Public TV seeks funds for new gear

BOISE – Idaho Public Television has been producing award-winning documentaries and public affairs shows despite struggling with broadcast equipment that’s more than 30 years old, its general manager told lawmakers Monday.

In fact, the equipment is so fragile that last June, a central piece of it, a 1974-vintage video mixer, was irreparably damaged in a storm, triggering an appeal for federal aid and a state insurance claim.

“The equipment is 1970s, 1980s vintage, and it’s well beyond its useful life,” Peter Morrill told the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee.

House Appropriations Chairman Rep. Maxine Bell, R-Jerome, complimented Morrill on the breathtaking footage of Idaho’s landscape, wildlife and people that flashed across display screens as he updated the joint budget committee on IPTV’s activities.

“If you can do that with that old, antiquated equipment … I don’t know what you’d do if we actually gave you good equipment,” she commented.

Replied Morrill: “I’d like to find out.”

Gov. Dirk Kempthorne has called for funding the first phase of a three-phase plan to update IPTV’s broadcasting equipment. It calls for replacing aging analog broadcast equipment, including such basics as cameras, lenses and tape machines, at the main studio in Boise with new digital equipment, at a cost of $973,400.

Morrill said the plan is to update equipment in Moscow and Pocatello in the second phase, two years out, and to replace equipment in the state Capitol the year after that.

But some lawmakers were concerned about the price tag. “Yours is one that is a lofty request for the type of budget that we’re going to set here,” Senate Finance Chairman Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, told Morrill.

Sen. Mel Richardson, R-Idaho Falls, said he’d rather that Idaho didn’t spend any money to support IPTV.

“I still have a little problem with tax dollars going into competition with private industry,” said Richardson, a broadcaster. “There are literally hundreds of channels that are out there. … You certainly have a product there that is worth privatizing.”

However, Morrill noted that public television is “really of a non-commercial nature.”

If Idaho Public TV were to lose its $1.5 million in annual state funding – about one-quarter of its budget – it would have to pull back to serve just its most cost-effective market, Southwestern Idaho, Morrill said.

“If we lost state funding for public broadcasting, IPTV would shrink down to something like Southern Idaho Public Television, or maybe Southwestern Idaho Public Television,” he said. “The numbers do not suggest that we’d be able to maintain the statewide reach that we have.”

IPTV now serves 97 percent of the state – the only medium that does so, Morrill said. Because of Idaho’s geography, size, and fragmented markets, the state has no statewide newspaper, radio station or commercial television.

Currently, only 14 staff positions at IPTV are supported by state dollars. Nineteen are funded by federal Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants, and 21 by private donations.

Rep. Shirley Ringo, D-Moscow, said after the budget hearing that she thought privatization was “a horrible idea.”

“When I compare the quality of public TV programming to that in the private sector, it makes me wonder if the private sector shouldn’t be looking to go public,” she said.

Ringo said she supports the governor’s equipment-replacement proposal. “There comes a time when you absolutely have to do it,” she said. “It’s been ignored for two years prior to this. The need is genuine.”

She added, “It’s quite possible that by waiting, there are parts of the state that could lose access to the programming.”

The IPTV budget hearing came on the same day that the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee heard the Idaho State Historical Society’s budget pitch, which director Steve Guerber delivered in costume, portraying Capt. John Mullan.

Mullan charted the famous Mullan Road, and Guerber shared his story while pleading for more funding to address historic preservation in Idaho, including the stories told by the many historic trails and roads that crisscross the state.

Idaho has a backlog of more than $2 million in needed maintenance on its historic buildings, but the state has “zeroed out” the budget to address that for the last four years straight, Guerber noted.

He said the Historical Society also has had increased demands for archival materials due to water issues and homeland security questions, but remains seriously shorthanded, with just three archivists for a job that national standards say should take 15.

Rep. Margaret Henbest, D-Boise, asked, “Even though your workload has increased, none of the $18 million in homeland security money that has come to the state has made its way to your budget?”

“That would be a good assumption,” Guerber responded.