While retransmission consent and negotiations between content providers and content distributors are among the top stories for the last few weeks, there have been some stories from the public broadcasting world that exemplify issues affecting your favorite home for Big Bird or Garrison Keiller.
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Senior officials in public media, generally, report to a Board of Directors. Unlike major corporate boards, members of public media boards are volunteers. Some boards have little or no responsibility for what the stations do, others are charged with responsibilities in funding and programming policy and some attempt to control station operations and demand or strongly suggest programming. Most board I have worked with as an employee or consultant want information. That's it. In fact I have attended board meetings at stations where a quorum is not present and cannot conduct business. I have worked with boards whose members are only looking to impact their personal resume. Since many members are volunteers, they pay attention only when there are issues at the stations or issues members want to "champion."
Leaders of public media stations who report to a Board of Directors also serve at the "pleasure" of the board. Individuals who accept a leadership are well aware of the whims and scattered direction a board may take.
The full story about the dismissal of Allan Pizzato, executive director at Alabama Public Television and Pauline Howland his chief deputy may never be known. It is still not clear what the members of the Alabama Educational Television Commission had in mind when they fired the two leaders. Pizzalo was a long term leader of APT having been there for 12 years - an eternity in modern public television.
The Commission did not anticipate unintended consequences that followed the firings. Nine lay members of the APT's fundraising organizations resigned in protest.
Speculation still runs rampant on the reason for the firings. Two possibilities still lead the pack of rumors.
There had been ongoing discussions with the commission over the mission statement of APT which seemed to change the non-discrimination in programming part of the mission.
Recently released minute from commission meetings show increased pressure on Pizzalo air programs produced by religious leader David Barton.
Pizzalo took copies of the programs to programming staff who questioned the religious nature of the program and some inaccuracies in program facts.
Although Pizzalo is out as Executive Director, Howland was reinstated temporarily to finish the budget process.
Current has more information the old and revised mission statement and other issues at APT here.
Are you a fan of Garrison Keillor and Prairie Home Companion (APHC)? If you live in South Florida, you will need to find another station that carries the series.
WGCU, Fort Meyers, FL, is dropping the long-running series. The reason - money.
The state of Florida zeroes-out state funding for public media stations. This left some stations at a loss to find replacement funding. In WGCU case, state funding was 10 percent of their budget. A large portion of that income was used to purchase programming including APHC.
To add insult to injury the producers wanted a increase in fees for APHC by $22,000.
Rock Johns, GM of WGUC-FM, said, "it was a hard decision to make."
In order to make up for the shortfall, the station held a special pledge drive to finance the series. The drive, unfortunately, raised a mere $1200.
More in Current.
Yesterday (July 12) Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) announced the layoff of eleven staff members while addong six.
TPT is one of the most respected and well funded public television stations in the country.
The layoffs were not due to fudning or potential fudning issues, but TPT is reogranizing.
The reorganization is to allow TPT to embrace new and developing technologies to distribute and create content for other platforms.
TPT invited those laid off to apply for the six new positions or other positions that become available das a result of the reorganization. Current
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