WASHINGTON D.C.—America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) will hold its 2024 Public Media Summit, Feb. 26-28, at The Salamander Hotel here, the group said.

With the theme of “Partners in Public Service,” the summit will examine the public service mission of APTS stations as well as technological advancements that are changing the television industry.

“The Future of Technology” panel, scheduled for Feb. 27, 8-9:30 a.m. EST, will focus on must carry, Federal Communications Commission policies, spectrum business opportunities, streaming, ATSC 3.0, datacasting and possible partnerships between public stations and wireless careers that leverage 3.0.

Panelists will include: 

• Ajit Pai, former FCC chairman, partner at Searchlight Capital Partners and APTS board member
• Andrew Russell, president and CEO of PBS SoCal, Los Angeles, Calif.
• Franz Joachim, general manager and CEO of New Mexico PBS and APTS board chair 
• John Zeglis, retired chairman and CEO of AT&T Wireless, board member of WNIT, South Bend, Ind., and APTS board member 
• Michelle Shanahan, APTS general counsel who will moderate the panel.

FCC commissioners Brendan Carr and Geoffrey Starks are also scheduled to offer their thoughts on public TV’s role in the future of the media as well as public service.

The summit is only open to APTS members.

The full summit schedule is available on the APTS website.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) gave out five major awards at the Public Media Summit that honored leaders and supporters of public media in such areas as innovation, public service, championing public media and lay leadership.

The awards included:  

• The 2023 Pillar of Public Service Award was given to Jonathan Abbott, president emeritus of GBH in Boston, Massachusetts, for his pioneering work in creating innovative educational programming and content for people in Boston and across America.
• The 2023 Excellence in Innovation Award to Dolores Fernandez Alonso, President and CEO of South Florida PBS in Miami, Florida, for her groundbreaking leadership in the creation and ongoing success of the Health Channel. 
• The 2023 National Advocacy Award was given to Jack Williams, governmental relations manager at Alabama Public Television, for his work in building relationships and support for public broadcasting within the Alabama congressional delegation and State Legislature.
• The 2023 David J. Brugger Lay Leadership Award was given to Diana Enzi, representing WyomingPBS, for being a tireless advocate for public broadcasting, both on the national and State levels. 
• APTS gave its Champion of Public Broadcasting Award to Domenic Ruscio, a long-time advocate who recently retired.

APTS said the Pillar of Public Service Award, which was given to Jonathan Abbott, recognizes the contribution of an extraordinary leader and innovator in one or more of public television’s three essential public service missions: education, public safety, and civic leadership. 

Under Abbott’s leadership, GBH helped create PBS LearningMedia, a rich digital resource platform which helps two million K-12 teachers enhance 40 million students’ education every day with tens of thousands of engaging, interactive learning objects adapted from the best of public television programming and additional resources from the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, NASA, National Science Foundation and more. This service has been widely used throughout the pandemic by students and teachers alike, with a record 20 million users visiting the site during the 2020-2021 school year.

As a trusted leader in educational media for more than 50 years, GBH is the largest producer of PBS content for television and the web. Its programming has ranged from iconic children’s programming such as Molly of Denali, Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, Arthur, Martha Speaks, Curious George, Between the Lions, and Pinkalicious and Peterrific, and Zoom to the lifelong learning series including American Experience, Antiques Roadshow, Frontline, Masterpiece and NOVA.

"Over the course of a 24-year career at GBH, first as general manager and then as president and CEO, Jon Abbott has made so many extraordinary contributions to public broadcasting that it’s difficult to catalog them all, much less pay adequate tribute to each of them,” said Patrick Butler, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations. “He was a founder of the Contributor Development Partnership, which has helped revolutionize fundraising for public television stations. He was a co-creator of the WORLD and CREATE channels that provide rich public affairs and how-to programming content to stations nationwide. With the Library of Congress, he launched the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, digitizing and preserving decades of public media content. And the list of such accomplishments runs on and on.”

The 2023 Excellence in Innovation Award  was given to Dolores Fernandez Alonso, president and CEO of South Florida PBS in Miami, Florida, for her groundbreaking leadership in the creation and ongoing success of the Health Channel.

Created by South Florida PBS in 2018, the Health Channel is the first TV channel of its kind, connecting viewers with medical and well-being specialists in real time and promoting healthier lifestyle options. In partnership with local organizations including Baptist Health South Florida and Miami’s Community News, the service provides the latest health information to enable viewers to better manage their own health. To complement the 24/7 broadcast and live interactions with medical and well-being specialists, the Health Channel offers a robust companion digital platform that provides access to specialized services.

“Under Dolores’s innovative, dedicated and passionate leadership, South Florida PBS and the Health Channel are offering their community – and Americans across the country -- a wealth of trusted information on everything from the coronavirus to mental health and medical breakthroughs to help people live healthier lives,” Butler said. “This is truly pioneering work, and it’s one more excellent example of the power of public television to invent a better future for all of us.”

The Champion of Public Broadcasting Award, which was given to Domenic Ruscio, is given to political leaders and other individuals who safeguard the ability of local public television stations to provide education, public safety and civic leadership services to their communities.

As a budget official of the former Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Ruscio delivered the first federal check for $5 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in 1969. From his service on the Senate Appropriations Committee staff, to his successful advocacy for our federal funding over the past 25 years as a consultant to APTS, Ruscio’s unwavering engagement has significantly strengthened the public media system. This exceptional work culminated over the last four years with consecutive increases in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and a cumulative increase of $188 million across all public media programs, resulting in the highest level of federal funding for public broadcasting in history.

“From the moment Dom Ruscio delivered the first federal check to CPB more than 50 years ago, no one has done more, over a longer period of time, to ensure the essential public investment in our work,” Butler said. “His wise counsel, effective advocacy and personal passion for the mission of public media have been indispensable to our success over the past five decades. It’s my great honor to present him with this most well-deserved 2023 Champion of Public Broadcasting Award.”

The 2023 David J. Brugger Lay Leadership Award was given to Diana Enzi.

Elected to the WyomingPBS Foundation Board of Directors in 2020, Diana Enzi has been a tireless advocate for public broadcasting, both on the national and State levels. In addition to the foundation board, Mrs. Enzi serves on its Outreach and Events Committee and has helped organize screenings of Wyoming PBS programs, generated ideas for such programming, and connected Wyoming PBS with new friends and supporters across the State.

As the wife of the late U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, who was a faithful supporter of public broadcasting and federal funding for local stations for more than two decades, Mrs. Enzi has been, and continues to be, an influential and effective voice highlighting the important role of local public television and the need for continued federal investment in public media. Senator and Mrs. Enzi were partners in life for more than 50 years, from running shoe stores in Gillette to representing Wyoming in the United States Senate.

Mrs. Enzi has also been an active member of the board of the National Job Corps Association, which said upon her retirement in 2021, “Her commitment to education for young people has made a great impact on many students’ lives.”

“Diana Enzi has been a quiet but extraordinarily effective advocate for public broadcasting for decades,” Butler said. "She marshals her amazing network of friends and admirers in Wyoming for the benefit of Wyoming PBS in countless ways, and she was a beloved ambassador for our work on Capitol Hill with Senators and spouses alike for a quarter of a century. We are deeply indebted to her for advancing bipartisan support for public television over so many years, and we are honored to present the 2023 David J. Brugger Lay Leadership Award to Diana Enzi.”

The National Advocacy Award, which was given to Jack Williams of Alabama Public Television, is presented to station leaders who excel in telling the story of their local station’s work in education, public safety and civic leadership and how federal and State funding make that work possible.

“Jack Williams is a tireless advocate for public broadcasting, helping to strengthen our ever-growing bipartisan support both in Congress and throughout the State of Alabama,” Butler said. “Jack has been an extraordinarily effective champion of our cause with the Alabama congressional delegation, investing considerable time and energy in educating these leaders about our public service missions of education, public safety and civic leadership, and about the indispensable nature of the federal investment in our work.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Total government funding for public media rose to record levels last year, passing the $1 billion mark for the first time, America’s Public Television Stations president and CEO Patrick Butler said in his annual address to the Public Media Summit. 

Noting the important role that public media played during the pandemic, where more than 100 million American contracted COVID and a million died, Butler stressed that the future of local public television stations is “a public service enterprise reaching far beyond the confines of the television screen.

Local stations are already “inventing the future,” launching dedicated education and health channels, interactive job training courses geared to local market demands, public safety and border security communications networks, and more, he said. 

Butler also hailed the adoption of the Next Gen broadcast standard as a platform for greater progress and innovation in the future. 

“Twenty markets have made the transition to the new ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV broadcast standard with all of its potential for greater mobility, security, addressability interactivity, spectrum efficiency and signal strength, as well as dramatically better picture and sound quality and more stations are converging every month,” Butler said. “Software on display at this summit will give NextGen stations the ability to connect directly with viewers, increase engagement with them and enable new revenue opportunities. And before us lies the intriguing prospect of using a portion of our spectrum to support a national data distribution that work connecting consumers and institutions of all kinds to the billions of devices on the Internet of Things….[This] pathbreaking platform…deploys the right spectrum for the right purpose at the right time for precisely such applications. Without the need for elaborate station engineering. South Korea has found a way to link the NextGen broadcast standard with 5G technology for such a network and we can too.”

Public media’s work in delivering a host of new services for education, emergency alerts and entertainment during the COVID period of “sorrow and anxiety” also helped them build public support for increased funding during recent years, Butler said. 

“At our last in-person Summit in 2020, I was proud to report that federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) stood at $465 million as a result of a $20 million increase that you and we at APTS secured for the appropriation cycle just passed,” Butler said. “Since then, the CPB funding has increased every year by a total of $70 million. And the CPB appropriation now stands at an all time high of $535 million.”

Meanwhile, state governments have stepped up their support, Butler said. “Thirty-nine states now provide funds for public broadcasting and 20 of those states, providing more than half of our state funding, have both Republican governors and Republican legislatures. Including investment in capital projects and other special initiatives as well as station operations, state funding for public broadcasting reached $363 million last year and all the time record altogether government support for public broadcasting past the $1 billion dollar mark last year and that is a milestone worth celebrating.”

Butler acknowledged, however, that public stations face a difficult fiscal climate going forward. 

“A new Republican majority in the House of Representatives has come to Washington determined to rein in federal spending and reduce the national debt, investing only in programs they deem efficient, effective and essential,” he said. “One influential proposal making the rounds right now would reduce federal spending by $9 trillion over the next 10 years, largely through cuts in domestic programs. And we are on that list. Securing further increases for public broadcasting in such a climate is a daunting proposal."

"But we can say with absolute confidence that no federal appropriation does more with less than we do with one hundredth of one percent of the federal budget," he continued. "….[It] will be our responsibility, our opportunity to show them and every lawmaker how essential our work and public safety, education and civic leadership is to their constituents….We must impress on them that most stations in most markets simply don't have the donor base of corporations, foundations and generous individuals to sustain these services, much less enhance them without federal support. The Government Accountability Office reached precisely that conclusion when Congress asked them to study the question several years ago and the answer hasn't changed. This is why we're asking for an increase of $40 million for CBP in the next appropriation cycle, and level funding for ready-to-learn interconnection and system infrastructure and the next gen warning system. Securing that funding won't be easy. It never is. We're already advised that level of funding is a win for the next two years.”

WASHINGTON—An A team of FCC auction, repack and ATSC 3.0 experts will brief noncommercial broadcasters at their upcoming annual gathering Feb. 27 in Washington at the America's Public Television Stations Public Media Summit.

Noncommercial broadcasters were among the big winners in the incentive auction and joined with commercial broadcasters and the Consumer Technology Association to petition the FCC to approve the voluntary rollout of the next-gen ATSC 3.0 IP-based transmission standard, which the FCC did in November. 

Lined up for a panel on the "aftermath" of the auctions and "beforemath," as it were, of the ATSC 3.0 rollout, will be Media Bureau chief Michelle Carey; Incentive auction task force deputy chief Jean Kiddoo and Deputy Chief Hillary DeNigro, and task force senior advisor Charles Meisch.

Look for the FCC officials to be asked about how the reimbursement process is going and when there might be another tranche of money, which a source says is one of the big issues the commission hears about. APTS has suggested it could use a second tranche ASAP. The FCC has made it clear that beyond that initial $1 billion allocation, it would time future allocations based on demand. Until it sees phase one stations getting close to using up their allocation, it does not have a burning desire to launch another tranche.

The first allocation came back in October.

The officials will probably also talk about consumer education and how stations can make the transition smoother for viewers.

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

This story first appeared on TVT's sister publication B&C.