Pubcasters Hope to Retain ‘Strong’ Bipartisan Support in Senate

Lawson said public broadcasters didn’t have much to worry from changes in Senate committees. He said Senate Majority Leader Frist (R-Tenn.) was “open to working with us.” Sen. Stevens (R-Ala.), who’s in line to head the Commerce Committee, has been a “tremendous supporter” of public broadcasting, he said. Lawson added that the new ranking Democrat on the committee, Sen. Inouye (D-Hawaii), was a long-time friend. In terms of appropriations, Sen. Cochran (R-Miss.), who will be chairman of the full committee, was one of the “fathers” of the Ready to Learn program, he said, and “our challenge is to engage him fully around other public broadcasting issues.” Public broadcasters have “strong support” from both sides of the Senate aisle, Lawson said, “but the problem is they are not going to have a whole lot of money to spend.”

Public broadcasters will have to contend with the Bush Administration, which consistently has declined to forward-fund CPB. “It’s a bit frustrating for the administration to propose that all of our infrastructure funding come out of CPB annual appropriations,” said Lawson: “So there is no question we have a challenge there.” Public broadcasters will need to mobilize the same kind of grassroots response used in Congress, he said, to “reach out to the Administration.” Also, the boards of local stations include many influential Republicans, and “we have to mobilize that base,” he added.

Lawson expressed guarded optimism about the passage of the CPB reauthorization bill, which won a unanimous vote in the Senate Commerce Committee. Based on that success and the continued interest in Congress in local control of the media, he said he was confident it would pass the Senate. Key staffers in the House did react favorably to the bill, he said, “but we have not really tested the legislative proposal with key members of the House. We will be doing that over the holidays and early next year.”

He said the proposal for a trust fund in exchange for early return of public TV’s analog spectrum had run into problems because of “mixed messages coming form public television this year.” APTS had put out a proposal that it had vetted with stations, and PBS had come out with a “seemingly competitive” proposal, he added: “That simply created a lot of confusion.” Lawson said he hoped “that’s behind us” and public broadcasters could move forward with a trust fund plan tailored to education and not designed to replace annual appropriations. He said the apparent traction in Congress for a hard date for cessation of analog broadcasting would make public TV’s proposal for voluntary return of analog spectrum in exchange for a trust fund attractive. “But we also recognize that depending on how far out the hard date is, the window for an early give back by public television will not be open for long.”

At a recent APTS board briefing, Reynold Hoover, dir. of FEMA’s Office of National Security Coordination, raised the possibility of rolling out nationally the digital Emergency Alert System (DEAS) pilot launched jointly by APTS and the Dept. of Homeland Security in the Washington area (CD Oct 22 p5). If the pilot is successful, he said, it “creates a kind of seal of approval for public television datacasting to provide other services.”

APTS has begun to give serious thought to stations’ use of their excess digital capacity for revenue producing activities. KenCast CEO Bill Steele has given a presentation to the APTS board on the growing interest in providing streaming video to handheld devices, Lawson said, and how DTV datacasting could fit into a hybrid system that feeds WiFi and WiMax, to provide interconnectivity to mobile devices. APTS staff will work with stations to pursue such new business opportunities, he added.