Radio Survivor

Every year scores of community and public radio stations apply for funding from the Department of Commerce’s Public Telecommunications Facilities Program. The venue funds a host of capital expenses that many of these stations can’t afford otherwise. The cash goes to upgrading transmission towers, funding shelters for transmitters, and buying new control room equipment, console furniture, auxiliary power gear, air conditioners to protect servers from hot weather—all that good stuff and more.

So, of course, there’s got to be a politician somewhere who thinks this good deed ought not to go unpunished. His name is Representative Charlie Wilson (D-OH), and Wilson actually thinks he’s going to reduce the deficit by killing this fund.

No kidding. Yes way. He’s for real submitted a bill to kill PTFP. Here’s Wilson’s statement on the issue.

TRIMMING THE FAT

1. Wilson is the LEAD SPONSOR of an upcoming bill to eliminate the Public Telecommunications Facilities Grant Program. In FY 2010, this program received $18M in federal funds. Once all television signals were converted to digital in June 2009, this grant program was no longer needed as it pertained to analog service facilities. President Obama zeroed out this program in his FY2011 budget proposal, but it is unlikely that Congress will pass a budget resolution this year which could result in the program continuing to be funded. Congressman Wilson is proactively making sure that a defunct program will not receive funding or become a place holder for other funding.

Eighteen million whole bucks! Woah. There you go. That’s going to cut down the national debt, like, not at all.

Ending PTFP, however, will hurt a boatload of community stations that really need this money to keep up their infrastructures. It appears from Wilson’s statement that he hasn’t even actually looked at the program and noticed that it funds radio stations, which did not go through the government’s DTV transition program.

Apparently there’s talk that the radio end of PTFP could be funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Please. The CPB hasn’t got any money for this. It’s too busy helping fund the Public Broadcasting System so that PBS can distribute a three hour worshipful TV documentary about Ronald Reagan’s former Secretary of State George Schultz, funded by his pals.

The National Federation of Community Broadcasters is fighting to keep PTFP alive. Go to NFCB’s site and help them.

Free Press has a provocative new report on the state of public media and how to more adequately fund it. Many of the reform group’s proposals involve siphoning income from commercial station advertising revenue or Federal Communications Commission spectrum auctions. I’ve got an overview of the document up on Ars Technica, which has generated quite a few comments. They largely focus on the question of whether the government should get more involved in media—always a subject for heated debate.

I’m not inclined to hash that out here, but do wonder about one of the report’s smaller recommendations. A section of the piece titled “Restoring Public Media’s Heat Shield” focuses on the very legitimate concern that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting fails to protect public media from external political pressure.

“The current appointment process for leadership at the CPB is overly politicized. Presidential appointments govern the entire process — into which neither the public nor the core constituency of public media producers have any input. It also often leads to appointments as rewards for political support, rather than simple calls to service for qualified people, including those who have broadcasting or media experience.”

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As we’ve reported, National Public Radio has been filing comments with the Federal Communications Commission a lot these days, talking up its localism initiative, Android app, and new mobile site. NPR’s latest commentary to the FCC on its National Broadband Plan reiterates all these points. But here’s the paragraph in the filing that got our attention:

“Rights: Copyright laws, especially those relating to music, have become highly complex and confusing, causing significant difficulties for public media entities striving to expand and improve their public service offerings to a growing audience on multiple platforms. While it is widely recognized and accepted that content creators have undeniable rights, attention must be given to the use of content for public service by public media entities. In a general sense and for purposes of simplification, Congress needs to consider the creation of a common public media waiver enabling the use of music regardless of distribution platform.”

Doubtless you’re wondering what this “common public media waiver” would look like, detail-wise. Sorry folks. That’s all NPR has to say about the matter in this document. But it’s no surprise that NPR might have some issues here. As the service points out, radio listeners download NPR podcasts over 15 million times each month and its new mobile device site gets 4.5 million views a week. So we’re talking about a shifting array of royalty challenges on every conceivable platform—terrestrial, Internet, and mobile. That can’t be much fun. (more…)

We reported last week that a study from the Knight Commission was quite critical of the amount of time that National Public Radio stations give to coverage of doings within their signal areas. Now yet another assessment offers the same perspective, this one penned by Leonard Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson over at Columbia Journalism Review. Their essay “The Reconstruction of American Journalism” is even more concerned about the trend, actually, both on commercial and non-commercial stations.

“On radio, with the exception of all-news stations in some large cities,” they write, “most commercial stations do little or no local news reporting.” And they continue:

“A growing number of listeners have turned to public radio stations for national and international news provided by National Public Radio. But only a relatively small number of those public radio stations also offer their listeners a significant amount of local news reporting. And even fewer public television stations provide local news coverage.”

The authors mention a few bright spots, but overall: “local news coverage remains underfunded, understaffed, and a low priority at most public radio and television stations, whose leaders have been unable to make—or uninterested in making—the case for investment in local news to donors and Congress.”

What to do? Schudson and Downie say Congress, specifically the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, needs to get busy on this problem. It should declare local news reporting “a top priority for public broadcasting and change its allocation of resources accordingly.” And the CPB should require every public radio and TV station to produce a minimum amount of local programming and require stations to report to the funding agency on their progress. And Congress should change the CPB’s name to the Corporation for Public Media and give it more money.

Finally: “Congress should also reform the governance of the reformed corporation by broadening the membership of its board with appointments by such nonpolitical sources as the Librarian of Congress or national media organizations. Ideological issues that have surfaced over publicly supported arts, cultural activities, or national news coverage should not affect decisions about significantly improving local news reporting by public media.”

The four major organizations that represent public broadcasting say the Federal Communications Commission shouldn’t count public radio and television station board members as the “owners” of the license in question.

“We must caution that this data does not, on a station-by-station basis or in the aggregate, provide a meaningful representation of the role minorities and women play in shaping the programming and services that public broadcasting stations offer,” they wrote on June 26. “Thus, the purpose and efficacy of such a data collection is questionable.”

The warning comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service, and the Association of Public Television Stations.

Some background here: Several months ago the FCC launched a new proceeding on how to boost the number of radio and TV stations owned by women and minorities. The present situation is pretty pathetic. A recent study by Free Press estimated that minorities own about 7.7 percent of full power commercial radio stations. Women own about 6 percent.

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