I have a two-year old, and I can vouch for the fact that PBS programming has been an amazing supplement to her education. This is even more true for poor kids who don't have access to good public education - PBS Kids really fills an important need.
The following was written by a close friend who works at a management position at a major PBS affiliate in a major metropolitan area in the South. The bottom line is that Comcast is planning to use public funds to reap enormous profits on children's programming, while poor kids without cable TV will no longer have access to as educational and informational programs on the public airwaves as they used to.
I am posting it here with a request for recommendations and discussion about what we can do to save PBS. I am not asking for mojo, and will not put up a tip jar. Please recommend this diary.
Click below the fold for the full details...
The Public Broadcasting SERVICE has just done something so unspeakably vile that I am red-faced and nearly incoherent with rage. It's slightly complicated, so bear with me. Keep firmly in your mind the fact that PBS exists as a MEMBERSHIP ORGANIZATION for the SOLE PURPOSE of providing programming content to MEMBER STATIONS. Unlike NBC/CBS/ABC/Fox etc which are networks in their own right, with their own financial goals largely separate from the stations they PAY to air their content, PBS is PAID BY THE MEMBER STATIONS to provide content. They are a service, not a "system." We buy their product to put on our air. Keep that firmly in your mind as I explain the vileness.
PBS provides, as one of its services to MEMBER STATIONS, a schedule called "PBS Kids." Upwards of seventy member stations subscribe to this service and use it to program over-the-air digital kids channels. Our station, for instance, provides the kids channel as one of our four multicasts. Our local cable carriers have an agreement with us, and they carry all of our multicast channels as well, kids channel included. So we currently have a 24x7 children's channel, far superior to Noggin or any of the other oceans of commercial (and otherwise lousy) channels available. Did I mention also that our channel is FREE OVER THE AIR. So 24x7 children's EDUCATIONAL programming free to anyone who can receive a digital signal (currently a high percentage, soon to be 100% given that all new TV's will have digital tuners in '05).
PBS, without any consultation with member stations other than a couple of board member representatives (who, for very complex reasons, will do whatever PBS asks), has decided to make a change. PBS has entered a contract with Comcast. Comcast is the borg of cable television corporations. They are larger than the next three combined. The deal is this. PBS, Sesame Workshop, and HIT (the British company that owns Barney, Angelina Ballerina, Teletubbies, Boobah, etc.) have gone into business with Comcast to create two services. One will be a Video on Demand (VOD) service using the bulk of Sesame Workshop and HIT's archives, the other will be a "linear" (normally scheduled) channel with COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING. These channels will be made available to cable operators and satellite providers.
Because these are "hot properties" it is virtually guaranteed that every cable and satellite operator will buy the services. This will enable Comcast to push more of their services as add-ons as well. Comcast stands to make a very large fortune. For the bargain-basement price (not sarcasm) of $43M, Comcast has a ten-year contract for this channel. The company being formed to run it will program the channel (PBS will not). PBS branding will be used on this COMMERCIAL channel, thereby harming the PBS brand and injuring the NONCOMMERCIAL PBS member stations.
At the end of ten years, PBS will have the option of selling out their equity stake in the channel, they estimate that it will be valued at $150M. PBS's equity stake is FIFTEEN PERCENT. Comcast will have four of seven board members in the new company, and FORTY PERCENT equity. This channel will have exclusive rights for TEN YEARS to the content of Sesame Workshop and HIT's libraries. Just think, that's thirty years of Sesame Street, and that's jut the tip of the iceburg. So, in other words, PBS has sold its kids franchise to Comcast, for damn near nothing. This is an oversimplification, PBS does not own the libraries, Sesame Workshop and HIT own the libraries, but the PBS brand is just as valuable.
So, now we come to the gist of the problem. That PBS Kids service that dozens of stations have used for the past FIVE YEARS? The one that persuades cable operators to carry public television stations' multicast channels (FYI, there's no digital "must carry" for other than the "primary service"). PBS will end its PBS Kids service to its MEMBER STATIONS on September 30th, 2005. Better yet, they will begin using the (much more vastly-watched) PBS National Program Service (NPS) (the traditional "public television" PBS programs) kids block to pilot new programs which will then be moved to the cable service as soon as we've built an audience for them. We've been told that we CAN still use our nine-hour daily block of kids programming in the NPS to program a digital multicast kids service, but that they strongly discourage it. STRONGLY DISCOURAGE IT. They've offered a pathetic piddly dribble of profit-share income (and there won't be much of that given that Comcast owns a FORTY PERCENT stake in the new channel) to stations that decide NOT to offer an over-the-air children's service.
In other words, the short of this is:
- PBS has created a commercial venture to directly compete with its MEMBER STATIONS, in direct and absolute violation of its mission.
- PBS has handed the vast majority of the equity in that commercial venture to a honkin' big corporation for damn near no money at all without doing nearly enough to find competing "partners."
- PBS has yanked the programming provided to stations for free over-the-air kids programming on a 24x7 service.
- PBS will exploit stations for marketing of the new service and probably for audience generation, thereby degrading the little free kids programming still available on the main public television services.
- PBS will associate itself with two COMMERCIAL program services, thereby decimating the PBS brand itself, and causing very reasonable distrust of the value of the programming offered.
- PBS did this in secret, knowing that the membership would object, under the guise of "confidentiality agreements with Comcast."
- The 15-20% of households which do NOT have cable (and let's be real, darned few of them are like Dean and me, who simply CHOOSE not to infest our house with cable, most of them are the dirt-poorest people in every community), will lose the 24x7 childrens programs that they can get now for free.
THE POINT OF PUBLIC TELEVISION will be violated in the most despicable way possible as PBS chooses to directly compete with (aka "harm") its member stations, and at the same time put money grubbing above the welfare of the most under-served group of kids in our society.
[Note, this is my interpretation of the cock-and-bull story fed to us by PBS in memos and a teleconference today. They would spin this very differently. I'm sure you can find information about the plan in press releases, judge for yourself. ]
I hope that the dKos comunity can come up with ideas on how we can fight this corporate takeover of the public education airwaves. It literally is for the children.
Update [2004-10-22 9:42:30 by azizhp]:had to edit the story to remove some identifying information, to protect my source.