idaho legislature

Idaho Public Television Gives Budget Presentation

By Sharon Fisher, 1-27-10

The other shoe—the size of Big Bird’s—dropped in the Idaho Legislature as Idaho Public Television General Manager Peter Morrill gave his budget presentation to the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (JFAC), two and a half weeks after a budget recommendation that would phase out general funding support for the statewide television network after four years.

“I have a great deal of respect for the difficult decisions the Governor has had to make and propose to this deliberative body,” Morrill said. “And there is an enormous amount of respect we have for the process you have to go through to understand the needs and wants, and try to guide this state to fiscal solvency.” But the long and the short of it is, without a new source of replacement funding, the station would have to let 41 of its 42 translator stations (with the exception of Lewiston) go dark, he said. The translator stations are what brings Idaho Public Television to rural Idaho.

The battle to save Idaho Public Television has spawned a nonprofit group, Save Idaho Public Television, with its own Facebook page, up to 3,441 members as of this writing, as well as numerous written statements, both pro and con, and journalistic pieces that span party lines and regional barriers.

So many people showed up at the budget hearing—wearing big yellow Big Bird feathers to show their support, according to the Boise Weekly‘s Nathaniel Hoffman—that they were encouraged to go to an overflow room to hear the presentation. Several members of JFAC, especially those in the rural areas most likely to be hit hardest by a phaseout, alluded to having received a great deal of constituent comment.

Part of the decorum of JFAC is that it is considered bad form to diss the budget recommendation, and Morrill skirted the line as he crisply recited the numbers in the mellifluous voice that Idaho Public Television viewers easily recognize: a more than $500,000, or 33 percent, reduction from 2010; $0 for replacement items; $0 for Idaho Experience; $0 for two people to help out with producing Legislature Live, which airs the House, Senate, and JFAC in audio and video gavel-to-gavel and, new this year, offers audio feeds of committee hearings as well.

Of particular interest to the legislative committee, of course, were Idaho Reports and Legislature Live.  In the first two weeks of the legislative session, Morrill noted, more than 14,000 people had logged into Legislature Live, and 7,578 had specifically watched JFAC, he said. Legislature Live currently costs about $195,000 to produce, including staff time and studio leasing.  Idaho Reports is currently funded by the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation—which has notified Morrill that its grant will have to be cut by 50 percent next year, due to the economic downtown—as well as by Friends of Idaho Public Television, he said. A recent feature, Capitol of Light, on the renovated Statehouse was funded largely by the Capitol Commission, as well as by Friends of Idaho Public Television and its endowment fund, he added.

As he has stated before, if the cuts are enacted, the network will most likely need to limit itself to the cities where it derives most of its revenue, such as the Treasure Valley. While it’s easy to raise funds to buy programming, “it’s far more challenging to specifically raise funds to keep repeater systems on in distant communities,” Morrill said.

Morrill also explained to the legislators that, as a public broadcasting station, it couldn’t sell commercials, sell its content to cable television or satellite broadcast, or use its government-funded equipment for commercial television production. In addition, it is already making use of grants—ironically, the station was awarded almost $100,000 in stimulus funding, intended to help preserve jobs, earlier this month—and is ranked above its peers in its ability to raise private funds. “I don’t think we’ve left too much money on the table,” he said.

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