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In the Matter of )

) MM Docket No. 04-233

Broadcast Localism )

)

Western States Public Radio (“WSPR”) respectfully submits the following comments in

WSPR is a regional membership organization for public radio stations in the western

United States. It represents more than 30 noncommercial educational radio station licensees of

stations that serve entire states or regions, small to major markets, and isolated rural areas with

local and national programming, including substantial news and public affairs programming,

classical, jazz, and world music programming, minority-oriented programming (including

African American, Hispanic and Native American programming), and other cultural

programming genres. WSPR members include FCC licensees that are state and governmental

entities, college and universities, and nonprofit educational organizations (also known as

“community” licensees whose governing boards are drawn from the community of license).

The WSPR public radio members already operate as inherently local institutions, as

reflected by their programming, community involvement (including active local outreach), and

operational funding. The unifying factor among these diverse licensees is a common mission to

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provide high quality public radio service to their communities of license. WSPR stations do not

than twenty hours of local programming each week. Of the remaining respondents, two more

produce between ten and twenty hours of local programming weekly, and another produces six

to ten hours of local programming each week.

Through their active community ties, issue-responsive local programming, and news and

community affairs content, WSPR’s public radio member stations already serve the interests and

objectives targeted by this broadcast localism proceeding. Moreover, these stations do so despite

limited budgets, as non-profit entities and noncommercial broadcasters. Although wellintentioned,

the proposed regulations aimed at strengthening localism would have the opposite

effect for the WSPR members. Compliance with several proposals, if adopted, would require

extraordinary outlays of money and time, and the expenditures would require these public radio

stations to either terminate broadcast services which directly serve local public interests, or at the

“Public broadcasting is explicitly encouraged by various Commission rules and

policies....[T]he very definition of the service, the status of its operating stations, and its

essentially non-profit, noncommercial programming nature make public broadcasting

stations very different, in programming terms, from their commercial counterparts…. [W]e

expect that as a practical matter the programming of these stations will reflect their special

status and that they will provide their communities with significant alternative programming

designed to satisfy the interests of the public not served by commercial broadcast stations.

We would assume, for example, that in the rare case where the commercial media market

appeared to ignore a significant issue in a community, the public stations would be among

the first to address it…. Such responsive programming would be entirely consistent with the

(1984).

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very least redirect vital and scarce resources which presently enhance on-air service to local

communities. Moreover, some proposals would not effectively assist WSPR stations in meeting

localism goals, and would instead hamper current efforts, as refined over time, to adequately and

practically serve local interests in an efficient, productive, and cost-effective manner.

seeks comment on several proposals for new requirements relating to communication between

licensees and their communities. One such proposal is that licensees convene permanent,

quarterly advisory boards of officials and local leaders to determine matters of local interest.

The Commission also seeks comment concerning informal ascertainment efforts such as listener

or viewer surveys, meetings, and the use of dedicated telephone numbers, websites, and email

addresses to facilitate dialogue. While WSPR member stations already engage in many of these

efforts to obtain valuable community input and shape programming, the notion of quarterly,

mandated community advisory board meetings – especially on a station-by-station (and thus

community-by-community) basis – would be simply unworkable, unaffordable, and counterproductive

for their public radio operations and networks.

Moreover, it is noteworthy that Section 396(k)(8) of the Communications Act already

requires a community advisory board for public radio stations (except for those licensed to

governmental entities) that receive federal funding, as enforced by the Corporation for Public

Broadcasting. Thus, with regard to public radio stations, Congress has already spoken on this

issue and the Commission should not overlay a separate scheme. The Congressional exception

for governmental licensees reflected its judgment that, given the public nature of their

governance structures, an additional board would be unnecessary.

Not surprisingly, three quarters of the surveyed WSPR members already have a

community advisory board in place. However, very few would be able to create a separate

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statewide advisory council meeting twice each year to review and advise on programming and

operations. Requiring the creation of an additional 13 duplicative boards across this

broadcaster’s state would drain valuable time and resources without providing additional value.

To achieve such a feat, the licensee’s small staff would need to spend an inordinate amount of

time on travel and administration, unavoidably taking away from the actual production of the

locally-responsive radio programming that the boards are ultimately intended to achieve.

In fact, many WSPR members would be hard pressed to set up advisory boards in the

communities for each of their satellite stations’ communities, which in Western states are often

located in very rural areas and at great distances from each other. Several would need to

dedicate excessive amounts of staff time to travel (with associated costs of time, money and

resources), to merely duplicate benefits provided by current ascertainment efforts. For example,

for one WSPR member with a 13-station network, quarterly advisory board meetings would

equate to approximately one such meeting per week. Given its large coverage area (more than

500 miles across), the time and travel expenses would be unjustifiable. In another instance, a

WSPR public radio network’s facilities are also scattered across a large area – and their existing

advisory board already travels to these sites on a regular rotating schedule. However, to

establish more than two dozen separate advisory boards would require a heavy administrative

burden and expense and would be impractical to establish and maintain, especially to replicate

what is already accomplished in more efficient manner by the licensee’s current board.

In addition, a WSPR University licensee’s experience with prior FCC advisory board

requirements demonstrated that it was an ineffective endeavor, in part due to the difficulty board

members had with traveling to the licensee’s campus location. As a result, the station now

maintains toll-free telephone lines and email addresses for listener contact, and has found that

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this direct public input is more valuable for creating issue-responsive programming. For another,

smaller WSPR University licensee, it would simply be an unattainable administrative burden to

Lastly, in the case of an community licensee WSPR station, its own community-based

governing board already serves the exact functions that the Commission proposes for a outside

advisory board. This licensee has found that maintaining a separate board to ascertain and

address local needs is duplicative and wasteful.

Nonetheless, when it comes to ascertainment, the WSPR public radio members already

employ various effective measures developed with their diffuse networks and limited budgets in

mind. For example, and in addition to the board arrangements described above, sixty percent of

the WSPR members conduct regular listener surveys. Also, half of the WSPR members conduct

focus groups in their broadcast regions.

In sum, the imposition of a rigid advisory board requirement for all full service stations

would impose an undue and unnecessary burden on public radio stations. For non-profit NCE

stations – some public university and local community licensees – the cost of establishing,

maintaining, administering boards across large Western states and in rural locations would be

substantial in terms of time, travel, staff, and other expenses. In many cases, these public radio

station have already organized advisory boards in efficient and cost-effective manners.

However, to require exponential expansion of these efforts would strain limited resources

without providing new benefits. In other cases, some public University licensees have found that

advisory boards are redundant or ineffective, and instead, these licensees employ other methods,

such as the toll-free telephone numbers, email contacts, listener surveys, and focus groups

considered by the Commission. The proposed changes to ascertainment methods are

unnecessary for all of these stations, imposing costs that far outweigh any potential benefits.

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operate “repeaters” of their primary full service radio stations, in statewide and regional

networks ranging from two to fourteen stations. The vast majority of these stations utilize

unattended operation 24 hours per day. Any changes to the FCC’s Rules and regulatory scheme

concerning main studio requirements, station staffing, and unattended operation – unless they

account and allow for this standard public radio structure and its economies of scale – would

have a drastic and negative effect on the presently existing local services that these public radio

networks provide, in many cases to rural, underserved communities. If forced to establish,

construct, and staff main studios for all of their regional repeater stations – or even just staff

transmission facilities during all hours of operation – many of the WSPR members would face

financial burdens which would require removing radio service to the very communities which

need it the most and cannot independently support stand-alone public radio stations:

$100,000 to its annual budget, depending on the ability to utilize volunteers, most

notably during overnight hours. Several other WSPR members also anticipate

serious financial consequences: ranging from “bankrupting our operations” to

“hiring more staff at a cost of at least $100,000” to “adding approximately

$1,000,000 annually to a present budget of just $1,600,000,” in addition to the

sizable capital expense of multiple new studios and microwave systems. Some

difficulties (both financially and logistically) with hiring new personnel and

creating facilities in which to house them across the state to attend to its satellite

stations. Notably, many of its transmitter sites are located on isolated mountain

tops which are extremely difficult to reach during the region’s winter months.

operation of its Denver-based station would require $50,000 for 365 days/year of

an eight (8) hour overnight shift; similar accommodations for relatively populated

repeater facilities would run upwards of $200,000 a year (to add 24 hour/day

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hours of operation. Without the personnel or finances to staff facilities or to build

24 hours/day, 7 days/week, 365 days/year, and it simply could not similarly staff

satellite facility locations.

budgetary impact from increased staffing and studio costs, at a time when the

majority of its funding (which comes from student fees) is already decreasing.

Nearly all of WSPR members would be unable to provide an employee at a remote

transmitter location for all hours of operation. Likewise, most WSPR members would be unable

to maintain full main studios and program origination capabilities in every community of license.

Most notably, more than half (58%) of WSPR members are certain that they would need to

terminate broadcasting during hours of current unattended operation (and another 26% would

The Commission has indicated agreement with those “who expressed concern about the

prevalence of automated broadcast operations, which allow the operation of stations without a

local presence, and the perceived negative impact that such remote operation may have on

reverting to a more restrictive prior rule on main studio locations to increase accessibility and

community interaction. However, the WSPR stations’ operational viability and on-going local

another would need to terminate 13. Others also anticipate having to terminate multiple repeater

stations. Moreover, each of the surveyed WSPR members estimates that the population affected

by such requirements would be substantial. Two-thirds of WSPR members believe that more

than 100,000 persons would be affected by the termination of stations due to the proposed

unattended operation and main studio changes, and a third of WSPR members estimate that

figure at more than 250,000. Notably, the loss of radio service in such areas would also frustrate

another localism goal, that of providing emergency information – “a fundamental area in which

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services rely directly on unattended operation and regional satellite networks. Unless the current

main studio waiver regime and unattended allowances remain in place, these public radio

broadcasters will be faced with facility and personnel expenses completely out of proportion to

current budgets. For these nonprofit entities, compliance would need to come at the expense of

other services. Invariably, such efforts aimed at benefiting broadcast localism, if applied to these

public radio licensees, could instead result directly in the loss of local radio service.

licensees to review network programming sufficiently in advance of airtime, mentions the

possible implementation a requirement to do so, and asks if certain programs should be

exempted. For the WSPR members, the required previewing of network programming (such as

that received from National Public Radio) would result in serious burdens. Obviously, as

programming such as news without harming its news value and the ability to serve audiences

with vital and timely public affairs information. Additionally, the mandated previewing of other

network programming would require the hiring of new staff or the reassignment of current staff

duties, with the unavoidable financial and opportunity costs that would result, as well as

logistical concerns regarding delays in broadcasts and the recording of programs. The time and

money spent on previewing public radio network programming – the basic format and content of

which are often already familiar to licensees – could necessitate cutbacks in other station

operations (such as the ability to create public affairs programming).

measures enacted for television licenses (including the adoption of a standardized quarterly

reporting form) should be applied to radio stations. The requirements, however, would be

surprisingly and extraordinarily burdensome for WSPR’s public radio stations, and the cost in

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resources unjustified by any possible value to be achieved. This is particularly true in view of

the amount and richness of responsive programming services that are provided by public radio

stations, consistent with their missions and history.

In fact, the reporting burden imposed by the enhanced disclosure rules would be far

greater for public radio stations than commercial stations by virtue of the amount of public

radio’s local, independent and issue-responsive programming services, all of which would have

to be meticulously recorded and reported. In that sense, stations that are actually accomplishing

As opposed to the current quarterly radio issues/programs lists (which might take a few

hours of staff time for stations to select a few issues of particular importance and provide

examples of responsive programming), the new requirement is much more akin to the

preparation of exhaustive quarterly catalogs of programming and other information across

multiple programming services. The initial setup effort (perhaps involving programming

tracking software and changes to record-keeping to compile data on a continuing basis) would

entail significant expenses (including staff and consultant work), while greatly increased staff

effort would be needed thereafter to actually compile the quarterly reports.

As with the other regulatory burdens noted above, the costs of compliance will inevitably

create additional strain on noncommercial budgets, especially given reductions in already scarce

public and private revenues for public broadcasting. The result, again, could be reduced

programming services of the very sort the FCC hopes to encourage. Indeed, however well

meaning, these rules may ultimately generate results opposite from those that were intended.

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regulations would have for public broadcasters. In the case of the public radio members of

WSPR, the unintended effects of many of the proposals would be wide-ranging and actually

destructive to existing local service. Whereas the “proposed changes are intended to promote

localism by providing viewers and listeners greater access to locally responsive programming

in fact strain limited public radio resources in such a way that locally responsive programming,

including news and public affairs content, would be drastically curtailed or eliminated.

Especially in the rural, Western states served by WSPR members, increased regulation of

ascertainment and reporting, and more stringent restrictions on remote operation, would translate

into enormous expenses for nonprofit licensees, which would inevitably come at the expense of

existing, high quality local radio services for underserved areas. WSPR therefore urges the

Commission to consider the impact of its proposals on public radio broadcasters, and to account

for them accordingly in this rulemaking.

Respectfully Submitted,

By: /s/ Margaret L. Miller

Barry S. Persh

Their Counsel

Dow Lohnes PLLC

1200 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, Suite 800

Washington, DC 20036-6802

(202) 776-2000

April 28, 2008

Alaska Public Broadcasting, Inc.

Alaska Public Telecommunications, Inc.

Arizona Board of Regents for the Benefit of the University of Arizona

Arizona Western College

Boulder Community Broadcast Association, Inc.

Brigham Young University

Community Radio for Northern Colorado

Eastern New Mexico University

Hawaii Public Radio, Inc.

Idaho State Board of Education (Boise State University)

Idaho State University

Jefferson Public Radio

KBPS Public Radio Foundation

KCBX, Inc.

KUTE, Inc.

Lane Community College

Maricopa County Community College District

Mt. Hood Community College District

Nevada Public Radio

Northern Arizona University

Oregon Public Broadcasting

Pacific Lutheran University, Inc.

Public Broadcasting of Colorado, Inc.

Regents of New Mexico State University

Seattle Public Schools

Spokane Public Radio, Inc.

The University of Oklahoma

The University of Texas at Austin

University of Utah

The University of Washington

University of Wyoming

Utah State University of Agriculture and Applied Science

Washington State University