Posted on 12/27/2010 8:47:30 AM PST by La Lydia
On Sunday, when KCET-TV stops broadcasting PBS programming after four decades as the primary PBS outlet in Los Angeles, most programs will move to another quickly revamped public broadcasting station in Orange County, KOCE-TV, which has rebranded itself as “PBS SoCal” and scrambled to expand cable system carriage. But KOCE has decided not to carry some programs, including “Independent Lens,” “Charlie Rose” and “Nightly Business Report.” So KOCE will send viewers to two other stations, KLCS-TV in Los Angeles, or KVCR-TV in San Bernardino, which reaches just 8 million to 10 million of the Los Angeles region’s roughly 17 million homes...“Need to Know,” which KOCE rejected so as not to displace its popular British sitcom reruns, may not be broadcast until February, while KOCE awaits PBS permission to move it to Sunday.
Setting the schedule has been a race against the clock for KOCE, starting in October, when KCET abruptly announced that it would quit PBS because it could not pay nearly $7 million in annual dues. “Up to the last minute, I didn’t think KCET would go nuclear. I just thought it would get resolved,” said Mel Rogers, KOCE’s president and chief executive.
But while PBS executives praised his station’s swift reaction, executives at the Independent Television Service sharply questioned excluding “Independent Lens” from KOCE’s lineup....
PBS expects to have a gap of several million dollars in its programming budget for a couple of years because of KCET’s withdrawal. And with little paid advertising to tell viewers where to find its shows — PBS cannot afford it — no one knows how long confusion will last. “That’s our biggest concern: can people find the content?” said Paula Kerger, PBS’s chief....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The KOCE call letters should have been KDEM or KLIB.
Unfortunately this will not happen in the Bay Area. Scanning past NPR and the Spanish only stations on my car radio takes almost half an hour.
I approve.
$7 million ‘dues’ to PBS?
Why is the government supporting this channel if the stations are paying tht much money????
Congress provides monty to the local stations — tax money that you and I supply. The local stations have to pay dues to PBS in order to obtain the right to broadcast its programming, and so the local stations use the money provided to them by Congress to pay PBS. This is how PBS can claim it gets “very little federal money” with a straight face. The local stations are the middle men.
Not to change the subject but our PBS station in Athens OH is a very good station. They have Charlie Rose, Religious shows, Gospel music and other conservative shows all the time. The Saturday line up of cooking shows is excellent. But this is Ohio and not California.
If the feds stopped their support I think Ohio citizens would donate enough to keep it going, and that is how it should be.
Where I live there are three PBS stations. Some of their programming I really enjoy: the British mysteries such as New Tricks, the cooking programs, some of the travel programs, the old Brit sitcoms. But their “public affairs” programming is completely and consistently slanted to the Left, to the point where I can’t even watch any of their straight news shows. It is disgracefully smug, one-sided and incestuous. I refuse to give them a dime.
“Diversifying the audience does remain a central challenge for public television.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Attention, blacks, Latinos, Asians and other non-whites: you better start watching PBS or we’ll figure out a way to make you!
“...best brand in media.”
And get scared, Disney/Pixar!
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