Appeals court voids college board’s sale of KOCE

Marisa O’Neil

A state appeals court this week voided Coast Community College

District’s 2004 sale of KOCE-TV to the station’s fundraising arm.

The opinion accused the district of purposely ignoring a higher

bid from a Christian broadcaster in favor of the KOCE Foundation’s

bid. That could leave the door open for spurned bidder Daystar

Television Network, which sued for the right to buy the station, and

then appealed after losing.

“In essence, this means a new sale -- or, if the district’s

trustees find that the prospect of televangelists eventually

acquiring KOCE to be too distasteful, no sale at all,” the justices

wrote. “But if they do sell, it must be a fair sale to the highest

cash bidder, with no favoritism as regards bidding deadlines.”

Coast Community College District trustee Jerry Patterson said in

an e-mail that the district could appeal the decision to the state

Supreme Court, take the case to federal court or comply with the

court order.

Complying with the court “is the most obnoxious option and I

certainly hope the full board will not choose that action,” he wrote.

According to state law, college districts may sell property for

cash to the highest responsible bidder. Coast Community College

District, which had decided to sell Orange County’s only PBS TV

station to bolster its sagging budget, selected the KOCE Foundation

as the highest bidder in its 2003 auction.

It rejected a $40-million bid by Dallas-based Daystar, the

nation’s second-largest Christian broadcaster, because the bid came

in a day after the bidding deadline. The district instead considered

Daystar’s previous $25.1 million bid.

The foundation’s winning bid was $32 million -- $8 million cash,

plus a promised $24 million over 30 years. That was later reduced by

$4 million to reflect costs that might be incurred if the station was

removed from the PBS format, the opinion reads.

“To assert that a bid from televangelists made the very next day

after bidding was closed for an extra $15 million in cash while

letting a favored bidder off the hook for $4 million two months after

the bidding was closed can only be described as the rankest sort of

favoritism,” the court opinion reads.

A “smoking gun” in the case is a statement by one of the

district’s brokers saying trustees wanted to “filter out” bids from

televangelists, the court opinion said.

In his e-mail, Patterson said Justice David Sills, who wrote the

opinion, missed the fact that the station was mostly funded by viewer

donations and fundraising even before its sale.

“This sale was not a sale of surplus school property, it was a

return to the community of the license for public broadcasting,” he

wrote.

Though the appeals court overturned the sale, the KOCE Foundation

still holds the Federal Communications Commission license to operate

the station. It’s unclear now what that will mean to the station.

The foundation officially took over the station in November of

last year. Since then, it has launched new local programming and the

Butterfly Initiative, an arts-awareness campaign.