County to get second public TV station in ’07

KOCE-TV, the only public television station in Orange County, will have a competitor in the near future.

KCET, which covers Los Angeles and much of the Southland, announced plans last week to work with Cal State Fullerton to start a new Orange County digital channel.

The station and the university plan to launch KCET Orange, a 24-hour network featuring news, local arts and educational programming, by fall of 2007. KCET, which launched in 1964, is the West Coast flagship station of PBS and reaches 11 counties, including Orange County. Although many viewers in Orange County already watch the Los Angeles-based KCET, the new station — which is separate — would provide more local coverage.

KOCE President Mel Rogers and KOCE-TV Foundation Chairwoman Jo Ellen Allen said they welcomed the prospect of a second Orange County broadcaster.

“KCET’s our second-favorite station,” Rogers said. “Obviously, they see themselves as trying to serve the whole market, and Orange County is part of that market.”

He added that he believed that KOCE, which operates from the Golden West College campus in Huntington Beach, could count on retaining its local audience.

“We’re the ones with infrastructure here, so we do daily news,” Rogers said. “We had live shots from the opening of the [Renée and Henry Segerstrom] Concert Hall. We’re the community station, but it’s not a problem if KCET wants to serve the community, too.”

The two stations have a brief history together. In 2003, when the Coast Community College District put KOCE up for sale, KCET joined with the KOCE-TV Foundation in making a bid to purchase the station.

The $10-million offer was the lowest in the first round, and the parties dissolved their partnership soon after, citing too little time to work on a joint bid.

The KOCE-TV Foundation later won ownership of the station, but the Daystar Television Network, a Christian broadcaster that made a higher cash bid, sued shortly afterward. The issue of KOCE’s ownership has been in the court system for three years, with an appellate judge recently declaring the sale to the foundation illegal.

Regardless of KOCE’s fate, KCET President Al Jerome said his station had long sought a presence in Orange County. He noted that according to Nielsen ratings KCET is responsible for more than half of the county’s public television viewership.

“From our perspective, we’ve been serving Orange County for 40 years,” Jerome said. “This is a way of deepening our involvement.”

Bruce Erickson, the associate vice president for university communications and marketing at Cal State Fullerton, said a major goal of KCET Orange was producing investigative pieces on pollution, affordable housing and other parts of daily life. Both sides said it was possible that KOCE and KCET could share programs in the future, most likely during pledge drives, although no agreement has been made yet.

“There’s no shortage of good big stories to tell and big problems to approach and investigate,” Erickson said.