WCQS Renewal Challenged

Ashville's Citizen-Times reports that WCQS license renewal is being challenged by The Ad-Hoc Committee for Responsible Public Radio. The committee says WCQS has failed to establish a community advisory board and failed to survey its listeners (assessment of community issues?). 

Programming changes may be the base cause for the petition to deny the  renewal. WCQS recently focused resources to enhance local news coverage. In the process they took some locally produced programs off the air. The Ad-Hoc Committee for Responsible Public Radio is led by Fred Flaxman a public radio producer and retried executive. Flaxman also complained in the petition that the station doesn’t air programs created by local independent producers, including himself. He produces a classical music program called “Compact Discoveries.”  Station Manager Jody Evans says an episode of Compact Discoveries was carried by WCQS a few years ago as a special. Flaxman lists the station as carrying Compact Discoveries on his website.

Evans says all of the issues in the challenge have been addressed in the station's response.

Kan. gov. saves money for public broadcasting - KHGI-TV/KWNB-TV/KHGI-CA-Grand Island, Kearney, Hastings, Lincoln

Kan. gov. saves money for public broadcasting - KHGI-TV/KWNB-TV/KHGI-CA-Grand Island, Kearney, Hastings, Lincoln

Public Broadcasting in Kansas gets a reprieve. With just weeks left to the end of the fiscal year, the cuts would have been felt deeply by public broadcasters in Kansas. The cuts would have been deepest in rural areas. Local programming, the programming with the potential for the deepest impact on the local community, was on the line.

Grants Budget May Get Slashed in Kansas

According to an article in the Wichita Eagle, funding for public broadcasting may get cut by about $900,000 in Kansas. The state Legislature proposed the cuts this past weekend. The amount is more than half the grant money originally set aside for public broadcasting. For station in the more populous eastern Kansas, the cuts represent about a 4% drop in funding. For stations in the rural western part of state, the cuts will be more deeply felt and could all but eliminate local programming.

Those stations traditionally receive more funding because they cover more territory and have fewer             viewers and listeners. Smoky Hill covers 71 counties in Kansas; High Plains, half the state.
"It amounts to 15 percent of our operating budget," said Lynn Meredith, general manager and CEO of Smoky Hills Public Television. "It is going to affect local programming," Meredith said. "We are already running with a fairly slim staff."


 In all cases, stations have about six weeks to figure out how to offset the shortfall before they take effect on July 1.

Budget slashes funds for public broadcasting - Becky Tanner