BILL ANALYSIS 1
1
SENATE ENERGY, UTILITIES AND COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE
DEBRA BOWEN, CHAIRWOMAN
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|SB 844 - Schiff |Hearing Date:April 13, | S|
| |1999 | |
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|As Introduced: February 25, | | B|
|1999 | | |
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| | | 8|
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DESCRIPTION
Current law establishes the California Public Broadcasting
Commission (Commission). This Commission, comprised of
appointments by the Governor, the Assembly Speaker, the
Senate Rules Committee, the Superintendent of Public
Instruction, and the Director of the Postsecondary
Education Commission, is charged with developing and
supporting a statewide policy to encourage the growth and
development of public broadcasting services.
This bill creates the California Public Broadcasting
Council (Council), which is chartered to provide the
Governor and the Legislature with an annually updated plan
for future public broadcasting services. The Council,
which is governed solely by representatives of public radio
and public television, shall also assist in the
disbursement of funds as described below.
This bill creates three programs for spending any state
funds which may be granted to public broadcasting:
1) The first program is for the purchase of
equipment. These funds, when made available through
the state Budget Act, are allocated to eligible
stations pursuant to a statutory formula allocating
75% of the funds for public television and 25% for
public radio. Within those percentages, half of the
money is allocated equally to all eligible public
broadcasting stations, while the remaining funds are
divided between stations in proportion to the amount
of nonfederal funds they raise. Funds are only
provided on a matching basis.
2) The second program is for the operation of
public broadcasting stations. These funds, when
made available through the state Budget Act, are
allocated on the same basis as the first program.
3) The third program helps fund multistation
projects, or projects when benefit more than one
station. These funds are allocated at the
discretion of the Council.
This bill does not provide any funding.
KEY QUESTIONS
1)Should the state create a new, privately run council to
encourage the development of public broadcasting, create
a plan for future public broadcasting services, and help
allocate any state monies made available for public
broadcasting?
2)Should a formula to allocate funds to public broadcasting
be created in statute?
3)Would a better solution be to apply the spending formulas
in this bill to the existing California Public
Broadcasting Commission?
BACKGROUND
Public broadcasting includes both public television and
public radio. Today, there are 14 public television
stations and 23 public radio stations in California, none
of which receive state support. According to the public
broadcasters, California is one of the few states in the
nation that provides no public support for public
broadcasting. They cite several examples of the funding
provided in other states, using a per capita number: Utah
($7.76); Alaska ($7.00); Kentucky ($4.26); West Virginia
($3.72); Mississippi ($2.82); and Georgia ($2.36).
The impetus for public broadcasting's effort to call for
state support is a federal requirement that public
television stations change their broadcast signal from an
analog signal to a digital signal by 2003. (Commercial
television must also change to a digital signal, but their
schedule is more compressed.) Digital television may well
change the nature of television by providing clearer
pictures, increasing the number of channels, and providing
data and interactive features. The cost of this mandate is
significant, both for the broadcasters and for owners of
television sets. The Public Broadcasting Service estimates
the cost of complying with the mandate and upgrading its
production facilities to digital, which is not required by
the mandate, will be $1.7 billion nationwide. Some of
these costs may be funded by the federal government, but
most will be funded by other public and private sources. A
similar digital mandate for public radio does not exist,
but some speculate that such a mandate will come soon.
The Public Broadcasting Act of 1975 created the California
Public Broadcasting Commission (Commission). The
Commission is required to "develop and support a statewide
policy to encourage the orderly growth and development of
public broadcasting service responsive to the
informational, cultural, and educational needs of the
people of California." The Commission is empowered to: a)
make grants to public broadcasting stations for operations,
programming, and capital facilities; and, b) establish an
interconnection system between public broadcasting stations
to facilitate statewide distribution of programs. The
Commission consists of 11 members of which five are
appointed by the Governor, two are appointed by the Speaker
of the Assembly, two are appointed by the Senate Rules
Committee, one is the Superintendent of Public Instruction,
and the last is the Director of the Postsecondary Education
Commission. While it still exists in statute, the
Commission hasn't been funded since the mid-1980's.
COMMENTS
1)The federal mandate for television broadcasters to
digitalize their signals has galvanized public
broadcasting. While the mandate currently pertains only
to the television signal transmission function, public
television broadcasters foresee a need to digitalize
production facilities to take advantage of the digital
broadcast signal. Public radio, which is under no
mandate to digitalize either its signals or its
production facilities, is a believer in the benefits of
digitalization and feels it may face a mandate to
digitalize in the future.
2)While this bill does not appropriate any money, it does
create a statutory formula for dividing any state money
provided for capital improvement and operations. This
formula provides 75% of funding to television and 25% to
radio. According to the public broadcasters, this is the
same split used by Congress when it appropriates money.
Within these percentages, the funding is split into two
equal pots. The first pot is shared equally among all
eligible stations, while the second pot is split
proportionately among the stations based upon the amount
of nonfederal money raised by each station. This formula
has been agreed upon by the public broadcasters. The
bill also provides that any monies provided for projects
which benefit multiple stations be divided by the
Council. However, because the Council is governed solely
by public broadcasters, the Committee may wish to
consider whether it's appropriate to let them divide up
the public money among themselves.
3)Rather than create a new, non-public organization to help
plan how public broadcasting will benefit the citizens of
the state, the Committee and the author may wish to
consider whether it would be more appropriate to
reconstitute the existing California Public Broadcasting
Commission. The structure of the Commission is public
and established, and its mission of the Commission is
very similar to that conceived for the Council. An
additional benefit is that the Commission is more
systematically affiliated with the state's educational
interests, which arguably should be one of the prime
benefactors of public broadcasting. The funding formulas
envisioned in the current bill could simply be imported
into the existing statute.
POSITIONS
Support:
California Council for the Humanities
California Public Television and Radio Broadcasters
Oppose:
None reported to Committee.
Randy Chinn
SB 844 Analysis
Hearing Date: April 13, 1999