA2K emphasizes adding second and third radio services in rural areas.
"The availability of services to a lot of people will be significantly enhanced by gaining services or having more choices become available to them on the dial," predicts Thomas.
As for rural coverage of public TV, the immediate challenge to small stations is to complete the digital conversion by the FCC deadline of 2003. In Amarillo, that means raising $4-5 million, says Herring. "You take our situation and multiply that by 50-60 stations that have the same types of challenges--it's pretty frightening." Despite the improvements KACV has achieved by hiring outside programming expertise and fundraising assistance, the cost savings and enhanced revenues don't begin to meet the anticipated costs of digital.
"You can't squeeze $2-4 million in efficiencies out of an operation that's $2 million a year," she comments.
CPB's recent expansion of aid to small and rural stations was intended to help these outlets prepare for the digital conversion, according to Doug Weiss, CPB's v.p. of TV operations.
"Because the federal appropriation is going up, we were in a position to do that," he explains. The strain to complete the digital conversion will be "greatest amongst these stations. We needed to get the money to them sooner rather than later, to give them time to meet the FCC's conversion deadline."
Using a metaphor adopted by the television CSG task force, Weiss adds, "What these stations lack is seed corn. There's nothing they can put aside to improve their own circumstances."
"Since the mandate for digital, there has been a sincere effort from all organizations to maybe even over-represent us a little bit," says Herring, speaking of recent TV task forces convened to work out grants policies. "It's not an issue of us being shut out."
Later news: CPB gives final approval to rural radio aid plan, 1999.
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Earlier news: Moving faster on the TV side, CPB
earlier approved extra aid for rural public TV stations for fiscal year 1999.