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Why I don't contribute to OETA

Sat, Mar 27, 2004; by Matt Deatherage.

That's the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, responsible for operating all public television in the state of Oklahoma. It includes four stations - KETA-13 in Oklahoma City, KOED-11 Tulsa, KOET-3 Eufala, and KWET-12 Cheyenne - plus several repeaters. (Don't try finding that information on the self-congratulatory Web site, though, unless you have the direct link to OETA's coverage map. I actually had to search Google with all four station IDs to find it.)

OETA recently completed yet another of its "Festival" fund-raising drives, and normally, I'd strongly consider contributing a few bucks to it. I do often watch the Oklahoma News Report, Oklahoma's only statewide news broadcast, because it consists of OETA original news reporting on statewide issues such as the Legislature and the economy, augmented by reports from Oklahoma City and Tulsa stations on other issues. No crime blotter, no diet crazes, no helicopter shots of house fires. Of course, they shorten it by ten full minutes during the pledge drive, but you have to expect that.

OETA also produces "Stateline" documentaries about Oklahoma, OKC and Tulsa local public affairs shows, and even a state arts show, "Gallery." Stateline and Gallery both won regional Emmy awards, as did an OETA production of the dedication ceremony for the new State Capitol Dome in November 2002. OETA is broadcasting in HDTV in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, with the other two stations joining the digital party this year.

So why do I refuse to consider contributing to OETA?

Because it's a rich organization that strongly emphasizes serving and placating rich, conservative donors over actually serving the public. As the President and CEO of PBS says in a note to producers:

PBS aims to increase awareness, provide multiple viewpoints, treat complex social issues completely, provide forums for deliberation, and strengthen ties between our viewers and Web users and their communities. Others may produce content within the same genres, but programming produced for PBS must always be distinct as well as distinctive.

OETA is afraid of multiple viewpoints, ignores complex social issues, and provides forums for deliberating whether polka dancing is wilder than the waltz.

Specifically, OETA has refused to air every major PBS-aired documentary or program on gay and lesbian issues, not just in the past ten years, but ever. OETA edited the highly-acclaimed miniseries version of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City to remove the female breasts. But even the edited version showed two men kissing, so OETA refused to air it until 10PM (the equivalent of 11PM on the east and west coasts, after prime time), and still was threatened with losing half its funding from the state for doing so.

OETA hasn't made the mistake of honoring the PBS mission since.

It refuses to show the award-winning PBS gay and lesbian documentary series In the Life, nor did it show the documentary "Scouting for All" about Eagle Scout Steven Cozza's efforts to get the Boy Scouts to admit gay and atheist members. OETA would not even air Out of the Past, the documentary of 400 years of lesbian and gay history.

Why? Because OETA puts the fears and homophobia of its rich donors and supporters ahead of the PBS mission of "providing multiple viewpoints" and "treating complex social issues completely." When it comes to gay and lesbian issues - and, in fact, most progressive issues altogether - OETA goes AWOL. If it weren't for PBS series like Frontline and NOW with Bill Moyers, there'd be no progressive voices on OETA at all.

What's more, the station regularly uses the pledge drives to hint that without more support from the left, it'll drop those shows, too. "We prioritize our schedule based on what you tell us as a contributor," OETA has said, for at least all of my life. It's not about multiple viewpoints - it's about the viewpoints of the people with money. Look at PBS's list of what shows OETA will air and see for yourself. Don't be fooled by the inclusion of shows like P.O.V. - I don't think OETA shows all of the episodes, censoring the ones the donors might not agree with.

Furthermore, OETA is rich. It has offices in both Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and as this "virtual tour" shows, they're very nice offices indeed, including a studio capable of producing shows for national PBS distribution. When former OETA director Bob Allen (a classmate of my parents, btw) announced his retirement in 1999, the Legislature honored him with a proclamation that revealed that OETA brings in more than $2 million in fundraising each year, and has an endowment fund with more than $15 million. The State of Oklahoma provided $5.6 million for the conversion to digital TV, but the OETA Foundation matched that amount.

And yet, just six months ago, outgoing directory Allen (who stayed on until November 2003 while they found a replacement) told a state budget committee that funding at OETA was "fragile," and that OETA was doing without ten full-time employees than authorized, including two that would be seeking outside and federal funds.

But if you look at the FY 2005 OETA budget, you see that nearly 60% of OETA's operating budget comes from private sources, and that the OETA Foundation provides "funding for programming nearly equal to that provided by state funds." Elsewhere, we learn that programming and production occupy about a third of OETA's budget (58% is broadcasting and technical, probably so high due to the switch to HDTV).

If I'm doing the math right, that means the OETA Foundation provides the equivalent of at least 1/6th of OETA's annual budget each year, or about $575,000. The Foundation must be even richer than that to have provided $5.6 million for the DTV conversion. Normally, foundations and endowments return a maximum of 5% of the principal each year, so including the DTV gift would put the OETA Foundation's principal somewhere over the earlier-stated $15 million mark, with it growing every year since pledges all go to the OETA Foundation.

What does OETA do with this money, other than the urgent and required DTV conversion? It censors gay and lesbian programming, it drops other controversial national PBS shows, and it produces exactly one show for national distribution:

The Lawrence Welk Show

Yes, that's right: OETA spends the foundation's and the state's money to produce all new episodes, each year, of the hour-long polka-kitsch fest that left commercial television 22 years ago. The shows apparently cannot include any songs written after 1968, and Lawrence Welk himself died in 1992. The show left production in 1982, but reruns lasted until 1987. That's when OETA, sensing an underserved audience with deep pockets, picked up the reruns, and began producing original new wrap-arounds and segments with the Welk Orchestra, combined with rerun segments.

OETA has now produced something like a dozen Lawrence Welk specials, and claims that the show is the most popular "syndicated" program on public television today (PBS does not carry it).

So, to recap: OETA has a wealthy foundation that could fund the entire statewide system on its own for a minimum of three years. It produces a popular nationwide show with that money, and brags to the legislature about how it uses less state money per capita (about $1) than any other statewide public television service. And yet despite that alleged comfort zone, it refuses to air most programs having anything to do with gay and lesbian issues, and would avoid all progressive issues if it could. Anything beyond Frontline (OETA's fourth most popular show) does not make it through OETA's broadcast tower.

And while OETA can find the money to produce the Welk show, and for other programs to air instead of the multiple viewpoints that PBS promises, it can't do the same for other popular PBS syndicated programs. According to Slate from six months ago, the highest-rated cooking show on public television is America's Test Kitchen, from the folks at Cook’s Illustrated magazine, a food source I hold in esteem just slightly below Alton Brown. ATK is a great show that shows cooking methods, ingredient tasting, equipment testing, along with science and trivia. It deserves its high ratings.

So, of course, OETA runs it only at 10:30 AM on Saturday mornings, and pre-empts it several times per year for pledge drives. It's been off the air here for two weeks, returning just today with episodes from a new season that hadn't yet been seen in Oklahoma.

Despite spending 58% of its budget on broadcast and technical issues, however, OETA aired today's episode of ATK the same way it does at least once per month: with the video half a second ahead of the audio. I guess it's lucky none of the cooks are openly gay, or we might not see it at all, with or without audio.

When OETA shapes up its act - both technically and programatically - I'll consider contributing. As long as the statewide public television system considers it more important to censor minority views, produces only one national show of music intended to please only an ultra-conservative audience, and can't even bother to fix audio and video synchronization for the duration of an entire half-hour popular show several times per year, I'll spend my money on other causes.

I don't know if you should do the same - I'm against the entire idea that donations should make public television responsive to your needs more than the needs of diversity and balance. That's how we got OETA in the first place. But as long as they're setting the rules that way, I'll vote for diversity and against the safe, bland, dear-God-let's-not-offend-the-Gaylords mentality that is today's OETA.

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