Will Elmo find a new home?

The 19-inch black and white TV was rolled into our classroom each day to watch 9^th grade physical science on WUNC-TV in Chapel Hill. We were introduced to basic concepts of physics and chemistry, the states of matter, principles of energy, electricity and magnetism, and Newton’s laws, with actual demonstrations.

The groundbreaking proposal was to determine whether a master teacher could teach students throughout the state. I have two memories of this experiment. First, while the teacher may have been a master, she was also pretty dull. The second was that watching from Greenville the picture was often snowier than a North Carolina winter; some days we could barely make out the teacher’s face.

Educational television, as it was then known, was the brainchild of three people. The most commonly associated proponent was Bill Friday, then the assistant to the president of The University of North Carolina. Billy Carmichael, a former big-time promotion and advertising executive as well as Vice President and Finance officer of UNC, along Kay Kyser, nationally renowned big band leader were also actively involved in dreaming how WUNC-TV could educate and inform the state.

I first became involved in public TV in 1988, when Friday and Capitol Broadcasting’s CEO Jim Goodmon approached me about heading up a new nonprofit, the North Carolina Public Television Foundation. The General Assembly of North Carolina had given public TV money to build a new state-of-the-art broadcast and production center in Research Triangle Park, however lawmakers failed to appropriate money for new equipment for the building.

UNC’s cameras were out-of-date second-generation color cameras. I remember well appearing on the annual fundraiser, Festival. In order to get enough light for those antiquated cameras the studio lighting was all but blinding. The rest of their production equipment was equally outdated. We raised more than $5 million to bring equipment more up to date, but more was needed.

I love public television. I was proud that the last two years of my television show, NC SPIN, were produced at UNC-TV. But the statewide network has never lived into the dream Friday and many others had for it.

Funding was always a problem. Even though the legislature made an annual appropriation of funds, they were never sufficient to produce a significant volume of quality local programming.

And today the television medium has changed dramatically, with over-the-air television losing market share to cable, satellite, the Internet and steaming services. When longtime WRAL anchor David Crabtree became CEO of PBS NC many had hopes he could make the network more relevant and have more local content. So far, the struggle continues.

I recently read news stories suggesting that PBS NC was thinking about leaving their current RTP home and moving the production and administration facilities and staff to downtown Raleigh.

Why, I asked? How will such a move result in more local programming, reduced expenses or more viewer input? What was the impetus behind this suggestion?

Sadly, I wasn’t able to get satisfactory answers to my questions. Current employees told me that the issue was far from settled and until they knew more they couldn’t speak to the matter. I was told that the building they moved into in 1990 was in a sad condition. It didn’t work well in today’s media environment. Someone suggested that public TV needed to be more visible and people had a hard time locating it in RTP. I was told that since the UNC administration was moving to downtown Raleigh, they had wanted PBS NC to be closer to them.

But one source may have given the real reason why Elmo might be moving to a new home. The current RTP location has somewhere around 60 acres of land…valuable land. This site could be ideal for new UNC research or administrative facilities. If not, the property could yield large financial gains if sold to another buyer.

But, as one who has been involved in public broadcasting for more than 30 years, I am the proverbial “doubting Thomas.”

Let’s begin with the recognition that renting office space in downtown Raleigh will be costly, even with the abundance of vacant office buildings. In addition to the occupancy costs, PBS NC employees would have to rent monthly parking spots, as would potential visitors.  Satellite dishes and equipment would need to be relocated to the new space, as would towers to deliver microwave signals to the network of 12 stations spread across the state. It hard to believe that operating costs would be significantly lower than at RTP.

But the major question to be answered is what PBS NC can do to become more relevant in producing more significant local programs that would attract more viewers, more underwriters and donors? Before any other discussions of a move are resolved these questions deserve answering first.

Tom Campbell is a Hall of Fame North Carolina broadcaster and columnist who has covered North Carolina public policy issues since 1965.  Contact him at tomcamp@carolinabroadcasting.com