Stations Protest PBS Program Pricing : Television: Opponents of the new policy claim that the fee schedule may drive some smaller stations out of the network.

By SHARON BERNSTEIN

June 11, 1991 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

A new method for assessing the money that public-television stations must pay in order to receive programs from the Public Broadcasting Service may drive some small stations out of the network altogether, its opponents say.

The new policy charges higher fees to stations in large population areas--even tiny educational outlets--and forces small stations in markets where there is also a major public-TV station to delay airing PBS programs by as many as eight days if they want to receive a discount on the new rates.

“I think it’s totally unfair,” said Tom Little, general manager of KVCR Channel 24 in San Bernardino, which under the new rules can only afford to buy 37% of the programs offered by PBS. “It puts any (small) station in a multiple market at a major disadvantage.”

The new rules are so controversial that--even though they have already been approved and are slated to go into effect July 7--they are the subject of a special meeting at this week’s PBS national convention in Orlando, Fla.

Southern California will be one of the areas most affected because there is signal overlap among KCET Channel 28 in Los Angeles, KOCE Channel 50 in Huntington Beach, KVCR in San Bernardino and KLCS Channel 58 in Los Angeles.

The new policy works like this: Stations must either buy the rights to 100% of the programs offered by PBS or settle for 50% or less. Most stations now run about 75% of PBS offerings, according to network executives.

And in areas where the broadcast signal of a station purchasing only a portion of the programming overlaps that of a station buying the full menu, the smaller station must delay airing PBS programs by either 12 hours or eight days, depending on the extent of the discount the station has chosen.

According to Peter Downey, senior vice president for business affairs for PBS, the new guidelines were designed to help small stations in sparsely populated areas afford PBS programming, while at the same time offering exclusivity as a perk to large stations in metropolitan areas for paying higher fees.

The policy--part of PBS’ new, centralized approach to programming--represents a marked change from the way stations have traditionally paid for shows. In the past, they simply paid for the programs they chose to use. Because the shows were priced according to their costs, those that were fully underwritten, such as “Masterpiece Theatre” or “Mystery!,” were free of charge.

The new method, Downey said, allows PBS to pool the money it receives instead of earmarking it for specific programs. The idea, he said, is to give PBS programming chief Jennifer Lawson more freedom to experiment.

Most affected by the new rules, according to Downey and others, are small stations like KOCE, whose dues will go up because of Southern California’s dense population, and whose signal overlaps that of giant KCET.

According to Roberta Smith, KOCE’s director of programming, the Coast Community College District-operated station will pay between $70,000 and $90,000 more than the approximately $350,000 it paid last year to receive PBS programs. Even at those rates, the station will purchase only about 49% of the programs PBS offers, and must delay broadcasting them by at least 12 hours except in the case of “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” which it may run any time after KCET.

Already, plans are in the works to move a number of programs, including “Mystery,” “Nova” and “Live From Lincoln Center,” to different days from KCET.

“There might be some near-term disruption of people who are used to seeing a particular show on a different night,” said KOCE General Manager Bill Furniss. “But the possible upside of this is (that) we might gain more audience on different nights.”

At the same time, Furniss said, the station will not be able to take advantage of national publicity on special programs like “The Civil War,” because it would not be able to air them on the night mentioned in advertisements and reviews.

At KVCR in San Bernardino, general manager Little predicted that viewers may lose the ability to receive some PBS programs altogether. Because programs like “Masterpiece Theatre,” which is fully underwritten by Mobil, will now count against the 37% of PBS programming that KVCR can afford to buy, it or another fully underwritten program will probably be cut from the station’s schedule, Little said.

And because many people in the San Bernardino market cannot pick up KCET’s signal, viewers will simply miss out, Little said. The station has not yet decided which programs it will drop.

Ted Krichels, general manager of KBDI-TV in Denver, said that he plans to drop “Masterpiece Theatre” for the same reason. In addition, Krichels said, KBDI will be forced to delay airing any PBS programs it does buy by eight days.

“The problem in Denver and the problem in some larger markets is that the larger station looks at the market as their turf,” Krichels said.

Indeed, according to PBS’ Downey, the point of the delay was to reward large stations for paying more for programming, a move welcomed warmly by big operations in crowded markets such as New York and Los Angeles, where small stations are paying as little as 5% of the fees coughed up by WNET and KCET.

“It’s a tough call, but I do think (the policy) is fair,” said William Kobin, president of KCET. “I think that if one station is going to pay considerably more than another station that it overlaps, there should be some advantage or compensation for that.”

But Noel Smith, television network manager for KNCT in Killeen, Tex., and a member of the PBS board, said the change might have the effect of driving small stations in overlapping markets away from PBS.

While that may not have been the intention, he said, some at PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting do believe that there should be fewer PBS stations.

“There are people who are of the opinion that by having two stations in a market, those viewers--through their taxes--are paying double for a service,” said Smith, who is a founder of the network’s small stations consortium.

“It’s forcing stations like ours to search elsewhere for additional suitable programming,” said KVCR’s Little.

Already, Little said, public television’s regional consortia, such as the Eastern Educational Network, are developing programs that small stations can buy more cheaply than programs from PBS.

But Nancy Hendry, the PBS vice president and deputy general counsel who was an architect of the new rules, said driving small stations away “is not something that has been part of any of the discussions that I have participated in.”

And while some small stations might be forced to look elsewhere for some of their programming, that simply means there will be greater diversity among the stations, she said.

Little and others warn, however, that the end result could be a split like the one that shook public radio a decade ago, when American Public Radio was formed as an alternative to National Public Radio.

“They’re cutting us loose,” Little said. “You want PBS to be as strong as it can be. But if they turn their back on you, you have to look elsewhere.”