Head of Seattle's public-TV station to step down amid devastating debt

Seattle Times ^ | April 18, 2003 | Cheryl Phillips and Kay McFadden

[goldstategop]

If PBS and NPR go under, that will be the best news all of us have ever heard!

[IncPen]

You see, you don't need advertisers, you don't need to build and maintain and please your audience. You can run a TV station just for your own world view

You just need government money.

This can be quickly fixed.

[Voltage]

Clark conceded that his focus on national productions — expensive, ambitious projects that KCTS hoped to air across the country — didn't pay off.

Viewers are kind of tired of programs praising anti-war rallys if would seem.

[martin_fierro]

Our tax money at work.

[Uncle Miltie]

They could make money by carrying the DITTO-CAM....

[Digger]

If PBS and NPR go under, that will be the best news all of us have ever heard!

GW would never let that happen. A true conservative president would.

[rdax]

If PBS and NPR go under, that will be the best news all of us have ever heard!

Actually, it's probably good to have PBS and NPR around to keep the libs from actually trying to compete in the real world. They can have their one station at the end of the dial to hear their message.

[WIladyconservative]

Looks like it's time for another telethon or auction to try to raise even MORE money for them to mismanage.

[KeyWest]

In one of the most liberal cities, they do not support their own. This is actually not unusual. Libs tend to be penny pinching and want others (read taxpayers) pay their bills.

What is happening is instructive. The law of unintended consequences is going to kill the dems in fundraising. By supporting so called campaign finance reform, they killed soft money and have to rely on the general public for contributions. But the pubs have small donations but from lots of people, while the dems relied on big from few, and that has been cut off. The pub base gives while the dem base does not or is on the dole and only takes.

[shotgun]

This elitist POS should have sold advertising on Sesame Street et al, however that would have required relying on market forces...ho hummm

[Cuttnhorse]

They say Clark, whose total compensation is $268,000 a year, does not tolerate opposing opinions and dominates a weak board of directors.

A weak board of directors, at a PBS station...hard to believe. LOL!! I can just imagine all the feel-good politically correct discussions in the board room. Serves the dummies right.

[martin_fierro]

Say buh-bye, ferret-face.

[PoisedWoman]

• KCTS compares poorly to seven public-television stations in other cities with similar viewer ratings. Comparatively, KCTS has unusually low cash reserves and spends much more on lawyers.

Spending more on lawyers reflects Seattle style...this is the city where the ultra-leftist city council haggled for weeks over a support-the-troops statement, arguing the fine points to death. KCTS never loses a chsnce to sink dollars into leftist shows that even the most dedicated leftie must be bored to death with.

Nevertheless, I watch KCTS to see excellent shows like Frontline, the Nightly News with Jim Lehrer, which is more balanced than the networks by far, and for the Saturday afternoon cooking shows which may actually be a profit center for them. Their daytime kids' cartooons seem good for the most part....where would we be without Teletubbies?

[Eala]

KCTS has piled up millions in operating deficits and cannot pay its bills. It owes $229,000 in rent to Seattle Center, $2.8 million in back dues to the Public Broadcasting System and its cash deficit tops $1.2 million.

Well, it's a mixed bag if it goes under. The good news:
- We're rid of KCTS and its extreme liberalism
- Less money for PBS (though they'll just go crying to the government)

The bad news:
- The Seattle Center will extract the deficit from other organizations using its facilities
- The government will probably make up the deficit to PBS with our tax dollars

I haven't watched KCTS for years. But the wife says the past three months have been constant fundraisers, and increasingly more blatant advertisements.

[goldstategop]

There used to be a reason for public television. No longer. What with all the disguised commercials there's not much that differentiates it from cable TV. At least with cable TV you do get a voice in what you want to see with the money you pay up front.

[txzman]

Interesting to note that the Clinton way of living continues to be unearthed.

Corruption, intolerance, greed and mismanagement.

[Samizdat]

What? People aren't buying their left wing drivel anymore?

[Drango]

- The government will probably make up the deficit to PBS with our tax dollars

Indeed they will...Although we here at FreeRepublic disdain PBS/NPR, Republicans in the House/Senate are some of the prime supporters of the liberals in "Public Broacasting". There is no bigger supported than Alaska's Republican Senator Ted Stevens who recently won thier prize for the biggest suck-up.

[Billthedrill]

Let me describe this operation for those not from Seattle. There is a piece of VERY high-priced real estate north of downtown, which used to be the fairgrounds for the 1962 World's Fair. That's where the Space Needle and Key Arena, where the Sonics play, and that architectural abortion that holds Paul Allen's Experience Music Project (aka "The Slug That Ate The Space Needle") and sundry other relics of a bygone affluence - the Pacific Science Center is there as well. Cool place. Anyway, at the corner of this is a large, beautiful building with the KCTS logo. This is their operation and the real estate is called Seattle Center. They owe the landlord 229 large.

The station itself has tried to become one of the PBS anchors such as WGBH in Boston, producing its own material and generally tooting its own horn in the industry as a veritable rock of liberal faith. It is flashy, expensive, pretentious (IMHO), and about as solvent as Donald Trump after his salad days.

Down in a more workingman's town, Tacoma, there resides its antithesis in the PBS world, a little station named KBTC. The "BTC" stands for Bates Technical College, its source for technicians and not a little program material. Rather humbler operation, but it's the one that snagged such popular standbys as Red Green, Doctor Who, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and Red Dwarf.

The point I'm making is that one station showed us what we told them we wanted and the other one showed us what they just knew we really ought to be watching for our own good. Broadcasting can be a tough business, but figuring out which one went belly-up is a no-brainer.