110501 May GM Report long version.pub - Idaho Public Television

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idahoptv.org GENERAL MANAGER’S REPORT The community station in Waupaca, Wis., has been getting started since 1993, and organizer Mark Gerlach almost made a run for the license this year. He enjoys the Native station WOJB in northern Wisconsin and thinks it does excellent radio. “I just loved that station. Why couldn’t we do that?” he asks. Waupaca’s future station recently pinpointed an available frequency and figured it would have top priority for PTFP assistance because part of the coverage area could not yet receive any public radio. Without PTFP, “it will definitely take longer now,” he says. “We think we can make a go of it.” PTFP came in especially handy during television’s DTV switchover. It helped some 280 stations to buy digital equipment, including 200 transmitters and antennas. PAGE 16 The Office of Management and Budget took note: Nearly all TV stations would soon be switched over to digital operation. A budget officer therefore advised that funding PTFP was no longer justified. “In recent years, most PTFP funds have supported public broadcasters’ transition to digital broadcasts. This transition is largely complete, so funds are no longer necessary.” It was one of many White House budget proposals, both Republican and Democrat, that have tried to abolish PTFP. “They look around to cut something,” says Dennis Connors, retired former director of PTFP. “It’s been around for some time. They feel it has met its mission. It was an easy target.” The Obama White House is the latest to cross out PTFP’s budget line. A recent budget document suggested that CPB should pick up PTFP’s grantmaking since it also began making equipment grants during the DTV transition period. “It was pretty apparent to everybody when CPB started the fund that the [Office of Management and Budget] would keep only one of them,” says an executive familiar with PTFP. “This time [the budget office] is dead serious about closing it down.” PTFP staffers has been reassigned to other tasks at NTIA. The idea of PTFP closing down greatly concerns Idaho Public Television General Manager Peter Morrill. Rural broadcasting, like rural electrification, has required subsidy to overcome high costs per viewer. “To put in a repeater system or a full‐power transmitter in a rural situation where we have 50,000 viewers is very different per ‐viewer than one transmitter that serves half a million people.” This time Congress couldn’t save PTFP. “Now it’s gone,” says Morrill. “Whether it ever comes back, we have no idea.” Comments, questions, tips? behrens@current.org Red State Home Companion By TIMOTHY EGAN The New York Times April 14, 2011 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/red‐state‐home‐companion/?partner=rss&emc=rss POCATELLO, Idaho – It gets pretty lonely out here on the lava beds of the Snake River Plain if you’re looking for something other than a right‐wing rant for company on the car radio. From Twin Falls to Idaho Falls, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Glenn Beck rule the airwaves. Beck is on two stations in Pocatello, case you missed one of his conspiracy theories.
idahoptv.org GENERAL MANAGER’S REPORT PAGE 17 The public airwaves that brush over this beautiful piece of high country carry a monopoly of thought — that is, until you pick up the first scratchy sounds of KISU‐FM. It’s run by a proud conservative, Jerry Miller, but he serves up something different for Eastern Idaho. You get a music program called “Potato Head Blues,” maybe some city hall news — up to 30 hours a week of home‐ grown programming. On top of that, KISU‐FM delivers “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered,” “Car Talk,” “A Prairie Home Companion” and “Fresh Air with Terry Gross” from the stellar lineup of NPR. Late at night, the crisp, authoritative tones of the BBC can be heard in the Idaho Rockies. It seems illogical that when the Republican Congress took aim at public radio, they were going after an audio lifeline much loved by their own constituents in Red State America. The big cities — they can take the hit. But up to 100 stations, mostly rural and small‐town, might have gone dark if the cuts from the House had survived. In a multiple‐prong attack on NPR, Republicans slashed funding for public broadcasting, then passed an additional “emergency” bill to prohibit independent stations from using federal grants to buy NPR programs. Both cuts have been restored, for now. The amount of money at stake in targeting small stations — about $430 million — would have zero effect on the budget deficit, the Congressional Budget Office reported. By comparison, the state of Idaho got $2.7 billion in taxpayer‐funded farm subsidies from 1995 to 2009, according to the excellent data system compiled by the Environmental Working Group. This at a time when crop prices are at near‐record highs and big corporate farms are flush. So why go after such a meager sum for public radio, when it means so much to the least‐populated areas of America? Spite. Ideology. Choose your poison, it’s there. Some conservatives just hate public radio. They think it’s elitist, snooty pants, full of borrrrrrrring civil discussions and, OMG — that 20‐minute piece on chanterelle mushrooms! Surely no one in Idaho Falls cares what the BBC World Service has to say about Ivory Coast. “I can tell you what the people in rural communities are not doing with their free time: listening to public radio,” said Laura Ingraham, who comes up with such opinions from her home in the Washington, D.C., metro area. Like a lot of the Beltway magpies who flock from one partisan clack‐fest to the other without bothering with facts, Ingraham is clueless on this topic. Even with a broadcasting signal much weaker than its competitors, KISU‐FM is number six among 25 stations in morning‐drive‐time in the Pocatello region, a metro area of about 90,000, said Miller. But “the government is subsidizing entertainment and journalism,” as George Will has argued. “Is there a shortage of either?” Yes. There is. KISU‐FM carries “Idaho Reports,” the longest‐running legislative coverage program in the West. Rush Limbaugh is never going to cover the Boise statehouse — he tells them what to do. As for entertainment, ask people in Appalachian Kentucky. There, one of the poorest areas of the country is given a lift by the small federal grants that help keep local bluegrass acts and regional storytellers on the air, as my colleague Katherine Q. Seelye reported this week. Or visit one of the native villages of the Last Frontier State, where Alaska Public Radio serves 330 communities in an area the size of Ohio. That’s why Don Young, the Republican Congressman, is against eliminating money that is so vital to keeping rural areas in the national conversation.
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