The ‘local’ in local broadcasting: Public stations struggle to produce quality programming on tight budgets
A snippet of the story by
Chris GrahamI had an inkling as to what the meeting was going to be about - just from the tone of the e-mail. The station management at
WVPT, a public-television station based in Harrisonburg (VA) whose audience over the air extends from Charlottesville to Winchester and by satellite stretches into the Washington, D.C., market, had requested a meeting with me to talk about my fledgling monthly TV show, “Virginia Viewpoints.” I had been waiting for the ball to drop for several months by this point - nobody had stepped up to sponsor the show, and really it had seemed to me that money issues were killing the station all around. ...
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Budget issues are nothing new in the public-broadcasting business - it seems that station managers in both public-radio and public-TV are all working on margins that are ever-shrinking, for a variety of reasons.
“The state and federal funds have tended to not grow over time - so you have to find ways to raise money either from the contribution side of things, whether it’s individuals or corporations, or through whatever other means you can try and come up with,” said Curtis Monk, the president and CEO of the Richmond-based Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corp., which operates three television stations and two radio stations under the
Community Idea Stations umbrella in Central Virginia and Northern Virginia.
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Former WVPT president and general manager
Bert Schmidt is in something of a different galaxy now than he was when he was back in the Valley - now the president and general manager of the Hampton Roads-based
WHRO, he oversees radio and TV operations that are housed under one umbrella and that have a $13 million annual budget to work with, more than four times what he had back in Harrisonburg.
And yet Schmidt still can’t go out and spend money like it’s going out of circulation.
“You’ve still got to be smart,” said Schmidt, who - full disclosure - was the person who hired me to produce and host “Virginia Viewpoints” during his tenure at WVPT.
“Yes, we have certain advantages here. WHRO is in a much more populated area. It’s the 40th-largest TV market in the U.S. - versus Harrisonburg, which is 186th. So there are obviously a lot more sources for funding than Harrisonburg ever had,” Schmidt said.
“And having both TV and radio is a wonderful combination. Right now, we have four TV stations - if you include our high-definition, kids channel and how-to channel - and we have two broadcast radio stations, a pure classical and a NPR news and public affairs. And two digital radio stations as well. Plus we have extensive educational services that are used statewide. So WHRO is fortunate to be in a position to have a lot more products to be able to raise money for,” Schmidt said.
“Of course, it costs us a lot of money to be able to provide those products,” Schmidt said. “But being able to house them all under one roof allows the administrative costs, the fund-raising costs, to be spread over all those products - as opposed to being at a smaller station, where you have just TV, and all the fund-raising and incidental costs have to be covered from just that one TV station.”
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Of note is that even with that much, much larger operating budget, WHRO was by and large out of the local-production game before Bert Schmidt’s arrival earlier this year.
That interests me if only because it seems to me that the lifeblood of a public-broadcasting station - radio or TV - would be its local programming.
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“The cost of doing a show in Harrisonburg is pretty similar to what it is in Norfolk or anywhere else. The odds of me being able to find funding for a similar type show in Hampton Roads is greater when you have Fortune 100 companies based in the area. The advantage is that the likelihood of finding funders for it in the Hampton Roads region is much greater than being in Harrisonburg,” Bert Schmidt said, comparing his current situation at WHRO to what he used to have to deal with in the Valley at WVPT.
And even with all the talk about how expensive local shows are, “You don’t have to spend six figures every time you want to do a local show,” Schmidt said.
“That may be the easiest way to win a bunch of awards - but I’m much more interested in creating programming that is a benefit to the community,” Schmidt said.
“The important thing is you have to have your ears to the community - and hopefully do programming that’s relevant,” Schmidt said. “When I was at WVPT, we started ‘Virginia Farming’ - which has gotten great funding, and continues to get great funding. We’re doing a similar approach in Hampton Roads - focusing on programming that’s relevant to the community that surrounds the military, the African-American population, both of which are significant in this region."
“We have several TV shows in the development stage right now - and it’s not because we have this huge budget. In fact, the budget that we have is already committed to a lot of different things. So we will take a similar approach to trying to be smart with programming - to try to talk to the community and understand what the community wants and needs,” Schmidt said.
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However you slice it all up, though, the bottom line is, well, the bottom line - and when money is tight, “the first thing that’s going to go at any station is its local programming,” Bert Schmidt said.
Schmidt understands why management at WVPT did what they did after his departure - and as somebody who was directly affected by the cuts that came down this summer, I do, too.
Read the full story
HERE.
The Capitol Steps, who started out as a group of Senate staffers, appeared at Virginia Beach's Sandler Center on Sunday, September 28th. They satirize the crazy business of U.S. politics. And, they're equal opportunity artists of the political lampoon, i.e. they're "bi-partisan butchers"! And hilarious! My face hurt from laughing so much.
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