by June Casey
When San Bernardino’s public television station KVCR-TV goes digital in 2003, a lot more than outmoded analog technology will head out the door with it.
The tiny station is engaged in a race against time to raise the $32 million needed to relocate to high tech headquarters, that haven’t yet been built, and to buy the equipment that will put KVCR in compliance with a Federal Communications Commission mandate to convert to digital broadcasting format by 2003.
“We’re just starting the [fundraising] process,” said KVCR General Manager Lew Warren from his office in the San Bernardino Valley College basement, that currently houses the 37-year-old public television station, the first to be licensed in Southern California and the first in the nation licensed to a community college district.
Construction costs on the new building alone are expected to run $17 million. Because it will be primarily an educational facility, the structure must conform to the Field Act, a state law that mandates stringent construction requirements for any school building. Adhering to those requirements will make it “twice as expensive” to build, according to Warren.
He plans to complete a survey of community education needs in the Inland Empire by the first week of January. Based on the information compiled, he will begin the lengthy grant application process directed at federal and state entities and various private foundations. “I’m also working with a number of businesses,” said Warren. “Response has been positive.”
Despite Warren’s sanguine outlook, the outcome is by no means a certainty. In neighboring Orange County, executives at KOCE-TV in Huntington Beach, have suggested selling the broadcast license. The suggestion was made over the objections of trustees of the Orange Coast Community College District, who recently spurned offers from Cal Poly Pomona and Chapman University in Orange to buy the license. Chapman was pursuing a possible partnership venture with the undercapitalized Orange County station.
Just recently, however, KOCE announced an agreement with P S TV Palm Springs, beginning this month, to broadcast programs including Lawrence Welk and British comedies to residents of that city, according to Mel Rogers, KOCE president and general manager. This arrangement should help to increase KOCE’s membership, however, resulting revenues will be shared. KOCE is viewed by about 2.5 million people a week, earning a total of of approximately $2 million from its membership, and $1 million from underwriters. In the future, the station plans to provide live coverage for Orange County events, but first must raise $6 million for the required digital format.
While KVCR and KOCE, along with thousands of smaller stations through the nation, struggle to find funds, KCET in Los Angeles, a community-licensed PBS affiliate, has already raised $16 million of the estimated $20 million needed to make the conversion, and their new facility has already been built. KCET President and CEO Al Jerome, who has been with the station since 1995, said fundraising efforts had already begun at the station by the time he came on board.
The success of KCET is directly tied to the level of public support the station historically has enjoyed, Reed said. That support translates directly into donations from its viewing audience. “Nationwide, public television is considered a treasure. Americans feel it brings great value to their lives.” Part of the test that KVCR and KOCE will face, he believes, is how much the stations are valued by their communities.
Ironically, as undercapitalized PBS affiliates like KOCE and KVCR face huge budget shortfalls, the nonprofit Public Broadcast Service itself is reaping unprecedented financial windfalls via new corporate sponsorships from Internet companies. With business booming in the brave new world of e-commerce, these new rich kids on the block have a surfeit of dollars and a keen hunger to tap into the prestige associated with PBS and its high brow audience.
But the smaller stations have no share in that bonanza. “Each station is on its own,” Reed said. If the support is not there, “some stations may have to provide less service.”
He added that KOCE and KVCR, along with KLCS in Los Angeles, are exploring the idea of combining their operations via joint production and purchasing agreements, as a means to reduce overall overhead. Although Jerome said KCET is also willing to embark on joint projects with smaller stations in surrounding communities, nothing concrete has yet emerged from these talks.
In the meantime KVCR, like the little engine that could, inches along on its arduous uphill journey to find new financing sources, both traditional and otherwise. “We’re looking to increase underwriting and to hire underwriting sales people,” said Warner. If the ambitious fundraising program goes according to plan, KVCR-TV will eventually broadcast from a 10-acre facility specifically designed to house “all the new technologies.”
But the building, and the proposed high tech business park at Norton Air Force Base where the station will be headquartered, is still “in the design process,” under the guiding hand of the Inland Valley Development Agency. The design must then be submitted to the California Department of Education for review and approval, a process that could take up to a year. Once construction begins, Warren estimated it will take another year to 18 months to complete.
What will happen if financing shortfalls or construction delays prohibit KVCR-TV from meeting the digital conversion deadline set by the Federal Communications Commission?
“Legally we need to have just one digital signal operating by 2003,” said Warren. “There’s a transmittal site on Box Spring Mountain in Riverside County, above Moreno Valley, that we could convert to digital in order to be legal and keep our license open.”
The dream, however, is for KVCR eventually to have four digital channels that will transmit from the spacious new complex still on the drawing board.
Warren cautioned, however, that the far-reaching plans now in the works represent just “the preliminary story.” With rapid changes in technology and in funding sources, “six months from now everything could change dramatically.”
Far superior to current technology, digital provides CD-quality sound and images that are four to eight times sharper than analog broadcasting. More significantly, versatile digital operation opens up “a whole new spectrum” of programming possibilities beyond what is currently available, Warren said.
Because digital technology allows stations to compress information, KVCR will eventually have the capability to run the current PBS schedule and college-credit courses, along with classes for children in kindergarten through twelfth grade, local government broadcasts, and a host of other programs, each potentially with its own on-screen web pages, and all broadcast simultaneously. Said Warren, “It all fits in the digital pipe.”
KVCR’s current annual operating budget of $2.3 million is projected to increase following conversion, because digital broadcasting requires more technical support.
The community college district provides 24 percent of KVCR’s annual budget. Another 35 percent comes from fundraising. The federal government contributes 14 percent, with an additional 19 percent derived from outside business underwriting and miscellaneous interests.
The KVCR viewing audience is estimated to be 1,400 households, which translates into approximately 5,000 viewers, per week. The station blankets the entire Inland Empire from Ontario to Temecula.
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