WMFE-TV Sale Raises More Questions for PBS Future
Monday, April 4, 2011
By: Judith Smelser

April 4, 2011 | WMFE - The public media world has been buzzing this weekend with the news that Orlando-based WMFE is getting out of the public television business to focus on its public radio station, 90.7-FM. The decision is raising new questions about the future of PBS and public television nationwide.

Late Friday afternoon, Orlando’s main public broadcaster dropped a bombshell.

“Today, we formally announced that Channel 24-WMFE-TV has been sold,” said WMFE President and CEO Jose Fajardo, “so that we could focus our resources on 90.7 public radio.”

Fajardo would not say who’s buying the station, though that information could become public as soon as Monday through filings with the Federal Communications Commission.

The news sent shockwaves through Central Florida, as viewers feared the loss of programs like Sesame Street, NOVA, and Antiques Roadshow.

“Public television programming is not leaving the Orlando market.  It’s still going be here, available through the other stations.” said Fajardo.

The other stations are WDSC-Daytona and WBCC-Cocoa.  They do run most of the popular public TV shows, with exception of PBS NewsHour, which is currently broadcast only on WMFE.  The Daytona public station declined to comment for this story; the Cocoa outlet could not be reached late Friday afternoon.

PBS will have to scramble to make one of those stations its new primary carrier in the Orlando market, a position that would normally come with much higher dues and program costs.

It didn’t quite work that way last fall, though, when the main PBS station in Los Angeles, KCET, dropped its PBS affiliation and went independent.

Steve Behrens, managing editor for the public media industry newspaper, “Current,” says PBS had to take a financial hit in LA.

“They are being paid less by the station in Los Angeles that became the primary station than the previous primary station was paying them,” he said, “so it’s possible that’ll happen [in Orlando] too.”

WMFE says it now pays about a million dollars a year in fees to PBS.  CEO Jose Fajardo says those costs could have increased by as much as 37% under a new formula the network is considering.

“They’re still working on that formula,” Fajardo said, “and it might be less, but even an increase of 10% in today’s environment would’ve been too much.”

Today’s environment also includes big drop-offs in corporate and individual support.  WMFE says its TV pledge drives are down 34% since 2007.

Fajardo puts part of the blame on a decline in the quality of the fundraising programs that PBS sends out.  Those are the specials on everything from Doo-Wop music to self-help and financial advice.

“We would take a week of typical PBS programs and take that off the schedule,” Fajardo said, “and we would replace it with special pledge programs that [were not] necessarily PBS core value-type programs.”

The pledge shows are also heavily laced with pitches for related books, CDs, and DVDs, with the proceeds going to local stations.  This so-called “transactional” fundraising model has taken over at public television stations across the country.

“The more that that has happened, loyalty has fallen off,” said California-based public media consultant Mike Marcotte.

“People are responding to the DVD opportunity, as opposed to some kind of social contract that they feel like they have with their local station.”

Marcotte says WMFE’s decision to sell its TV station after more than 45 years on the air makes Orlando just another domino falling down in the PBS system.

“This is really forcing people inside PBS to take a very hard look at their dues structure,” he said “and of course, they’re stuck.  The more they talk about slashing dues for the local stations, that’s money that’s coming out of the producer’s pocket, so there’s going to be some kind of scaling back of production or production values.”

But PBS has at least one prominent local defender in WMFE’s former CEO Stephen McKenney Steck, who ran the station for 35 years before he retired in 2007.

“I don’t find PBS to be necessarily the enemy in this thing,” said Steck.

“PBS has demonstrated, at least while I was Chief Executive Officer, to be willing to talk, compromise, deal, and do whatever it takes.”  

PBS is declining interviews on the WMFE sale.  In an email statement, the network says it will look to other area member stations to provide, “a financially stable service in the Orlando market.”

As for Steck’s opinion of WMFE’s decision:

“I think it’s mis-directed, I think it’s way premature, I think it’s a rush to sell when there’s plenty of options that I think need to be more publically and community-inclusively discussed,” he said.

Current CEO Jose Fajardo insists the station and its board did try to find a way to keep WMFE-TV on the air. 

“Selling the TV station was the last alternative we looked at,” Fajardo said.

“We looked at mergers, partnerships, going the KCET route as an independent public TV station.  The numbers just didn’t add up, no matter which alternative we looked at.”

The public will have 30 days to comment on the sale with the FCC. Stephen McKenney Steck raised the possibility that the federal agency could delay or reject the sale.  Fajardo says that’s always a possibility, but WMFE seems fairly certain the transaction will be approved.  The station has already laid off five employees, and several more have been told they’ll be let go when WMFE-TV goes away for good.  The station expects that to happen sometime in the next three months.