The Coast And The Non-Profit Televangelists
by Paul McGoldrick
If you had had anything to do with the licensing of non-commercial FM radio stations, and their operations, you will understand that it is a nasty pool to be playing in. Down at the bottom end of the FM dial there are loads of sharks around and they have developed the art of landing an open channel down pat. They find ways to force college stations -- who for the most part want to carry NPR, classical music and, for some reason, jazz -- off their temporary transposer channels and, instead, gain themselves a full license.
The sharks are religious, they know the power they can exert under the Constitutional Amendments, and they use it. I have seen at least five FM channels co-opted in this way in the last eight years in my area.
It is not something that I have ever understood, from either a content point of view or from the FCC's interpretation of their own rules. I have listened to some of these stations to try and gauge what they really are, and I have no doubt at all that at heart they are money raisers, first and foremost.
It would be dishonest for me to say that these stations are targeting the guilt -- and hopes -- of, in particular, the elderly because there is no way that I can prove that; although the IRS could and should examine these non-profits a great deal more closely than they do.
Money raising feeds expansion and I am happy to say a religious brodcaster that has a local CP (construction permit) for a channel which would knock a local classical music transposer off the air has obviously not been raising enough "disposable income" to permit them to purchase the full-power transmitter and other systems they need. Hopefully the CP will expire before they do… Social Security was not supposed to be a source of funding for religious propaganda.
I never expected there to be a religious takeover of the airwaves in TV. But by leaving the definition of non-commercial out of their rules the FCC (who have lost their ability to make any kind of tough decision since the AM Stereo debaçle) has left the door open for the courts to intervene. And non-commercial TV is now fair game.
Most people visualize, when you talk of non-commercial TV, the affiliate stations of PBS providing educational, informational programming with drama, news and musical entertainment. Unfortunately, televangelism falls into the same broad category.
In 2004 the Trustees of the Coast Community College District in Huntington Beach (Orange County), CA, considered the amount of the subsidy they were giving the College Public TV station, KOCE, and decided that $1.8 M a year was non-sustainable in a State where education budgets were being strangled by politicians (that Darwin missed) in Sacramento and with the looming pressure from Washington to further cut funding for the arts. They decided they had to sell the station.
Like the way one's mind must be focused before your judicial hanging the community in Orange County came together, founded the KOCE-TV Foundation, and put together a financial deal that would put about $32 million into the College District's coffers over 30 years. No interest payments involved but at least the subsidy situation would be over and the station would continue to provide PBS programming, and the fairly substantial amount of local material that the station has a reputation for -- unlike many PBS stations who have neither the funds, or facilities, for very much local material.
There's always a catch when things go well, isn't there? In this deal look to a religious broadcaster out of Dallas, TX, called the Daystar Television Network. It offered $25 million for the station, in cash, and just to reinforce their seriousness upped it to $40 million the day after bidding closed.
The College District Trustees went for the KOCE-TV Foundation bid as they wanted the PBS tradition to continue and declared the $40 million bid from Daystar as too late. The FCC subsequently transferred the license to the Foundation. Everybody happy?
Not exactly. Let's look at the other bidder. Daystar was founded by Marcus Lamb and his wife Joni (neé Tramell), who is now a personality on the Network. Lamb has apparently been preaching since age 15 (so have I, but not in a religious manner) and the couple opened their first TV station in Montgomery, AL when Lamb was aged 27. Quoting them, the couple was later able to open big time in 1993 in Dallas, TX with KMPX-TV through "miracles & divine favor" -- and the contributions of thousands of believers and the scared, no doubt. The couple now owns about forty TV stations in the US and has distribution over five cable MSOs, and a bunch of satellite transponders that literally cover the inhabited Earth. What is weird to me is that they own two stations each in Seattle, WA, Maui, HI, and Buffalo, NY and three stations in each of Tampa, FL, Modesto, CA, Nashville, TN, and Little Rock, AR.
Does that Empire say non-profit to you? At today's pricing of stations that lot should be worth about $1 billion.
Back to KOCE. Daystar claimed in district court that the sale was illegal as it discriminated against religion. The lower court was very common-sense and threw the case out. Daystar didn't quit there, however, and a California State Court of Appeal told the College District Trustees in June 2005 that they had blatantly discriminated against Daystar, and reversed the sale. "If the district's trustees find the prospect of televangelists eventually acquiring KOCE to be too distasteful, no sale at all," quoth they. The court went on to say that the sale to the KOCE-TV Foundation "can only be described as the rankest sort of favoritism."
Wow. So now we can't sell something to people we prefer to sell to? Favoritism is illegal? If a Foundation like this was buying something there certainly should be tools in place to protect the members in any purchase, with proper bidding, etc. For a judge to determine that fiscally the bid from Daystar was better for the discontinuation of the type of programming that the viewers want is arrant bigotry. Favoritism is not discrimination. Selling your house, for example, to a family that you believe will look after it better is not discriminating against other potential buyers.
Hopefully the College or the Foundation, or both, can find the wherewithal to take this to the Supreme Court where common sense might prevail. The station is feisty about continuing to support Orange County and we wish them good luck.
Meanwhile, if you really want to support the non-profit Daystar Television
Network (operating under the auspices of a 501(c)3 non-profit in Georgia)
here's sixteen ways you can give to keep Jodi's hairdo on the
air.