Orange County’s Public TV Quandary

The growing public dispute over the future of KOCE-TV Channel 50 has begun to resemble a PBS-style “community in crisis” documentary, complete with a grass-roots Internet campaign to try to halt the proposed sale of Orange County’s only public television affiliate.

How the debate plays out over the next few months will determine the face of public television in Orange County, a big-city-sized swath of suburbia that could be left without a mainstream broadcast outlet to call its own.

At issue are such nuts-and-bolts elements as how much the Coast Community College District, which owns KOCE, should have to spend on a federally required conversion to digital programming, and the more ephemeral questions of local pride and sense of place.

Similar debates have cropped up around the country as a faltering economy has ravaged government budgets, placing publicly owned television stations in financial straits. In Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula, WNMU-TV Channel 13 is struggling to stay afloat after license holder Northern Michigan University was forced to cut $12.5 million out of the college’s $58-million overall budget, said WNMU General Manager Scott Seaman, who is eliminating several jobs -- including his own -- to reduce costs.

Elsewhere, North Texas Public Broadcasting agreed this month to sell one of its two stations to religious broadcaster Daystar -- one of the bidders for KOCE -- for $20 million to establish a programming endowment for its remaining station, KERA-TV Channel 13.

In the KOCE debate, the questions cover a broad spectrum. Which is the college’s primary responsibility, its budget or its viewers? Should the station be sold to the highest bidder, probably a televangelist group, or only to an organization that would preserve PBS programming? Should the station be sold at all, and is there enough financial support in the community to keep it going?

“I have five members, and you’re going to get five different opinions,” said the president of the college district’s board, Paul Berger. “I’ve never seen the board so diverse in its opinions.”

The board is expected to hear from the public on the issue during its regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, in the Robert B. Moore Theatre at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

The district provides about $1.8 million of the station’s annual $8-million operating budget, though some board members said the district’s portion could climb to $3 million in the next few years.

Beyond the operating budget, the station faces big bills from a Federal Communications Commission mandate that all broadcast stations convert to digital technology over the next few years, requiring millions of dollars in new equipment. KOCE has estimated that its conversion, most of it for updating studios, will cost about $8.5 million.

About $3.5 million of that has been raised primarily through the KOCE-TV Foundation, and a tower broadcasts a digital signal from Mt. Wilson, which supporters argue meets the federal requirements. Updating the studios is expected to cost the remaining $5 million.

This year, the college district hired a firm to solicit bids for the station. Ten proposals were submitted, a list that slipped to eight with the withdrawal of KPBS-TV Channel 15 at San Diego State, and the merger of bids by KCET-TV Channel 28 in Los Angeles, which is a major PBS affiliate, and the KOCE-TV Foundation, which would preserve KOCE shows such as “Real Orange.”

College officials declined to discuss specifics, but insiders said the most lucrative bids for the station could bring the college about $30 million.

Berger said he opposes selling the station but believes that a merger of operations might be the best solution if Orange County’s programming independence can be maintained.

“I like consolidation, if an arrangement with KCET can be worked out for the good of both stations,” Berger said.

Although attention has been focused on a possible sale, the board could still reverse course and hold onto the station, said Trustee Jerry Patterson.

“The decision has not been made,” said Patterson, a former Santa Ana mayor who has been active in efforts to maintain KOCE as a PBS affiliate. “I think we’ve gone out and tried to find out what the market was ... but we haven’t made a finding that it’s up for sale.”

He said any windfall to the district in a sale would be a welcome infusion but would not be worth losing the station.

Some trustees, though, say getting out of the broadcast business might be the right move for the college district.

Trustee Walter Howald said he believes advances in technology may have reduced the station’s importance to the college’s core mission: education. Televised courses, he said, are moving more and more to the Internet, and the district must decide whether maintaining the station fits in with its mission.

Howald said the station’s audience has extended far beyond the district’s coastal-Orange County boundaries, in effect outgrowing the reach of its owners, and most KOCE-carried programs are available through other PBS affiliates, such as KCET.

“As trustees we have a fiduciary obligation ... to make sure we’re using our resources productively and as efficiently as possible,” Howald said. “I want to make sure the educational delivery mission is fulfilled. That makes sense to me, to serve the people we need to be serving.”

Trustee George Brown agreed, saying he would like Orange County to have a PBS affiliate but did not think the financial responsibility belongs to the college district.

“There has to be some type of association that has the public interest at heart, or the KOCE-TV Foundation has to figure out how to solicit more money from the community,” said Brown, former mayor of Seal Beach. “We’re not in that business.”

He said he disliked having to cut back on services for students while the district spends money to operate a television station.

“Should we do that?” he said. “Absolutely not. It’s a no-brainer.”

KOCE viewers, meanwhile, have turned to the Internet to vent frustration over what they see as secretiveness by the district -- they say there has been little public discussion by the board or station officials -- and to rally opposition to a sale.

“Why isn’t the station asking for public input?” said Janet English, an eighth-grade science teacher who has produced student-directed programs airing on KOCE. “The public has put all this money into the station. Don’t we have a right to know the details? Why don’t they ask us to help save it?”

English, who helped launch the www.savekoce.org Web site, said the operating support from the district amounts to less than 2% of its $170-million budget.

“Money is not the issue,” she said. “The amount involved is about the cost of landscaping.... Why sell it at all?”

Mitch Goldstone, an Irvine businessman and community activist, has launched a complementary e-mail campaign hoping to not only maintain KOCE as a local PBS affiliate but also expand its local coverage.

“Hopefully, this can be used to awaken people to recognize that there needs to be more local coverage,” Goldstone said. “We’re in a county of 3 million people and there’s no local broadcast outlet, no local coverage. This is the last hope for it.”