Say buh-bye, ferret-face.
Posted on 04/18/2003 10:30:21 AM PDT by new cruelty
The president of Seattle's public-television station abruptly announced his retirement yesterday, noting "others may not believe I'm the one to lead the station" through its profound financial problems.
Burnill "Burnie" Clark, 61, who has led KCTS since 1987, said the station would also scale back production of national shows and would lay off up to 25 percent of its staff, about 35 jobs.
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.
And it has long stopped producing the kind of quality local programming that is its primary mission.
Clark blamed Channel 9's woes on the poor economy nationally and regionally.
But a Seattle Times investigation — which Clark knew was scheduled for publication this weekend — found instead that many people cite mismanagement and, in particular, Clark's leadership.
Employees, former executives and the station's own paid consultants say Clark runs the public entity like a private fiefdom. They say Clark, whose total compensation is $268,000 a year, does not tolerate opposing opinions and dominates a weak board of directors.
"There was a real need for critical voices," said Sturges Dorrance, former general manager of Seattle commercial station KING-TV and a KCTS adviser. "But from what I understand, critical voices were not listened to."
"The scandal of KCTS," said Barry Mitzman, who worked at KCTS for 19 years and hosted its "Serious Money" show until 2001, "is the failure to serve the public trust, to use its license effectively, or to create the kind of relevant, well-grounded programming that made people here feel proud and connected."
Vanessa Greene, a consultant who spent two months assessing KCTS last fall, said recently: "I think the people of Seattle should be up in arms about that television station. It's absolutely outrageous the way it's being run. If there were stockholders, these guys would have been thrown out years ago — particularly Burnie Clark."
Greene, a former CBS executive with 30 years' experience in television, said she told Clark at the conclusion of her work that for the good of KCTS he should retire immediately.
But two weeks ago, Clark insisted he would stay at the helm. And the station's board of directors expressed support for him.
Even yesterday, the board chairman, retired Boeing executive Doug Beighle, stood behind Clark — calling him "a courageous and visionary leader" — and said he was surprised at the retirement.
Clark said he decided to retire after having "an epiphany" two weeks ago at a conference in Las Vegas about the future of public television. He realized he didn't have enough time to refocus the station and had become "a target." He said his retirement will take effect at the end of October.
Clark conceded that his focus on national productions — expensive, ambitious projects that KCTS hoped to air across the country — didn't pay off.
"It was an ambitious effort that has not produced the results we hoped for," he said.
Eleven employees, mostly in production, were laid off yesterday. Five job openings won't be filled. Many of the other positions will be eliminated this summer as existing national production projects are completed, Clark said.
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(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Viewers are kind of tired of programs praising anti-war rallys if would seem.
GW would never let that happen. A true conservative president would.
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.
Say buh-bye, ferret-face.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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