So what do you all think. The main PBS station in the nation’s second largest media market, is pulling out of PBS because of money woes.
Of course there are three other PBS stations in the media market to replace KCET. Not all areas of the Los Angeles media market get all the other three PBS stations.
Is PBS a dying institution? Did LA just have too many PBS stations? Or was KCET just mismanaging it’s money? Seems like they should be able to run a station on 37 million, but what do I know?
I think KCET is making a big mistake, and losing the PBS cachet is going to mean the end of the station in the long run, or even the short run. How many independent over-the-air broadcast stations are there in the LA area? Not very many. I think the problem is that TV viewership is losing to the internet. And even before that, smaller networks were having a hard time. Look at UPN and the WB. Both long gone.
Wow. KCET has produced some great programming, but I don’t know how well they will succeed in the “real” world. The pledge drive model is pretty tough these days. If the viewers aren’t generous enough, it’s pretty hard to pay the bills.
That is too bad - I can recall watching KCET when I lived in LA and there was some great programming.
Odd that in the television capital of the world they are having problems getting money to pay those dues - that is pocket change for someone like Spielberg or any number of big name celebrities.
Then again, even the major broadcasting (NBC, CBS, ABC) are struggling to keep profits - declining viewership, higher cost of production, cable stations making inroads. Plus it doesn’t help that the internet is starting to take away a lot of television viewers - perhaps PBS should just go internet as that seems to be the wave of the future.
I think that part of the issue for PBS stations is that a lot of the sorts of programming which they have traditionally offered (educational, arts, travel, British stuff) is now easily available to cable or satellite subscribers from non-PBS sources.
In case you don’t know, PBS charges member stations for their content. They also get charged on a sliding fee scale.
That means if KCET pays seven million a year for programming from PBS, a station in a smaller market like Bosie, Idaho would pay a lot less.
Also programming is charged on the basis of availability. For instance, in Chicago we have WTTW, the main PBS station, WYCC also in Chicago, which provided mostly educational courses for college credit, and WYIN, which is similar to WTTW but runs of out NW Indiana. WYIN is in the Chicago media market, but because it’s transmitter is in NW Indiana near Lowell, WYIN doesn’t cover much of the Chicago media market. Thus WYIN pays a LOT less for PBS content, then would WTTW or WYCC.
There was a big issue when WYIN wanted to move it’s digital antenna to Willis (Sears) Tower, as it woud’ve given WYIN coverage equal to WYCC or WTTW but WYIN would still have paid PBS less for its content.
Too bad. I’m no longer in the KCET area, but I used to watch it a lot. Showing old movies is a good thing. But we’ve already TCM and other cable channels to see them. I think it will be a tough slog and that it is a poor decision. I guess L.A. needs more infomercial channels.
That’s one problem. Another is the overlap in PBS stations, as mentioned by Markxxx. Growing up in southern Connecticut, for instance, we could watch Channel 49 (the Connecticut Public Television station), WNET (the flagship station out of New York City or WLIW (the Long Island PBS affiliate). Sometimes, they were showing the same program at the same time.
This is an amazingly stupid idea. Of course, KCET has been run by idiots for years, so what do you expect. My GF used to work for them, and the stories she tells about the stuff that went on there are beyond belief. Bunch of nutcases in charge of that place.
Huell Howser’s a hoot! And many of his shows are very interesting.
I liked the episode about the ‘submarines’ in the desert. These were buildings that used evaporative cooling – but not swamp coolers. (Doncha just love crawling up on the roof to remove bits of excelsior from the spider?) Instead, water was dripped onto burlap that covered the metal roof. It evaporated to keep the interior of the structure cool.
Howser’s wide-eyed presentation is aching for parody, but he really does come up with interesting things.