Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • Page 1-24

24 Chicago Tribune Section 1 Thursday, November 12, 2015 Tony W. Hunter, Publisher Gerould W. Kern, Editor Peter Kendall, Managing Editor Colin McMahon, Associate Editor George Papajohn, Investigations Editor Geoff Brown, Operations Development Editor Margaret Holt, Standards Editor R. Bruce Dold, Editorial Page Editor John P. McCormick, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Marcia Lythcott, Commentary Editor tribune ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITORS FOR NEWS Robin Daughtridge, Photography Mark Jacob, Metro Mike Kellams, Business Cristi Kempf, Editing Presentation Joe Knowles, Sports Founded June 10, 1847 Chicago I EDITORIALS Chicago's public television drama City Colleges could reap millions by selling WYCC if the mayor would go for it.

endowment to fund the best digital journalism program at any community college in the country? Plus millions to fund other City Colleges programs, lessening the burden on Chicago residents who are being hit up for tax increases. "Stations like WYCC, a noncommercial station, are in the position to reap an astonishing amount of money," Robert Heymann head of the Chicago office of Media Services Group, told us. "In 2015, television viewers have so many choices, from Netfiix to iTunes to Hulu to YouTube, that the concept of having a licensed TV station isn't relevant anymore." TV stations have until Dec. 18 to file paperwork to participate. City Colleges officials can enter the auction but drop out at any time in the process if the price drops too low.

There is a history in Chicago of panicked officials selling off seed corn and regretting it Everyone remembers the disastrous parking meter deal. This isn't like that. There is no future revenue stream at stake; there is only a TV station signal that is potentially worth much more in the hands of another industry. They went from buggies and candles to cars and electricity on "Downton City Colleges, get the point? Maybe you never noticed that Chicago has two public television stations: WTTW-Ch 11 and WYCC-Ch 20. That means twice as much "Downton Abbey." Two channels broadcasting one British upper-class melodrama? Sounds a bit posh.

Well, it's daft if it continues because the smaller station, WYCC, is owned by City Colleges of Chicago, which has a chance to sell the channel in a government auction for as much as $474 million. You read that correctly: as much as $474 million for a community college TV station. PBS plot alert! It's like a mysterious rich uncle has come to call, but cash-strapped Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he won't answer the door. "Why would you auction something off for a financial gain when our students are making huge educational gains learning at the station?" Emanuel said last week. Excuse us while our monocle drops in the soup, "Masterpiece Chicago should sell the station because the city is in desperate financial straits, and the marketplace is offering an extraordinary premium for Channel 20's broadcast bandwidth.

There are other ways to teach college kids the media business besides operating a little-watched TV station via the 20th century technology of a broadcast transmitter and rabbit ears. The backdrop for this potential deal is the digital revolution and slow demise of over-the-air television transmissions. Wireless carriers need more bandwidth to keep up with skyrocketing demand from consumers who want speedy access to social media, video and other content on their phones. The best place to acquire that spectrum space is from broadcast television stations because their transmission frequencies are usable by carriers and powerful enough to travel long distances and penetrate walls. These days, most TV viewing is done via cable or satellite, and increasingly on phones.

That means TV stations are sitting on a gold mine: their underutilized broadcast signals. The Federal Communications Commission is planning an auction starting in March to acquire bandwidth from willing TV station owners for sale in a second auction to mobile phone providers and others. Potential spectrum buyers are rumored to include T-Mobile and Google. The FCC has set maximum bids for individual stations to participate in what's known as a reverse auction, a complex transaction that will allow the government to acquire all the frequency space it needs for resale. Of Chicago's channels, one property that stands out is nonprofit WYCC, with a maximum bid of $474.2 million.

Industry experts don't think the selling price will be nearly that high, and it's possible WYCC would fail to sell. No one knows how the auction will play out because it's a unique situation. Some think WYCC could fetch $100 million to $200 million. This for a station, as media blogger and Tribune contributor Robert Feder reported, that has a budget of $5.2 million and an audience that averages 2,200 viewers in a quarter-hour. Here's what's crucial about understanding the potential sale: WYCC, which operates out of studios on the campus of Kennedy-King College in Englewood, would not have to cease operation.

It would only give up its broadcast signal. There are scenarios in which WYCC could remain on the air by piggy-backing on another station's frequency or moving to a lower channel on the dial. Those options would eat into the sale price. The station also could transfer operations to cable and satellite like CNN or ESPN. Or WYCC could go Internet only.

All these options would allow WYCC to continue its educational mission. And imagine what a windfall of $100 million could buy for a city college system with a $696 million budget. How about an $anta Claus is coming to a mall near you to get socks for Christmas than iPads. Their kids have to wait to whisper in Santa's ear, while the kids with reservations that is, the ones whose parents put down a deposit on a portrait package step right up. If you're not buying a package, many malls won't even let you snap a photo with your cellphone.

For some people, this is right up there with the sort of creeping commercialization that gave us Black Friday doorbusters on Thursday afternoon, before the Thanksgiving dinner table has been cleared. Our feeling about that has always been that if you don't like that scene, don't go. But the mall encounters with Santa began the day after Halloween and will last right up until Christmas. If you want to avoid them, your best strategy is probably to, yes, shop online. Hmmm.

There's something truly dispiriting about turning a visit with Santa into a ticketed affair. Santa Claus belongs to the kids, not to the malls and their event planners. To believe in Santa is to believe in a benevolent elf who breaks into houses on Christmas Eve to bring joy and presents to girls and boys who have been good. What kind of Santa lets kids buy their way to the front of the line? He's making a list. He's checking it twice.

He's gonna find out who paid that $10 nonrefundable sitting fee and who didn't. Santa Claus is coming to town. That's right, boys and girls. Santa plays favorites, and it has nothing to do with whether you've been naughty or nice. If your mom and dad are willing to shell out $10, you (and they) can skip that long line at the mall and head straight for Santa's lap.

It's like the Flash Pass at Great America! Forget all that playground talk about waiting your turn for the swing. Only 42 shopping days till Christmas! Yes, it's come to this. Retailers who are desperate to get shoppers off the Internet and into the malls have turned the annual visit with Santa into an extravagant and expensive affair. "They are full-scale Hollywood productions with very high-tech digital walls and cast members in elaborate costumes," a spokeswoman for a firm that plans and staffs the events told a Tribune reporter. Bricks-and-mortar stores have lost ground to e-tailers as consumers learned to love shopping in their pajamas at 3 perhaps with a spiked eggnog alongside the keyboard.

But Skyping with CHRIS SWEDACHICAGO TRIBUNE Santa Claus waits in his resplendent setting for children to arrive at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg last week. Santa hasn't caught on in the same way. To compete for foot traffic, the malls have upped the ante in Santaland. They're hoping the paid express lane will be a big draw, and why wouldn't it? A portrait with Santa is a treasured token of wide-eyed childhood innocence (or occasionally, abject terror). But nothing tries the holiday spirit like standing in a long line of cranky toddlers.

By the time your magical moment arrives, your moppet will likely be overdue for a nap or a diaper change or both. So yeah, who wouldn't pay the 10 bucks? The parents who don't have 10 bucks to spare, that's who. The ones whose kids are more likely SCOTT STANTIS Z0IS 51 WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING It was not until I retired that I became aware of how noisy supposedly tranquil suburban communities are. Consider the following: The almost universal use of commercial lawn services. All the commercial-grade gear (blowers, weed whackers, riding mowers) is without exception much louder than the consumer equivalent.

In Virginia, the racket goes on from early April until the final leaves fall a couple of weeks before Christmas. Does no one ever mow their own lawn anymore, as they did a couple of decades ago? Are people now too richbusylazyself-important to do it themselves? And the services are very inefficient they mow on a rigid schedule, meaning they mow right after a rain (rutting the ground and tearing the grass), or, as during this past AugustSeptember when there were five weeks straight with no rain: the grass had gone dormant and didn't need mowing. They still mowed lawns every week, generating noise that would wake the dead Mike Lofgren, The Atlantic There is no evidence that the University of Missouri denies equal opportunity to its black students; those black students, like every other student on campus, are surrounded by lavish educational resources, available to them for the asking on a color-blind basis. The university's faculty and administrators are surely among the most prejudice-free, well-meaning group of adults in human history. Thousands of Chinese students would undoubtedly do anything for the chance to be "systemically oppressed" by the University of Missouri's stupendous laboratories and research funding.

Colleges have capitulated completely to delusional victimology; unless employers are willing to stand up against the coddled products of the academic hothouse, we may all soon be living in a world of screaming, monomaniacal victims. Heather Mac Donald, City Journal.