The golden fleece of public broadcasting producers

As a sometime producer for television, I can tell you the name of the game is making a budget so low that it leaves profit for the producer after the show is sold. Sounds easy, but it is not, especially these days.

When budgeting for television, for example, producers often make the show for U.S. broadcasting at no profit whatsoever, relying on the Internet spin-off and foreign sales to make any profit at all. Are they paid a salary for production? Sure, but huge salaries like Aaron Spelling’s millions for “90210� are a thing of the past — way past.

When you do not have “real� commercials, the fight for budget and profit becomes even harder. PBS stations beg and plead for your donations and support. They run sponsorship commercials, get foundations to pitch in and squeeze producers to cut prices, often denying any profit to producers? “Sesame Street,� for example, makes no profit from sales to PBS, relying on merchandising alone to pay most of the staff.

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Which is why it annoys me to see public money and charitable donations being thrown at producing stations in the public broadcasting arena, like WGBH in Boston. WGBH has an arrangement with the BBC. The BBC Bristol documentary folks make world-ranging, award-winning documentaries for their show, “Horizon.� WGBH takes the BBC show, relabels it NOVA and re-edits only the credits and bits of voiceover to make it look like it is a WGBH production.

Hold on to your hats... their “cost� for the relabeling? In 1987, for a show I produced with the BBC, WGBH charged PBS stations $200,000 for a half-day’s work, tops. And that original show we made on the Voyager flight in 1986 had a production budget of $38,000. When I called WGBH to ask what their current budget per show is, they said, “We’re private company and do not have to reveal that figure.� So much for public TV broadcasting; no public access.

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When you make a radio show, however, costs can be contained more easily than shipping crew and gear to Mojave, India, Africa or wherever. Radio has always been a source of profit simply because the costs of audio studio production are usually lower than any video production. So, radio is mostly profitable for producers. The same cannot be said for the radio stations, especially the public radio stations.

National Public Radio (NPR), created in 1970 by President Johnson, is a privately and publicly funded nonprofit media partnership (sort of) consisting of about 800 radio stations, supported in part by taxpayer dollars through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The purpose is simple really. In the interest of a balanced media — commercial versus public — NPR stations are to provide entertainment, news, culture and opinion as they see fit.

How do they choose what to broadcast? Because they are funded by donations and support, the less popular the programming, the lower its support. It’s a version of the capitalist system and, so far, it has worked. The problem happens when the tail begins wagging the dog.

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The producer of “Car Talk� is Doug Berman. Berman is a powerful radio producer. He controls two of the most popular programs on NPR. These are very cheap programs to produce compared to news reporting, cultural events, international audio-documentaries and even the payment of royalty fees for popular music.

Imagine: You have two funny and jovial men sitting in a small studio in Boston, taking unpaid calls from listeners, dispensing advice, making a recording. Cost? Oh, let’s be generous and say, below the line (that’s a term meaning the actual out-of-pocket cost, less salaries), $20,000.

Now, imagine you sell that show, because it is popular, to impoverished public stations across the nation without the funds to make their own shows. What do you charge them? How about this... little WAMC (which you all receive; they have more than 20 smaller broadcasting “stations�) pays $300 a week. WJZZ in Phoenix pays $1,000 a week (they are a major metropolitan broadcaster, after all).

So, let’s see, if you average out the 800 or so stations, let’s call it $80 per station, times 800 stations, that gives you an income (less production) of $44,000 per week, 50 weeks a year (they sell repeats, too, to fill in the time). Berman’s production company probably makes, gross, about $2.5 million a year on this one show. Of course, Click and Clack get paid... but there’s also income from the CPB, the Internet advertising, the cash from sponsors of the actual show (which they plug on the air), the merchandise, and so forth.

When you look at the No. 1 show on NPR, Berman’s “Wait, Wait... Don’t Tell Me,� the numbers are even better. And American Public Media’s “Prairie Home Companion?� Don’t ask, that’s a cash machine, even exporting programming in Europe. Compared to two TV producers I know, making shows for prime-time television, the NPR show producers are making more profit in the public arena than they are. Yes, radio producers can actually make more than TV producers. And they are doing it with your donor support.

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There is nothing wrong with the capitalist system. There is nothing wrong with Berman, WGBH, NPR and others making profits from popular programming. What is wrong is that you, the public, the taxpayer (via CPB) and donor, are not entitled to see who’s getting what, why, and how much.

Twenty million people tune in to NPR, 20 million people who only hear the pleas for funding from volunteers and long-standing audio pals like Alan Chartock or David Galletly of WAMC. At least half of what they need is probably used to pay for excessive profits by producers, leaving less than half to run their stations, retain employees paid at reasonable pay scales and, generally, act in the spirit of public radio.

Remember, public radio is your radio, it does need your support more than ever, but it also needs your interest, your voice, your “vote� in keeping the profiteers at bay. That is, of course, unless you want a broadcasting fleecing à la AIG on your hands.

Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.