This morning’s media headline – US Court of Appeals rules public television and radio stations can run political ads. It even made the front-page news summary of the Wall Street Journal, linking to a full article on page A5. You can read the court’s ruling here.
Yes, the “PBS NewsHour” can now be sponsored by the Obama campaign, and “Washington Week” can run advertisements for the Tea Party.
How did that happen?
As it turns out, I have first-hand knowledge of much of the history. The plaintiff in this lawsuit, KMTP-TV San Francisco, is a station I helped launch two decades ago.
“Adam, we have the station,” announced Otis McGee, MTP’s Chairman, when he reached me in a control room at NBC in Washington DC, where I was wrapping up production of a broadcast for Quincy Jones Entertainment.
A San Francisco lawyer, Otis had incorporated the Minority Television Project, Inc. (MTP), and had filed a two-page brief in the years-long litigation by San Francisco community groups that were challenging the license of the city’s public TV station, KQED-TV. MTP had promised in its filing that, if the FCC found KQED to be an “unfit licensee” (that’s the legal term), MTP would provide the people of the San Francisco Bay Area with a unique multicultural television service. And I remember telling Otis back then that the FCC never pulls a station license, so we could forget anything coming of the proceeding.
So when he made that announcement on the phone, my reply to Otis was that it would take years, perhaps decades, for the Commission to award the license to anyone. A San Francisco station was worth hundreds of millions of dollars then, and I imagined every major broadcaster not already in the market would make a competitive filing.
“Are you near a fax machine?” asked Otis, and I gave him the number of the machine behind me at NBC. The machine buzzed with the incoming message. Reading his fax, indeed, the Administrative Law Judge had stripped KQED of one of its two TV licenses – the one for channel 32, KQEC-TV, letting it keep the other, KQED-TV – because of FCC violations.
Amazing. The FCC had actually pulled a station license, one of only a few times in the history of U.S. broadcasting that the Commission had taken such an action.
Then, looking in the voluminous record, rather than order a new, competitive hearing, the ALJ found MTP’s brief — and ruled that MTP was the only party in the long-running dispute that had actually asked for the license. So he awarded the license to MTP.
“Otis, we have the station,” I began when I called him back. “I’m on the next flight to San Francisco. See you in the morning.”
Getting the license was the headline. The other news was that, unless MTP constructed, staffed, programmed and launched a new, full-power television station in 90 days – 89 days by the time I landed in San Francisco – the Bay Area cable television operators would drop our channel and most viewers would be unable to receive the station.
With the help of other San Francisco TV stations and many volunteers, we went on the air one day before the deadline. KQED donated the transmitter, which it no longer needed. ABC-owned KGO-TV donated a full range of equipment, because it had just converted to digital (KGO General Manager Jim Topping said I should rent a truck and back it up to their loading dock; his extraordinarily generous gift was also probably a tax deduction.) And volunteers from Bay Area TV and radio stations helped build and staff the station for its launch.
And I was the General Manager. Booker Wade, who is now General Manager, was a lawyer volunteering to help with legal filings (and much else). KMTP became the second minority-owned public TV station in the US, after Howard University’s WHUT-TV in Washington DC — where, years later, I also served as General Manager.
Footnote on Bay Area cable — initially KMTP did not broadcast 24 hours a day so we shared a cable channel with other, cable-only networks. One day due to an error at a Cable control room, instead of switching cleanly to the start of KMTP’s broadcast day, cable viewers could see our children’s programming, but the audience was from an X-rated adult cable channel. The station was flooded with complaints from irate parents, who were stunned to discover their kids listening to what could gracefully be described as on-air sex education.
But I digress. Back in 1992, looking into the history of the station, we discovered that it had been owned by Metromedia, a longtime national commercial broadcaster. Most Metromedia stations – in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere – eventually became Fox-owned stations. But Metromedia’s San Francisco station was on channel 32, on the UHF band, at a time when almost all TV viewers watched VHF stations – the ones on channels 2 through 13. So Metromedia decided there was little value to the station and it donated it to KQED. The transmitter KMTP inherited and used for years was in fact the transmitter that Metromedia had used years earlier – and donated to KQED.
So KMTP was operating on a frequency that was in fact a frequency used by a commercial licensee. We speculated even then that, some day, KMTP could run commercials. Interesting note that WHUT-TV, the Howard University station, had also been donated by a commercial broadcaster because it was on the UHF band – also on channel 32. So we thought that off in the future both stations might run a limited number of commercials while still remaining true to their multicultural missions. Courtesy of yesterday’s Appeals Court ruling, that day is now at hand.
But twenty years ago, that was not part of the plan. MTP qualified for a federal Community Service Grant, and I determined that we could run the entire station operations fueled only by the CSG – any local fundraising or underwriting income could be plowed into new local programming directed at underserved minority audiences – which, in San Francisco, formed the majority of the population. We joked we should change the name to Majority Television Project.
We launched with a unique program schedule relying on little-used programs from PBS and other sources to build a broadcast service with no duplication whatsoever with the five other public TV stations in the Bay Area. We even had a cooking show weeknights at 7 p.m., “Cooking with Kurma,” devoted to Indian vegetarian dishes. In San Francisco, that was mainstream programming.
But we needed a signature program for our launch, and fortunately a news event provided us with exactly this opportunity. Just as KMTP was going on the air, the Senate Judiciary Committee was opening hearings on a new nominee for the Supreme Court. So I asked PBS about their plans, and they told me they would provide a live feed on one of its secondary transponders. I promised wall to wall live coverage – and asked whether PBS could also produce a nightly wrap-up program from Washington at 11 p.m. to midnight, which we would carry live at 8-9 p.m. Pacific time. We also preceded the PBS specials with locally produced special reports every night from 7:30 to 8 (yes, after “Cooking with Kurma”), underwritten by Bay Area law firms.
That nominee’s name was Clarence Thomas. And KMTP was the only station I San Francisco, public or commercial, carrying the hearings live – and with a prime time nightly recap. Later others joined for selected highlights, but KMTP was the station of record. It didn’t hurt Kurma’s audience, either.
Fast forward. Remember that Community Service Grant? The rules were changed and KMTP no longer receives it. KMTP also dropped PBS membership (as KCET has done in Los Angeles) and became an independent station. But still, it broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Now fast forward to 2012. Public TV stations around the country face financial challenges and some may be converted to religious broadcasting.
Characteristic of almost all minority-owned businesses, MTP has fewer financial reserves than most stations, so when the TV industry caught a cold, KMTP-TV caught pneumonia. Its very survival was questioned. And I remembered that conversation back in 1991 about how some day the station could run commercials.
Evidently Booker Wade remembered, too.