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Rupert Murdoch, the Congress, and public broadcasting

``` [This copyrighted article is forwarded to RRE by permission.]

Date: Wed, 1 Mar 1995 12:53:16 -0800 From: rsadl@max.sosc.osshe.edu (Russell Sadler)

I am enclosing a column I wrote a couple of weeks ago. I am a very mainstream, mass media journalist. For the last 25 years I have syndicated a daily radio and television commentary and a weekly newspaper column. The broadcasts are carried on 5 commercial television stations and 6 radio stations in Oregon and Northern California. Two radio stations are public, the rest are commercial. The column is carried in daily and weekly newspapers around Oregon.

I think you will find this column is a different explanation for the new congressional leadership's effort to "defund" public broadcasting.

Begin Column*

Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media baron, stupefied the media business when his Fox network outbid the venerable CBS for the rights to broadcast National Football League games this year. People in the television business knew Fox did not own enough stations in the top 50 media markets to charge enough for commercials to recover the $1.6 billion Murdoch spent taking the NFL away from CBS. Rupert Murdoch is no fool with his money. The industry waited for Murdoch to drop the other shoe.

There was less surprise when Murdoch announced his holding company paid $500 million for a 20 percent interest in the New World Communication Group, Inc. New World owns six television stations in the top 20 markets, four in the top 50 markets and two in the top 70, including stations in Dallas, the 8th largest market and Detroit, the 9th largest. Murdoch switched most of these stations from CBS affiliates to his Fox network. Now Murdoch had the means to charge more for commercials in the NFL games. Despite this brilliant high stakes entrepreneurship, Murdoch apparently lost $350 million in his $2.1 billion bid to build a national network. He needs more stations in the largest television markets.

There are no television frequencies available, especially the more lucrative VHF channels 2 - 13. They are licensed to ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox affiliates, a variety of independent stations and public television stations.

Enter Big Bird and Barney, two of public television's artistic and financial success stories. The new Republican leadership began a campaign to convince the American people Big Bird and Barney and their "elitist" audience were responsible for the national debt.

Government has no business doing what private enterprise can do better, chanted the ideologues. They do not explain why the vast wasteland of commercial television did not produce its own Big Bird and Barney instead of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Sen. Larry Pressler, R-South Dakota and chair of the Senate Commerce Committee announced Bell Atlantic was prepared to take Big Bird and Barney off the government's hands and syndicate it to cable, satellite and television outlets. Americans could still enjoy Big Bird - for a fee, of course.

There is a hollow, leaden ring to this heated, ideological rhetoric. Congress spends about as much on military bands as it spends on public broadcasting. Pressler comes from a sparsely populated state that has one of the largest public broadcasting audiences in the country. It can't be the money. Pressler can't be reflecting the views of his constituents. Congress really isn't after the public broadcasting's liberal bias - real or imagined. It turns out the new congressional leadership wants the public broadcasting channels, especially in the top 50 markets.

Public broadcasting licenses are owned by a variety of state and local governments, non-profit groups, colleges and universities. If the congress cuts public broadcasting funds and these stations are forced off the air, the government can reissue the licenses. Guess who is waiting in line.

Shortly after Murdoch's Harper Collins publishing company offered House Speaker Newt Gingrich the controversial $4.5 million book deal, Murdoch and other broadcasters asked for and got closed door meetings with House Republicans and Pressler's Commerce Committee staff. No one knows for sure what went on in these "private" meetings but reporters for Newsday and Los Angeles Times columnist Lars-Erik Nelson believe turning public broadcasting channels over to private broadcasters was a topic of discussion.

Bell Atlantic tried to make a deal with Murdoch last year for the 20th Century Fox film library worth an estimated $4 billion. Murdoch wants to sell, apparently to raise cash to replace the money he is losing on the NFL. Bell Atlantic has cash from its telephone operations and wants the film library to supply its planned venture into home entertainment. The deal fell apart when Bell Atlantic decided it did not have enough broadcast outlets to pay the bill. Bell Atlantic executives met privately with Pressler to complain about the lack of broadcasting frequencies in major television markets. Privately, the new congressional leadership believes public broadcasting stands in the way of restructuring the new electronic media and the solution is just turn off the spigot that pays for Big Bird and Barney.

The federal government holds a 13 year lien on any public broadcasting facility built with grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Those facilities include much of the modernized studio and transmission equipment in the largest markets and the extensive translator networks built by rural public stations like Jefferson Public Radio. If these stations cease broadcasting because of a lack of money, the federal government can just take over the property, issue the licenses to private operators and sell the lucrative studio and transmission facilities to their campaign contributors.

There is a surprising reason for this intense interest in old-fashioned television stations in the age of cable, satellite transmission and optic fiber cables. Murdoch's satellite television service demonstrated a revolutionary transmission technology that compresses signals 8 to 1.

Stripped of technobabble, that means within a decade it will be possible to transmit eight separate digital broadcast signals on television channels that can only transmit one now. If existing television stations can deliver 30 or more channels of home enetertainment into the Top 150 American television markets, it will drastically alter the economics of the cable and telephone industries.

Murdoch's compression technology will permit today's commercial and public television broadcasters - long dismissed as technological dinosaurs

Perhaps the bitter battle over Big Bird and Barney's future makes a bit more sense now.(ENDIT)

Russell Sadler Southern Oregon State College 519 South Mountain Avenue Department of Communication Ashland, OR 97520 1250 Siskiyou Blvd. 503-482-3959 Ashland, OR 97520

"Whatever hits the fan will not be distributed evenly." -Russell's Rule the Fourth ```

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