The Burlington Free Press from Burlington, Vermont • Page 52

Vermont's only public television affiliate struggles with old equipment, new debts is I Story by JACK McKNIGHT Photos by ELAINE ISAACSON The quiet street in the former Fort Ethan Allen complex in Colchester curves gently between rows of shade trees and neat, two-story brick homes. There's a military uniformity to the houses quaint, solid, durable. But around a corner, two gray metal buildings one long and low, the other tall and barnlike are sandwiched into the landscape: a bit of city-outskirts utilitarianism incongruous in the parklike atmosphere. They are the offices and studios of Vermont Educational Television (Vermont ETV). Behind the buildings, a huge white dish angled toward the southwestern sky plucks national programs two at a time from a WESTAR satellite orbiting some 23,000 miles overhead.

From a tall tower nearby, television signals are beamed to the top of Mount Mansfield and then on to three other transmitters and three translators strategically located on mountains in the state. From there the signal is relayed to home television receivers throughout Vermont and in parts of New York, New Hampshire and the province of Quebec. But the architecture of its buildings isn't Vermont ETV's only incongruity. It is the state's only public television station, which means that in a commercially oriented society its programs such as NOVA, Sesame Street, Hotline, Across the Fence, Masterpiece Theatre aren't punctuated at 10-minute intervals by clever jingles enticing kids to buy the latest sugar-coated breakfast cereal. It also means that the station gets its financial support from the general public, either through federal and state tax dollars or from the viewing audience as contributions.

A combination of funding problems, some particular to Vermont ETV and some the result of government austerity programs, has confronted the station with a crucial test of its ability to continue providing the type of programming its audience has come to expect. The reasons behind Vermont ETV's troubles are several: Equipment at the station is antiquated some of it more costly to repair than to replace but Vermont ETV lacks the money to make the renovations. The station has incurred budget deficits in the last two fiscal years and expects one in 1981. Vermont ETV also has a $125,000 4VermooterSunday, February 15, 1HS1' i ti i'i ii'. ('it i i i i Vermont ETV Manager Hope Green debt it must pay off in five years, money loaned the station so it could buy remote transmitting equipment for three of the station's four transmitters as a long-range cost-saving measure.

The equipment purchase, which eliminated nine operators' positions, was seen as the only alternative to terminating service in the St. Johnsbury and Rutland areas. When the deficits of the last two fiscal years, the projected deficit for the current year and the $125,000 loan are added up, Vermont ETV finds itself staring at a hefty $315,000 figure that eventually must be paid off. As a result, the station has been taking a hard look at spending and ways to do some fiscal belt-tightening without compromising either locally produced programming or viewer service. "I expect a couple of years of very austere operation," admits Hope Green, who in July was hired as the station's general manager.

"My first chief goal is to get (the station) out of the hole financially," But it was not mismanagement or overspending that got Vermont ETV into financialdifficulty in the first place, Ms. Green points out. "I don't think there has been big waste," she says, adding that Vermont ETV has not had "the big spender problem" that has caused difficulties for some public television stations. Rather, the situation developed through a combination of largely unforeseen circumstances. According to Ann Curran, director of public information, those circumstances included escalating costs coupled with a relatively fixed amount of support from state and federal governments and greater-than-expected deterioration of equipment.

When the station was begun in 1967 as a subsidiary of the University of Vermont, Mrs. Curran notes, a $400,000 grant from the state Legislature covered 90 percent of the station's annual operating costs. At that time the station was truly educational, she says, with most programming oriented toward use in the classroom. But soon, with the evolution of more general programming and increasing expenses, "It got to the point where state dollars wouldn't even put the station on the air." In 1980, the station's operating costs reached $1.7 million, and the state's share of the support totaled only 40 percent of the income. The remainder was derived from the federal government (23 percent) and fund raising (37 percent).

In 1979, Mrs. Curran says, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the non-profit organization that disburses federal funds to public television stations, required local stations to pay 50 percent of the "interconnect" costs for satellite and microwave operation. As a result, Vermont ETV this year will have to spend $42,000 in "funds that we simply weren't prepared to absorb." Another unanticipated expense has been a higher-than-expected incidence of equipment failure. Mrs. Curran explains that each of the four UHF (ultra-high-frequency) transmitters contains a klystron tube, which is "about the size of a steamer trunk" and costs about $25,000.

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