A year after the Boston Consulting Group study, the focus at many public TV stations is on improving local shows
Thirteen months ago, a report from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) jolted the corps of producers at public TV stations by suggesting that their local programming budgets might better be spent to fend off the cable networks with stronger national programs.
The report did not go quietly onto a dusty shelf. While it failed to inspire a major shift of resources into national production, it revived interest in local programming--encouraging some stations to get more and better local programming for the dollar.
The net effect, says Jeff Clarke, general manager at KUHT, Houston, is that the BCG report may have awakened some managers and ''put some of the fire back in the belly'' of those already committed to local programming. ''What has come up,'' Clarke says, ''is that the strength of our system is localized.''
In Twin Cities, KTCA--one station devoted to making local programs--President Jack Willis aims to increase the station's local production to nearly a fifth of its primetime hours.
Stations generally have renewed interest in local programming, says Lori Evans Lama, who follows local station production activity as associate director for scheduling management at PBS. ''But what that entails is a more focused involvement with the community, and not as much scattershot programming.''
Arthur Singer, general manager of New Hampshire PTV, agrees. The BCG study ''fell on deaf ears'' with many stations. He contends it could have come to a different conclusion based on the same evidence. ''The message I would have preferred to see is, 'If you can't do [local programming] well, get out of it and put the money into national productions.''
Certainly, since the BCG report came out many major-market stations have reconsidered the local programming and launched new series, among them Life & Times at KCET in Los Angeles, Q at KQED in San Francisco and The Group at WGBH in Boston. WNET chose to make a local talk show, The Charlie Rose Show, which also helps support itself as a national show on cable's Learning Channel. (Programmers from many of these stations will speak in sessions at the PBS annual meeting starting this weekend in San Francisco. Two sessions will be held Sunday afternoon and repeated Monday afternoon.)
Since the BCG report came out last April, some stations have reduced their spending and hours for local programs; others increased spending and hours. National figures to show the overall reaction are not available.
The figures show only that local programming doesn't amount to many hours a week. In fiscal 1990, CPB found the average PTV licensee produced only about 2.4 hours of noninstructional programs a week for local distribution, plus less than an hour of national and instructional programs. (The amounts were actually down slightly from fiscal 1989.)
To the BCG consultants, it seemed uneconomic for the stations altogether to spend more on local programming activity, including this small volume of shows, than they spend on a full schedule of national fare, including the best-known PBS programs.
The proposal for a wholesale shift of funds to national programming, however, ''hasn't gotten wide acceptance,'' confirms Ted Coltman, CPB research director, who commissioned the BCG study.
Even where stations cut back their local production costs, the BCG report wasn't the only reason. ''Stations have gone through significant cost-cutting,'' observes Philip Evans, a BCG vice president, ''though I fear it is out of necessity rather than a strategic reallocation.''
Similarly, the consultant's report was not the only factor encouraging stations to focus on local programming, but that's what many have done.
''There's a big consensus that local programming is a part of why we're going to be here in the future,'' says Mary Pruess, secretary of the Public Television Programmers' Association.
She sees decision-makers spending their local production money with more care. In the Southwest, Great Lakes area and the Northeast, groups of unrelated stations are stretching their production budgets by dividing up the job of producing episodes for regional series they all can air.
Pruess suspects that stations probably are making fewer labor-intensive documentaries and more studio productions such as the town meetings held by KUHT, Houston, her former station.
KUHT is preparing for the eighth in the ''extraordinarily successful'' series of quarterly two-hour live town meetings, says Clarke.
The first town meeting in 1990 set the standard by probing hostile police/citizen relations after a series of shootings that rocked the city. The producers covered old issues in pretaped set-ups, urging the mayor, police chief and the kin of shooting victims to talk about the future instead. The town meeting won a 3.8 rating in both hours, according to Clarke.
''That sent a signal to us that the community was definitely interested in focusing in on major issues confronting it.'' Since then, KUHT has done town meetings on education, public health care, aging baby boomers and youth gangs.
A 1990 viewer survey commissioned through the University of Houston's business school found that, after ''adventure'' shows, the audience wants more coverage of local events and issues, according to Clarke.
BCG's conclusion didn't apply to KUHT, he says. ''We saw it as almost the direct opposite of our approach and where we were going.'' Since he came to town as top programmer two years ago, the station has doubled its local programming, developing four new series and spending up to a quarter of its budget on local programming.
In Twin Cities, KTCA also has increased its local programming--20 percent in the last year, consolidating its specials into a Tuesday-night KTCA Reports after Frontline. And this month its board approved a Campaign for the '90s to raise $16.5 million for programming--nearly half to make local programs, says station spokesman Peter Myers. The station now gives 11 percent of its primetime schedule to local programs and aims to increase that portion to 18 percent, including a planned nightly current-affairs show.
New Hampshire PTV also puts its local productions into primetime and then runs them again so more people can see them. This gives local programs larger cume audiences than any other series on the schedule and quite respectable ranks on a poll of viewers' favorites--third and seventh among 50 programs, according to Singer.
The BCG report ''definitely got our attention,'' says Ron Gargasz, station manager at WBGU, Bowling Green, Ohio, which serves the Toledo/Lima market. His station reconsidered and retained its heavy production schedule, though it will fine-tune its production load by evaluating such factors as viewer response and the educational value of specific programs. In the past year, WBGU moved nearly all of its local programs into primetime, he says. The station can afford to produce so much in part because it employs 35 to 50 university students a semester to run cameras, produce and direct.
Web page posted Jan. 3, 1996
Copyright 1992 by Current Publishing Committee