KOCE up for sale

Jenny Marder

Huntington Beach’s local public TV station is up for sale, but

district officials are hoping that its nonprofit ally will swoop in

and buy them out.

Losing KOCE-TV would mean losing the only source of local TV news

coverage in the county since the Orange County News Channel went

under in September 2001. But station officials are hopeful that the

KOCE-TV Foundation will raise enough to save the station and its

local programming.

Faced with major budget cuts, the Coast Community College

District, which has been funding $2 million of the station’s $7.9

million annual budget, is no longer able to foot the bill.

“The district is finding that it is increasingly expensive,

especially in a digital world, to have a public station,” station

president Mel Rogers said.

The KOCE-TV Foundation, a nonprofit private corporation that

exists to raise and spend money on behalf of the station, has

expressed interest in helping the station stay afloat.

In November, the foundation submitted a proposal, but the board

was not confident that it could shoulder the costs.

“At the time, the board majority felt there wasn’t enough

assurance of finance,” trustee Jerry Patterson said. “They were

assuring us they could raise it, but didn’t have it raised.”

The foundation is one of the strongest options and is still

hopeful that it can raise the full sum, he said.

“I would imagine we have the foundation as a default partner,”

Rogers said.

Coast Community College District is responsible for about 25% of

the station’s total operating budget. Thirty percent comes from

memberships and the remaining 45% coming from the Corporation of

Public Broadcasting, production underwriting and foundations, said

Erin Cohn, district director of public affairs.

Last month, the district hired San Francisco-based Media Venture

Partners to assist in the search for a buyer or a partner to help

absorb the costs.

“We’ve gotten hit pretty hard,” Patterson said. “The concern is

that we have to try to cut our budget. We don’t want to sell it, but

we are faced with no other alternatives.”

The board of trustees will make the final decision whether to sell

the station.

The broker is in the process of developing a marketing booklet

that will soon be sent out to all prospective buyers and partners.

School and station officials have their fingers crossed that

programming will retain its Orange County focus.

“We would like to keep it Orange County based with an Orange

County emphasis,” Patterson said.

KOCE debuted on Nov. 20, 1972, as the 231st Public Broadcasting

Service station and the first based in Orange County. In its early

days, it broadcast six hours a day to a small audience.

Today, its signal is carried throughout all of Orange County,

broadcasting 24 hours a day to an audience of 4.5 million viewers.

The station airs 1,500 hours of programming per year. It is on the

campus of Golden West College.

“We might be the most important public television station in our

country because of our news role,” Rogers said. “Nobody covers

[Orange County] but KOCE. We’re really all the county has.”

This is not the first time the station has entertained offers. In

August 1999, Chapman University offered to purchase the station, but

the district decided it was not interested in selling at that time.

With the economy as bad as it is, Chapman has said it is not

interested in buying KOCE at this time, Rogers said.

In the studio, you’d never know anything was wrong. Cameras are

rolling and staff is hard at work preparing the daily programs.

“We will continue to operate as we are,” KOCE spokeswoman Judith

Schaefer said. “It’s business as usual for us until we hear

otherwise.”

Mike Taylor, news director of KOCE’s news program “Real Orange,”

concurred.

“If and when we are sold, we’ll deal with it then,” Taylor said.

The Orange County News Channel, a 24-hour cable news station and

the county’s only other source of local news for years, shut down on

Sept. 7, 2001.

Four days later, when two planes crashed into the World Trade

Center, Orange County viewers had only KOCE to look to for local

coverage.

The station stepped up to the plate, providing the only TV

coverage of the tragedy’s effect on Orange County.

For several days, the British Broadcasting Center aired continuous

coverage, and “Real Orange” extended its hours to provide frequent

local news cut-ins. “Real Orange” went on the air at 10 a.m. to

inform residents that John Wayne Airport, Cal State schools and the

federal building were all shut down in the days after Sept. 11, 2001.

The anchors are ready to take the reins, again, in the case of

another worldwide catastrophe. And if war is declared, KOCE will

interrupt regular programming to broadcast BBC’s 24-hour coverage,

along with frequent live updates from “Real Orange” anchors.

“There won’t be the same urgency and trepidation that was here

9/11, but we do have plans to cut in programming,” Taylor said.

Taylor, who began working as a producer for “Real Orange” in 1997,

said that the station has become increasingly news oriented since he

began.

“Since [Orange County News] has gone away, we’ve seen ourselves as

the only source of news in Orange County,” Taylor said. “Now that OCN

is down, there is a sense that we really have to be all things to all

people.”

And as a college station, education has always been central to the

KOCE’s mission.

“It has one of the most extensive telecourse schedules in the

country,” Schaefer said. The station broadcasts 26 telecourse

programs per year and sometimes offers an internet component to

courses.

“Community College students can get an associate degree just

through watching KOCE-TV,” Rogers said.

A federal mandate requires the station to convert wholly from

analog to digital format by 2006, which will add to the already high

costs.

KOCE staff will flip the switch on the new digital transmitter

next month and will gain 5 million, or 40%, more viewers, Rogers

said. The new antenna is on Mount Wilson near Griffith Park.

For a while, the station will broadcast from both the analog and

digital transmitters, he said.

The upgrade will cost an estimated $8.5 million, a goal

fund-raisers are still $5 million short of.

“This station is definitely an asset to the community, but it’s an

asset that’s always in need of funding,” Taylor said.

* JENNY MARDER covers City Hall. She can be reached at (714)

965-7173 or by e-mail at [email protected].