Ted Krichels Act 3 CPB years ----draft edit 720p

This is Greg making fun and welcome to the third installment of the media interview series with Ted Critel. So far we've covered Ted's

years

at kbdi TV in Colorado, a small independent public television station, and his

years

at wpsu TV and FM at Penn State. University Station today we're going to talk about Ted's years at The Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Washington D.C cpb uh, which will also cover the time that Ted and I worked together at cpb, so Ted, I think the place to start is to talk about cpb. In relation to what it does and its place in public media, I must first tell you that I had worked with CBB on different working groups and projects over the years, so I think I understood it and I certainly liked working with some of them. the people there, maybe some more than others, but overall, you know, I had the feeling that this was happening on a daily basis, it was kind of a culture shock, not unlike going from Abdi to Penn.

State, but it's a very different culture, and I struggled a little bit to get my feet on the ground, I think the important thing to remember is that CPB is a government created agency, I mean, it's a 501c3. technically separate, but its board is basically appointed by the president of the United States. These are people who come from different senatorial offices. Usually some are people who wanted to be ambassadors but ended up on the CPB board. was the group that basically governed and hired the president um and uh of CPB, very different than what you would have with individual lies with PBS with applications with NPR, you have a very strong station management component on the board of directors, you know, you know , and you have very different directorates, so I think understanding why the cpb was so focused on the governance of its board of directors and why its number one priority was to secure and maintain or increase federal funding is really important because it is very different to others. entity in the public media and I knew it intellectually, but I don't think I knew the amount of time the CPB would focus on its relations with Congress on the hill, on managing a board that often arrived with limited knowledge of how public broadcasting operated. um and they had very different personalities, that took a while, since you know Greg, you know some of them were eccentric in different ways, so I think understanding that and understanding that that's what drove cpb primarily and then we had our role, you know, in the self.

I guess we would call systems development media strategies on the television side, but there was also a radio component. Our goal was to basically take care of the stations to relate them to the stations and then come up with the programs and all that cover overseeing things like CSG interconnection uh things that came out of nowhere like the spectrum and how those two come together, I would say it wasn't always easy , but that was part of the challenge of being in cpb, I think you know. I certainly understand that I see it in this kind of sense, and that is that basically there were three three groups of people who worked at CPV: Pat Michael, Helen Saage and so on, who came from the government, they came from the State Department, then there were people like you and myself, Vinnie and others, Kathy Merritt, who came from the stations and then there was a third group, and that was made up of people who were from DC and who had no experience in government and had no experience in public media, but They were very smart people, and I saw the kind of combination of those three groups of people who came together to do really good work in terms of supporting public media.

Across the country, sometimes we had to know that we used different language and we had to explain ourselves, but I think together those three groups of people, led by Pat Harrison, CPB's long-time CEO and CEO, really work well together. Well, we could get into that as we go through this. I don't think it was as well oiled, maybe as you think. I agree, very smart people and I think our department was actually one of the best groups of people. I've worked with um, really smart, there's a lot of different ways that work together incredibly well, so I really appreciate that and I appreciate the broader point you're making that the CPB worked, uh, it was a little creaky, it wasn't always easy, but uh.

We kept it moving well. We did it. CPB's mission is to ensure universal access to high-quality, non-commercial content and it does so by distributing 70% of its funding to more than 1,500 locally owned public radio and television stations. I think cpb has fulfilled that mission pretty well over time and I was there for 15 years and you were there for many years as well, so Ted, after you left Penn State, you spent most of it. about a year working at PBS and a project called public media models of the future, which we'll talk about a little later, but you had the unique experience of working at a relatively small, independent public television station, a large university. uh system also on PBS and cpb so you know you saw it not just from both sides but you saw it from all sides that's one way of saying it yeah I did it and I don't know how much was accidental or how much was just my tendency to get involved in extracurricular activities?

But I also got involved in the Coalition affinity group, where I know I ended up applauding at different times the university licenses and the joint licenses and then applauding the entire organization and AGC was not a strong organization overall, it had no staff, it had no funds , but by doing that, you expose yourself to one of the system-related issues that people are worried about or what's affecting people, so I think that part was true too. with the future models, we intentionally look in some depth for stations that seem to have things figured out and we'll talk more about that later and we just try to put that together and think about what are the elements that make up a successful station, so yeah, I did, whether intentionally or just by being along for the ride I went through a lot of different experiences so let's talk about the projects that you worked on at cpb and let me start with the TV interconnect is something that you spent a lot of time on um and so what? could you talk about cpb's role in financing the television interconnection and just the entire interconnection?

Company in general is fine, well, the interconnection never goes away. I learned it pretty early on at cpb and it was probably one of the first mega projects I had to oversee, I don't know if everyone understands, but the funding for interconnection comes through Congress, it's a separate appropriation, it's not a given that it has to go to PBS, but traditionally, historically, that's how it's gone, but cpb has it in mind and I think rightly so, a role to ensure that in reviewing how that work is going, that's up to my department and we would hire a consultant, uh, because cpb didn't have and I certainly didn't have the kind of tech experience to do that review on my own, nor did anyone else at CPB, so we hired the first one that I supervised.

They hired John Futon, he's one of my favorite consultants, a very smart guy, um and This is at a time when things were starting to change and we were starting to look at satellite delivery, the way to do it. What about places where most shows aren't actually live? The nrt we would call them. Is there a better one? Interest was starting to arise, so these were the early days, but John Fooden was a little ahead of the time, so he made a very ambitious report. It was involved with a lot of politics and the politics around networking is very substantial on both the radio and television side, although in different ways, so you had gbh at the time with pmm which was trying to get off the ground very focused on delivery terrestrial content eh, you had PBS, which was, you know, I think kind of ingrained in the way I'd always done it. they did things and were kind of tired of changing something and then the stations that frankly didn't pay much attention got their interconnect got their little stipend paid whatever and generally just had faith that everything would work out So John Food's report basically shook it up, said you know you should look more at the cost here, some of the hidden costs on the management side, you should definitely look at transitioning off satellite more quickly, so all this in one.

The level made sense, but the pot he stirred was one I hadn't been exposed to in that way and those were the kind of underlying tensions between PBS and CBB, as well as NPR, PBS and cpb, so essentially here's cpb like a kind of bureaucracy. The organization started suggesting to PBS with this whole engineering department that maybe they should look at things differently, so there was a lot of pushback and I remember in particular it was a GM strategy meeting Greg, I don't know if you were. . There I was facilitating this meeting and I had never felt so helpless as a facilitator in my life.

I think it had been somewhat wired. I think I understand why, but PBS had gotten people you know angry and wanted to talk at this meeting, um, John futon, great guy, not the best person to put on the spot, um, so he was there like expert in all this. They facilitated me and these questions came from everywhere and they were mostly very critical, how could I? you do this, how could you guess how could you know that this is not going to work? This is not good and John melted, I mean, he was not a wonderful person, but not someone who accepted that kind of pressure.

Well, so he was trying to accommodate everyone. I was trying to facilitate and not take a position and everyone else just sat there, you know, so I was hoping that this was where one of those times I missed Vinnie because Vinnie would have stood up. and I was a bit tiate but we didn't have anyone there so this is my introduction to the world of cpb and uh the politics on a national scale ended I would say it worked out pretty well in fact PBS ended up using John Food in a lot when they started implementing the plan, so we got through it and I think we developed a very good working relationship with PBS, uh, engineering people over the years, uh, but it certainly got off to a rocky start, well, it did, but again I believe.

This is an example of how seriously the CPB took its role in relation to due diligence before awarding a grant. I think it's more serious than some of the other national organizations thought it should be. I think and I think NPR is probably more involved. that category where they just didn't want to and seemed to actively resist, uh cbbs looked into any kind of depth into their operations and that was much more difficult, it was like just trying to extract whatever information they wanted. I don't give it away lightly, but yes, I think that's the role that CPV plays and it should be played frankly, so Ted, another important topic that you dealt with during your years at CPB was Spectrum, could you explain to us what that is about? ?

Oh God, I'll go to sleep, but you know these problems and this is another one, they are critically important problems, they are not problems that the system as a whole is paying much attention to right now, this was like a year ago. I think we had to let them know what this was. They had the potential for public stations across the country to basically sell their license and it could have been devastating to the overall fabric of public television. So there was all this concern about what that is, what it is and how disruptive it's going to be, what the stations should know.

So this was another one that ended up in our lap and my department and we hired brought in a very good guy, Dennis Wallace from MSW and just a down to earth guy, and we started talking to different people around us, both in the commercial industry as in scenarios, and we tried to better understand what was going to happen, but this again is like the interconnection we were at the forefront not by choice, but if you look at what has evolved since then it was the disaggregation of the media and Frankly, the degradation of streaming technology, this is where you know a lot of this stuff was leaking out and our goal at the time was to try to get ahead of that.

I don't know if I can say how much we accomplished or not, but that was pretty much what we were trying to do because it also affected, we'll talk about this later. our CSD policy, so with Spectrum you know one of the things that came up pretty early on as we were deliberating is what a station is, what it was, it's usually been defined without any real pushback, you have a transmitter, you have an FCC. license that you're transmitting, you know, and that morphed into you might be transmitting more than one channel now at this point and then it morphed into you might not actually need all or even most of your spectrum to deliver a signal broadcaster, but then we have our CSG program which is based on being a broadcaster in that particular market, so at what point are you not a broadcaster​​and at what point does it affect your CSG?

So this is like that kind of politics that won things that we had to fight with. on a number of different fronts and I think the Spectrum was really pushing this in a way more than the others to really try to think about this ahead of time and what the potential repercussions are before the spectrum incentive auction that you had policy, um, we We did it and we were flying blind a little bit, um and very arbitrarily, I think in the CSG review it was basically said that you have to retain control of 50% of your spectrum.

To be honest I don't think there was really thought given to what that meant, at 50% capacity it seemed like it was enough spectrum to deliver a quality broadcast signal, but it wasn't an accurate measurement, but we had to have some interest in the field and say that if you want to continue earning your CSG, you need to maintain that control. Ted, we talked about all the preparation that went into getting ready for the auction where the FCC wanted to try to get something back from Spectrum, so we were prepared and then the auction happened. Take the story from there, well I guess on one level it was kind of like the year 2000, you know, it happened, but it wasn't as catastrophic as people thought, so you knew they were surprises in terms of where it went. the money, but it wasn't like it was a major realignment for public media.

I think that's what we feared most was that it would essentially cannibalize the entire system, which didn't happen. I think there were some extremes. I think and Philadelphia completely sold out and it actually made sense to them. why did they do that uh, there were other stations that figured out a way to do it, but it wasn't like that, it wasn't that big of a deal. I think a lot of the focus was on cpb and for our department on the repackaging that would happen. because that became a major issue, the station had to move to a different frequency for all of this to happen, regardless of whether they were part of the auction, so we spent a lot of time making Dennis Wallace available individually to the stations. or collectively we had a few different group meetings and basically from there we reconvened the CSG panel to, I think, validate that 50% still made sense, and we moved forward with that, so I would say there were the Individual Issues in markets mainly related to repackaging and um, I'm not aware and maybe my memory is failing me.

I'm not aware of any particular collapse that occurred, there were other large amounts that stations received or lenses received. but overall it left the system intact, yes I think it was good news, just a small irrelevant detail. It actually happened thanks to John Schwartz, who founded kbdi. He had the frequency that he had discovered all these different ways and worked with itfs, you may remember a lot, but he essentially donated that frequency to the ybe board of directors or the founders, or I forget the actual name of the entity, so there's a link there and it certainly came back to help whoever was involved with wbe at the time but that spectrum and it started again one of those like the interconnection never goes away it was like we were there before the auction we were there after the auction uh and I guess hopefully there are still people thinking about this, let's move on to talking about uh, the community service grant and we'll pick up where you left off, in just a minute or so, but a little background for people on the community service grant.

CSG community service, which goes to all cpb rated radio and television stations, there are many. of politics surrounding this formula-driven program, but in essence, for both television and radio, the main factor regarding the size of a station's grant is how much non-federal financial support or ffs a station can raise as much as The more you raise, the larger your subsidy. will be and that goes back to a time when every station really needed an incentive to raise money because no one was raising much so that's where NFS started as the base component, now that's too simplistic because of CSG politics , so you already know.

Ted continues the story from there regarding the CSG reviews, let me continue on your line a little bit because a lot of the CST, the community service grant is like statutory and there is a formula basis, some of which are, you know, the discretion of cpb. I know, but 75% of that money goes to television, 25% goes to radio, which you know, being on the radio side I think has been a historical source of tension or a source of sensation that seeing the radio has been deceived, but that was kind. of something that has never been seriously reviewed, I don't think it's for a good reason, you know, but within that there is a portion that has a base subsidy which was what on the television side was around 500,000, oh yeah, in that vicinity, that vicinity and So, to your point, the rest is nffs, so if you're a small station with two million dollars or less budget or five million even and below that base, Grant is your core because of your ability to raise money in a less populated area. it's limited if you're a larger station, that base Grant is kind of chump change and you're really increasing your Grant really comes more from all the money you can raise from a larger population membership that supports all of that's going to that pot, so you have this tremendous inequality between the stations at the high end that in that 5050 to 100 I think even 200 million in one or one case um and then the smaller stations that are basically just scraping for the the rest is a somewhat arbitrary policy if you look at it.

On the one hand, you could say that larger stations have more needs, they serve larger populations, smaller stations, who cares?, but on the other hand, let's say with universal service and is it equitable that these stations Are you struggling at the bottom end? So these are the kinds of key things that would continue to appear in CS2 reviews. I think the Spectrum, to your point, was pretty much what I think I mentioned. A little bit beforehand, we have to anticipate this and we have to see how it could affect the grants, so I would say the most important thing we did was two and a half reviews of CSG.

It seems like yeah, they started, you know, it was nice. almost continuously since 2014, uh, at least until the time I retired, which was in 2019, yeah, and you know, I would say that the problems, one of the usual problems was that what I just talked about was Gap and we should adjust the formula in some way that gives more support to the smaller stations and we had, I remember, you know, the big CST, well, everyone was big with the revision of the CST, we had, you know, New York and Boston, you know, and then we had the little one, so you had like John Abbott and Becky McGar from the smaller stations and you, we had a mix of different guys, we were pretty intentional about the size of the geographic budget and all that, and my goal was to have a report that came out of that because every CSG review had a report that went to the board and you would bring the members of that review panel to the board, um, so in this particular one, Becky Mcera and John Abbott They were supposed to present the findings and I remember a segment there and I don't know why John Abbott was almost crying, but Becky was convinced, you know, comforting him and we were able to reach a consensus, but the real problem was trying to mitigate, put a limit on the nffs for larger stations to allow more of that money to flow to the smaller stations and I think it was a pretty significant effort the potential impact for the small stations and we took it to the board and the board approved it and John and John were really supportive Yes, I don't want to.

I don't know if Neil on the New York side was that supportive, but John was definitely supportive and I thought he did a really good job. I did too. I remember a meeting that I think may have been in Nashville, where you and I and John Abbott from gbh and U and Neil Shapiro from W NE got together and talked about all this and you know I have to give cr

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to those two guys eyes, I thought they were understanding the situation that had developed over time where the larger stations had actually been able to do very well taking advantage of their CSG and the other things that they had in terms of support and the smaller stations were falling behind and, you know , they understood that and supported what they were trying to do with the CSG policy.

I would say it is a criticism of our board. I will say that Benely, John Abbott also spoke at that meeting about the need for larger stations to take a more proactive role in addressing not only inequity but also the health of the system and dbh, as you know, has a lot of resources and you You know he was basically putting forward the notion that there should be more help within the station community, you know? not just cpb and I thought he presented it, he had talked about it in one of the meetings. I thought he presented it very well at the board meeting and somehow the board took it as an insult and they didn't support it at all and basically thought.

I guess John was out of his lane and that was CPB's role, not WGBH, and I remember John was very upset about that and I supported him, you know, and I like our board of directors and I think maybe there was some misunderstanding, but For me, especially for you, fast forward to where we are today. I think it was a missed opportunity, so Ted, there's another job around systems technology that you put a lot of energy into. Can you talk about that first of all? I'm a liberal arts guy, so this is always a challenge, you know, the liberal arts guy meets a bunch of tech nerds and, um, technology and language that always seem strange, so, yeah, I do.

We did, this was again, looking at the loss of the PTF program. I think people know that it was a program that provided matching funds for the purchase of equipment and that it was really something that large, small and medium-sized stations used for many years. I don't know how long the program had been around when I was doing so well at kbdi. over the years and it was an incredible program and it really allowed the smaller stations to raise the necessary funds, especially for the type of expensive transmitter, you know, the purchases that had to be made immediately, um, and you know, not There were funds for that.

And there was a concern. I think at CBB I was concerned that if you look at the lifespan of a lot of this equipment, how are the smaller stations going to meet that challenge? So we did a study with Eagle Hill John Mosy. and who was at Eagle Hill at the time, um, it was very thorough, did we actually talk to a lot of engineers in the system, look at the aging, where they were, what they expected to have to spend over the next five years, um, and the picture ? The response was not encouraging, it really seemed like there was going to be some potential for stations that just couldn't deliver on this, so from that we put together an initiative and I guess we called it shared purchasing and the idea was to put together a collaboration to reducing those prices and negotiating more centrally with suppliers and especially again with the larger items, but cameras and all that, and negotiating prices down, there are a few different reasons why.

That didn't work, you know, I think internally there were some definite communication problems. I think externally we only had one bidder, which wasn't good, so CPB pulled funding for that effort, and eventually, it just stumbled. and then he died, uh, I think the biggest problem, and I don't think it's a CPB problem, is that we as a system don't act collectively, I mean, we join PBS together and pay dues, but we do it with very frequently. despite AGC and all that, we have our own engineering departments, we don't share many things, we meet at different regional or national meetings, many of which are Happy Talk, but there is no serious effort to do so. "We looked at the economics and how we can reduce our infrastructure, so when I look back, I think it was basically trying to do something in the wind and it wasn't going to work, but looking forward, I think we will." It's going to have to be more than this as we face the things that are coming just pick up on what you were saying about the PTF program so what was a public telecommunications facilities program was within the uh National Telecommunications Administration and ntia Information, which was in the Department of Commerce and stations could apply for equipment grants.

I know, in South Dakota, especially when I was there. We had many grants from nitia uh PTF to build the public television, public radio network and soed stations throughout the country. I think it was a time when he ended up somewhere in 2011, he had $25 million a year, that was, uh, that was in and uh, good friend of ours, Lyn. Chadwick, who worked at cpb but also worked at PTF, spent a lot of time working on those, those, those grants with stations, so that's what PTF was. I remember kbdi, we were inthe air fighting and, we got, it was a "The woman and I wish I could remember her name.

She's wonderful. She just worked with us. We got funding for half-inch tape machines. That's what we were using at the time. And no, I didn't fit into their categories, you don't know professional enough, but she just figured it out and then it was one of those, I guess, sort of technocratic, uh bureaucratic entities, but the people there also remember Walter Shepard, yeah, tried his best to figure out how to do it, work constructively with the stations, so it's a shame that it doesn't exist yet, yeah, so Ted, another component of the system's kind of technology, um, was the joint master controls of JMC, you talk a little bit about what they were and how that - I think that was a very good success story regarding the system Well, I'll talk about that a little bit about Greg, but you're the one I remember spending hours talking to on the phone. with people on this and some of the other shows much longer. than he would have ever done but I appreciate it a lot, uh, but this was, you know, actually, it was an idea that existed even in kbdi.

I actually made a deal with um uh krma to do a joint master that then fell through after I left, but um, it was just an INF. Expensive infrastructure and there was funding through CPB to try to encourage. I think Doug Weiss was the original one who might have come up with this program, but also to encourage collaboration between stations in nearby markets or overlapping markets. that would reduce personnel costs and equipment costs, so there was a program that CPB had when I was there and it continued and basically I think it succeeded and I think it was still successful, maybe more so than the fusion program that We'll talk about it shortly, but I thought it was a success.

The bottom line is before the Joint Master controls and there were three of them before that. Each station basically had to have technical operators on the line. all the time playing tapes was a huge efficiency, so as I saw it, yeah, um, and I think you know, maybe it's combined with the program that you spend a lot of time on and the fusion program is fostering um stations. especially those in the multi-station markets, but not always to look for ways that they could come together and this was, you know, really interesting because in some places it seemed to never run smoothly, I think despite all the talk about the economics and why it made sense, probably the biggest tortoise was cultural, you know, or staffing and people worrying about their jobs or people thinking about the other station, you know governance and all that, um, but could you talk a little bit about this because I think there were some successes and maybe some that were more difficult than others.

What I saw when I worked in South Dakota when I worked in Wisconsin is that you could join stations in a merger where it made sense to maintain an office. It's kind of a presence in a local community, but you end up with a lot of efficiencies that you could then put into scheduling resources instead of just going to all the things just to maintain individual stations. Everything you could put back. programming I knew coming in that there would be a lot of pushback or resistance, but if you look back and I did a report on this with the help of Ted Colman from uh cpb uh, if you go back to the beginning, the beginning of uh cpb, there have been a lot of mergers in radio and television over time.

I was surprised by how many of them, we didn't get as many mergers as I thought we could, it wasn't really anything I got. do because it was going to happen anyway, but it had taken 20 years in Los Angeles, that was one of the mergers that ended up happening um uh during the time this show existed, another one was in southern Illinois, where the public The stations of television came together and combined. It also happened in Virginia, so there were some good hits along the way. There were also some disappointments. I remember we used to have theoretical talks about how the system should work.

No I don't know if you want me to go on the record with any of these, but you know we would say, well, you know why don't we just give a regional CSG grant or maybe by state so that the stations had to come together so that you would have Um, you know a southern region or a western region or maybe it's just T. You know some cases, this already happens, but I think the concept that was never fully thought through, at least on my part, was that you would have a lot more economies of scaling and you could better leverage resources to provide better local services.

Yeah, we had another one that was a pretty good hit in West Texas with the public television stations there and some just happened. I think Nat and Liw happened. pretty quick, that might have been more of a buy, um, but uh, yeah, I think you know that's a bigger issue that maybe we'll come back to as we go over all of our other issues, okay, um, I would say something about atsc3. Thinking about that in preparation for this and you know what it made me think is there's always a new technology that's going to change everything you know if you go back at least to my time, you go back 40 years, there's always something coming that's either that kills us or makes us raise a lot more money and you know, digital or multichannel or different things like that, um and I remember at atsc3 a lot of consultants were making a lot of money on how this was going to be. a game, Cher, and maybe it changed, but I missed it, so we worked on it a little, probably hired someone, but I'd be honest, it's one that's faded, maybe, you know, it got overtaken by all this digital migration. that's happening, so I think maybe we'll touch on it as we go, but it's not Salvation on broadcast television, let's put it that way, you convened a group that looked at innovative business practices for stations, because times were good. , that was the idea, you know, I think we had talked about it in different studios and I thought it would be interesting to put together a group, some new managers, some others who had some reputation for their kind of resilience. the trends so you knew people like I think Courtne Ledger who was new to Arkansas W Lucas fairly new to Atlanta Kevin Martin relatively new he's been around for a while but in Cleveland and then you meet Steve the bass Rob Dunlap And you know. some others and the idea was not to get into big theories about where we were going, it was more to see what could be done in the experiment or try some things, so it didn't last very long, but the project that we took on, which I think maybe It was ahead of its time but certainly more relevant now, it was just the creation of short videos, this was the beginning of migrating content to different platforms and the idea was that those platforms were best suited to you.

I know two three-minute pieces, so this is what we're doing. Program from 2 to 7 minutes. We work with mentors that people want to be. You need mentoring or you need production experience or whatever in the group. Some of the larger stations have agreed to provide it, we're putting in a schedule that we haven't said yet, so we haven't started yet, but it's basically a 6-week schedule, uh, it's open to others, so frankly, I All it means is that you have to do it. I can't just show up and talk, but if you're willing to participate in this particular project, we'll be happy to bring people on board, we'll review, and then we'll share the results and replicate them. of interesting developments, I mean, one partnered with you, Atlanta partnered with Cleveland on some kind of business, you know, two-minute business clips about business in Cleveland.

Business stories in Atlanta, the one I remember most is, again, it seems obvious today, but Back then it wasn't Courtney showed a two-minute video. It's a wonderful piece about a farmer in rural Arkansas. She had been filmed by an intern in his free time. He went out with his iPhone and recorded this video and it was a great job and if you look at the world today and we were talking earlier about the cost of equipment and the loss of PTF, I think the real challenge is the lack of creativity at the local level, the level of production is too frequent. not in all cases by any means, but all too often it is at a static level and not enough resources are invested.

There was a study done by Har Sager several years ago. I think he was basically saying, "Put your money into domestic production is where revenue is going to be generated and he was right at the time, but there was an area there that we were exploring: how do you do local, how do you do it well, how do you do in a way that We can be competitive in the digital age, so I love working with the group. We didn't have any big goal in mind, but it was one of those projects that I always felt good about.

Times have changed. faster. I need to be more creative with our programming and I think some really good pieces came out of that, yeah, well, it needs to be more of a priority and it needs to be funded and I think that's something that's happening locally, it's moving away. from your reliance on PBS or even NPR, um and I don't think it's I don't know I may have missed it I don't think that's happening on the scale that you need to do some preliminary work on a rural initiative for television. public, part of this broader vision, as I carry it from this group of people that we have, we want to increase the visibility of the real United States, we want to do it by leveraging the strength that we already have.

I have which I think you know, this group exemplifies that it was actually inspired by an Osby meeting and I, asby, was the only affinity group that I didn't know when I came to CPB, so I made an effort to go to their annual meetings and um. I got over the stereotype of the boring, leny state and I really started to like people and I went to a meeting where there was a lot of talk about rural coverage because many state lenses cover an entire state and the state includes many rural areas, especially in the south and the western, and um, we were talking a lot about how you can encourage that because it's not really reflected in the PBS program on a regular basis, there are a lot of good stories, a lot of interesting stories. stories um and there are U production people at these different stations that are capable of doing that kind of work so it was really inspired by that to organize a meeting at cpb uh just to talk about R um and frankly if you think about what what's going on. in some of the current policies, uh, I think, in retrospect, this was a really important initiative, so we had a big meeting and, um, I didn't stay involved in it, it was coordinated by someone else and it basically became a one-time thing. , I think it gave some funding, I'm not sure how it progressed, but the vision was to have a much more intentional type of funding for this effort to have support for, say, a Western Coalition or a Southern Coalition or even thematically around to different issues that might be happening in rural communities and really doing it on a more continuous basis and so I think it's still an area that should be considered much more seriously, but it was inspiring.

I would say that listening to people talking about this who felt very strongly about the lack of that in our system and also their kind of inspiration to do more, it's like I'm going to write a memoir called my biggest failures because a lot of times they're like this. things, that is, us. we should have done this we should have done this and uh or we tried but it didn't work. I'm going to buy but you learn a lot from those things and um so it's not that I look back with regret it's just you kind. to see where things didn't flow the way they maybe could have, yes, but you're right, you learn a lot when you can apply that to another experience, uh, when something doesn't go the way you imagined.

The first place I want to move on to now is something that um cpb collectively all the cpb people get very involved in and that happens to be national conferences. One of the things about Pat Uh Harrison is that she puts a lot of effort into each one of them. every speech our harassment prevention training that every CPD employee must take we and society are working to address this issue not just for specific cases but for long term sustainable and lasting change you did some innovative things with the conferences well, first, I agree with you on the paparazzi, he is extraordinary and not only his preparation but his ability to be totally spontaneous and I think that is one of his great strengths, so our department had a lot to do especially with the p MBA conference because We did a lot of business analysis tracking how different trends are, seasons, income and expenses and all that, and you know, Mustafa, who was great in our department, spent hours putting those reports together, so we were going to the pmba and we were forced to have a There were quite a few people from our department that were there, so there were two different meetings that I was involved in.

I'll talk about doing that report first on the financial status of the system and Mustafa and I would do them, it was like two... person on the program and Mustafa would just totally get into the numbers.of how the different quadrants were doing and what was up, what was down, funding for the corporation that includes the foundation and the companies, has also increased, you have a 25% increase for the foundation. and my role was very much to ground this in this reality of the people who were there, so what is your experience? You are a smaller station.

Has your income increased or decreased or what are you facing? What are your challenges? I can't speak to what they were like before, but he was a great man. There is something in the business part of the system. You know, I spend a lot of time in meetings with managers and there's kind of a pattern or way that people talk to each other it's a little bit salesy a little bit you know I have this I'm in charge uh business managers or business department people are blessed, they're different and they tend to be a little more, you know, down to earth in numbers, I guess it was a great experience for me the first time Ted did this, let's just say I was skeptical about what Ted is doing and it turned out be a great success.

We had a session that we started, I think it was the first year and all I remember first of all is that the room was set up where all the chairs, you know, the typical conference, were facing forward and then someone was supposed to come up to the scenario. I know the wise person and I just remember walking into that room and saying this is not going to work for what we are trying to do, so literally five minutes before the meeting I rearranged the entire room so it was in a circle um. I think it was about asking cpb or something and instead of having wise people from cpb there telling how cool we were and what we were doing, we just turned it into an open discussion about what's on your mind, are you having problems ?

Do you have questions about CPB? But we're not going to give you any speech, it's just an open conversation and I think the first one wasn't very sure. He didn't know the group particularly well, so he didn't know. You know, this all really depends on who's there and if they're willing to talk and they were willing to talk, yeah they were, what was one of the things Ted, you know this session happened, I think it might have been The last session of the conference and the thing about business managers is that everyone you meet has really good, tough questions, so I want to go out of town and here you know you were, you know, bringing people in with you.

I know tough questions that, you know, we'd have to answer, but it became more of a conversation, I guess, and I think maybe that was, you know, what was successful. I learned many things, I think we applied some. You know, we applied the learning that we got from those conversations, it was a great success. What's also good is that our legal director, West Smithers, and our financial director, Bill Taman, were there and they go to all the meetings but usually in the background and very calm and in this session they were called by me and I don't want to say in a bad way, I mean, but there were questions that had to do with your areas and and It was good to see Bill Taman.

He did well at responding and being part of a group and discussing what the financial issues were and stuff, so he was a different side of CP for people to see and me. I think it was because we did it. I don't know, we did it every year. Yes, it became the session with the highest attendance. Yeah, it really was a big success, but you also had some success with other conferences, the PBS Tech conference. GM strategy met with the pnba and then I moved into tech because I mentioned the good thing about that was voices that normally They do not listen to each other, they were managers but they were not the general managers of the presidents, but they were key people, the technology conference was similar, you know, it was the engineers and they have a different way of speaking, both they and the business people have a different way of speaking than the GMS and you know it requires a little understanding. he used to uh he tends to be more grounded uh and he's not afraid to say things that might sound weird in the moment uh so you know, that was another those two were my favorite meetings because they felt more open and more honest, I mean, the people were talking about real problems on this station, very granular cases, you know teams or challenges with, uh, personnel you know, especially on the engineering, the broadcast side, finding engineers in today's world, where to look for them. and uh, so that would be a, I mean, it was in Las Vegas, the technology conference and it took me a while, it took me a couple of years before I adjusted and even came to like Las Vegas, but you know, I usually think about Caesar's Palace or something like that and him.

I'd be walking around these kind of glassy-eyed gamers on machines and everything walking into a conference room with engineers and uh, I think both sessions are real. I think it was good that CPB was on them and, um, I found it personally. It was a little encouraging to go to the GM strategy meeting. I would say I didn't do it once I got to CPB. I don't think I made the larger meetings easier because I was a biased person at the time. See ppb person, but we work. closely with the PBS people, so we basically coordinated the meetings and overall it went pretty well.

I think there were times where there was some tension over what topics and things like that, but we would agree on who would be the moderators and what. The sessions were and you know who was going to speak where and therefore a less active facilitation role, but we were trying to run those meetings and to be honest, I don't know how successful, I think it's one of those challenges in our system. is to have difficult conversations, but the goal was always how to structure this to go beyond happy talk and I think sometimes we did it better than others, yeah, I think what happens is that, um, maybe something happens, You know, three months, six months later, but the point is that you had the conversation and things came back even years later, that the GM strategy meeting helped stimulate ideas that you know then take shape, so maybe you don't. know.

It was such a futuristic conversation that you know things may not have happened very quickly but they had a long-term impact. Yeah, I think it's probably too much to go back to Spectrum and remember that we were talking about this before. Tim Fallon in Pennsylvania. Yes Yes. insisting on how much wiggle room he would have to give up Spectrum or rent Spectrum or and he was really trying to find the absolute advantage and still keep his Community Service Grant funded when you look back at it, what he was doing was pushing where I think, as a system , we're getting more and more to where a lot of different things are going to happen with that spectrum and how it plays out, and especially if there's another auction or another sale, it's going to be, you know, pretty significant, yeah.

I agree, Tim, as he pushed the envelope, he did it in a really good way that made us spend a lot of time on the board, uh, uh, trying to figure out if this is something that fits within the policy, so tip of the hat. hat. to Tim about that, Ted, while we're maybe starting to wrap up before coming to CPB, you spent a year at PBS, working on the public media models of the future, could you address what you see in the future for the public? media and how their future models could work to help the system in the future, boy, that's a great question.

Greg and I will chime in, but feel free to interrupt me if I start to wander, I may start meandering, uh, I think on one. At the level, there was a project that I remember doing and it was one of the best strategic planning initiatives I was involved in. I think it was Larry Wilkinson, it was a CPB thing several years ago and it was scenario planning, so instead of saying I know. what the future is, what you would say, we want to lay out four possible scenarios and then we want to look at each scenario and say what do we do in that scenario and I think that's something that the system desperately needs to do right now. a scenario that is very likely not good, I mean, essentially, we know that depending on the November election, federal funds could be deeply threatened, okay?

So what happens in that scenario? What happens if those funds disappear or are significantly reduced? There is a real 50% chance of that happening. We also know, and even from PBS records, that television viewership is declining, and even the 60+ audience, which is now the largest audience on broadcast television, is declining, that we are moving into an era in the one where streaming is not the primary medium, we're already there to some extent, but it's going to be even more so, so what do you do if your Birthright, your streamer, is the reason you're in your community because your ability to reach to many people at the same time is it? suddenly it's not the primary attribute it was, it may not even be worth maintaining at some point, so what do you do with that and then looking at the disaggregation of audiences, the loss of PBS as the primary driver of content is if you are local, what is that?

What is its role? and it could be a very different scenario. It could be one where stations are operating with much less money than they used to. It could be one where they have to build a lot more muscle around what they're doing locally and that's not necessarily about buying equipment, it's about who are the people who create the content that people are going to want to see, and then you have this kind of thing that I call the worst case scenario. but it is not included that there are some degrees of that that are going to happen, so in the future the report that I did did not foresee any of this in particular, but it did have some elements that I think are the key elements and essentially it is that I need an economic foundation, I mean, I think it was Beth Curley in Nashville who coined the phrase "you don't know money, there's no mission, if you don't have some kind of resources, you won't be able to operate, you also have to have a social foundation." value what is why are you there?

I mean, is it education, you know, news and content, is it entertainment? What is the why, why is the value of your community? You have to be clear about what your value proposition is and then the organization you have. To have the right people, it's the old Jim Collins thing, you have to have the right people in the right place, if you don't, it doesn't have to be the biggest staff in the world, but you need to have people who are creative. and people who are in tune with the community and can take advantage of that, so those are the three elements and then you know it's finding your niche and that niche may not be the same.

I mean, there are some who believe that there is a strong Educational Service still to be done. You know, I had this talk with people from CPB and I know that Eric Hipper was Nita also talked about this. I'm not against that at all. I just don't understand it right now. where is that service, but there is certainly a need to reach children, many of whom do not go to school regularly and many of whom do not have access to the types of content that they need, so there is certainly a need, The question is how you fulfill it.

I think Bass News in Oregon is a big supporter of local news and coverage. That requires tremendous effort. You have to be there in the community. You have to have reporters who know what they are doing. You're doing it, there are things that can happen and you have to look at the content, the content becomes more important than the distribution, you have to have content that people want to see and then you have to find out where they are seeing it. Are they watching on their iPhones? Are they looking on their laptops? Are they watching on their big TV in the living room?

What is it? What content do you need? How are you trained to reach them? So it's a difficult world and it's a world. Frankly, local stations generally haven't had to deal with it because they had the PBS National feed or even on the radio side the NPR feed, and they've really had to worry about that if you look at where the money comes from. It comes from commitment, it puts effort into major programs, it doesn't come from local, so changing that dynamic isn't going to be easy, but that's a transition that needs to happen now while you still have the resources to do it.

I remember. I know Steve Bass wrote a letter. I don't know, some people have seen it, but you know he basically quoted. You know how NPR news works by having the insert for a local and that journalist should have done that and Newsour really tried and I know it. They didn't try it because Jim Lair said Over My Dead Body um, but you know, the stations weren't particularly in favor of it either because they didn't think they could match the quality and they didn't have the resources, so I'm giving you a long answer, but essentially without enter all the models because the models are only examples of sites.

I mean, set up different areas where people can be. You know where they have chosen the stations. You know, San Diego has chosen news. Nashville had chosen funded documentaries. about topics of interest in Nashville, you know, there was in Minnesota, where they did the nonprofit channel, there are different ways this is run, but you have to start by looking at yourown community, so that's my shorthand. answer that was probably too long no, I think it was uh I think it was U really very good and very concise uh Ted um I want to ask you one final question um maybe a series of questions, but I'll answer them one at a time. and the first comes from something I read in your future newspaper public media models.

It's on page 30 and is where Twin Cities Public Television's

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orial guidelines for its Minnesota channel were listed, the first thing in the editorial guidelines. It was never misleading our audience and I started thinking about that because I couldn't really see a time where I thought we had misled our audience in general, but I thought about it and it raised this question for me as you reflect on your years in public media. Have we done the right thing for the audiences we sought to serve? Ah, I think overall maybe we've done well. I think the key part is the audience.

We have tried to serve. If you look at where our audiences are, they are. typically older and typically better educated and I think we haven't, you know, obviously it's not true across the board, but I think in terms of really being in our communities and serving those communities, we've probably leaned toward where it is the financing, um more. So, and where we could get the grants or where we could engage, sometimes they merge, but I, I, no, I'm not at all ashamed of what public media has done over the years. I think they've done great things.

And then I think he had to look for a resource where he could find them. So no. I think I'm proud to have been a part of that effort in different ways. Over the years, my concern is the future and you mentioned funding because this also occurred to Melanie when she was speaking at Penn State. We're entering an era where FCC guidelines often don't apply because they're not broadcast and I think the new funding model requires a greater sense of editorial guidelines than ever before, where you might be considering some marketing or working with a funer who has a role and the key is how to maintain that editorial separation as you move forward. move on because it's not the same, it's not going to be as clear between non-commercial and commercial, but yes, I think we're entering a different world where a lot of the old rules don't apply and I could get lost.

In the old world, I guess I missed the days of Walter Kronite and McNeil Lair. One of the things I think about quite often is, I worked in the Golden Age of public media, but I'm optimistic for the future, but what will it take for the next generation of managers and employees to work together to be successful? with your audiences of the future? Well, I think we talked a little about that. I think the challenge is what will motivate that change and On the one hand, this goes back to scenarios: the most likely scenario will be a crisis, whether we like it or not, there will be some type of crisis, loss of federal funds, you know, it will be taken away the spectrum or will give it to the highest bidder. the board, uh, they've completely lost broadcasting as a viable medium, those are all the crises that they know that are going to undermine the entire foundation of public television, so you know, the question is and we've been asking this for a while, I want to say that?

Is it necessary to change when you know it's going to happen, but it hasn't happened yet, so the stations are still making do with their conventional fundraising, um, and this is the time and I forget what business works, but essentially that's it the key to change? is to do it when you have the resources, so that you have the resources from your old business that fund your ability to change to the next, when you no longer have those, you won't have the ability to change, so innovation is Really looking at things before For that significant change to occur, I think Netflix was probably the obvious big example.

I remember getting all this stuff in the mail, the DVDs, and it felt like almost overnight, it wasn't overnight, but they turned around and saw that it was. They come and changed their business model I think this has to happen in the public media The Challenge and we talk again I don't want to be negative about it we don't have the structure and the system for change we don't have like the BBC has a person in charge that can cause changes, we have all these separate licenses, you have three national organizations with different modes of type of influence, uh, but there is no way to say that you know well, now we are going to continue down this avenue, so that has to change.

I think there has to be and could start with a cohort, a small cohort of managers who take the initiative, but something has to change in that sense and I am afraid that national organizations are too much their rois and the reasons say that they are like paralyzing them of some way. I mean, they're doing a good job inside those tunnels, I guess, but what needs to happen is outside of them, so no. Don't know. I'm not trying not to be pessimistic because I actually think that there is a very dynamic potential future that has a lot of moral localism combined with a kind of National Collective, but I don't know, I can't predict it exactly.

How that's going to happen, getting a business model for the digital world is something that I think has eluded us until now, yeah, and it's probably eluded a lot of people, business people, and you know, but if you look at the big ones. commercial people and you see what they are doing, how they are hedging their bets and moving things and creating their alternative channels. That's probably something to learn from that, but I'd love to have a clear answer about any sense of security. You and me, some final comments. No, I really appreciate your work. David's work.

It's been a fascinating journey to look back on intentionally. I think the only insight I had at some point and I wouldn't have thought of this. I do not do it. think through this process somehow when we talk look to the future there may be more to learn from kbdi than any other place I've been because there was a smaller station struggling to discover its own identity in a community without having the obvious support of you know the national programming service or you know the typical audience and you know that it wasn't a huge success, but the struggle and trying to figure that out may become more commonplace in the future. ability to say what we do now