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FROM THE EVANS SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

The

Electronic

Hallway

®

Box 353060 · University of Wash

ington · Seattle WA

98195- 3060

www.hallway.org

This

case was prepared in 1987 for the National Association of Educational Broadcasters by Dan H. Fenn, Jr., retired

faculty of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and faculty for the Cascade Center for

Public Service

Executive Programs. This case study is intended as a basis for class discussion and is not intended to

suggest correct or incorrect handling of the situation depicted.

The Electronic Hallway is administered by the University of Washington's

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Copyright 1996 The Electronic Hallway

A CHANGE OF MANAGEMENT

After the announcement of his successor as Executive Director of New Jersey Public Television

(NJPTV) on March 20, 1979, Dr. Lawrence T. Frymire busied himself cleaning up the loose

ends of the position which he had held since

the system had become operational some nine

years before. Looking ahead to April 30, his last day in office, he still wondered what had

happened --

why the Commissioners of the Public Broadcasting Authority had suddenly

requested his resignation some four mon

ths before.

The newspapers thought they had the answer: Governor Brendan T. Byrne was seeking to

establish political control over the state's public broadcasting system. As evidence, they noted

that the leading contenders fo

r the job were

Herbert Wolfe,

Byrne's first information director,

and former Democratic Assemblyman Gordon MacInnes, both politically involved with the

Governor. Frymire thought the pap

ers might be right -- but he was not completely sure.

NJPTV had come into existence in 1969

as the result of a citizens' study made in 1967-68 at

the instigation of then Governor Richard J. Hughes. Governor Hughes had requested a

distinguished group of 18 men and women including the Provost of Princeton, the Poetry Editor

of the Saturday Review, five members of his cabinet and TV personalities like Dallas Townsend

and Dionne Warwick to produce a set "of policies, plans and recommendations for the

development of public radio and television for the state." To head the Commission he selected

Dr. Edward J.

Meade, Jr., then Program Officer in charge of Public Education for the Ford

Foundation.

The Commission issued its report in May, 1968 and the Governor quickly followed through

with its recommendations, filing the nec

essary legislation

to establish a

Public Broadcasting

Authority. Late that year, the Act was passed and signed, and the Governor made the first

appointments of ten public members which were duly confirmed by the Senate. In addition, five

cabinet members (Commissioner of Education, State Treasurer, Chancellor of Higher

A Change Of Management

2

Education, Attorney General and Commissioner of Community Affairs) served ex officio. The

first Chairman was Dr. Meade; the Vice-Chairman was George Connett, Vice President for

personnel administration of the Prudential Insura

nce Company. (Other members, and those

appointed by subsequent Governors, are listed in Attachment 1.)

The Commission plan recommended a capital budget of $16 million, half to be raised in a bond

issue and the other half to come from federal funds, and an annual operating budget of about $6

million. However, the plan was reduced to $7.5 million in capital, financed totally by a bond

issue, and the operating budget to barely $6 million. By the fall of ‘69, a new Governor,

William J. Cahill took office.

While somewhat interested, Cahill was not as enthusiastic about

the project as had been his predecessor. Wanting to see the station for himself, the new

Governor made a visit to the rebuilt bowling alley in a rural area outside Trenton which served

as headquarters for the fledgling operation. To make sure he saw something more than just

empty space, Chairman Meade persuaded RCA to lend some equipment to provide the flavor

of an actual operating station.

The Governor then decided to proceed with the idea,

but more slowly than had been originally

planned because of the financially and politically controversial nature of the undertaking. As

with any major new program in New Jersey, the legislature was especially wary of this one,

uncertain as they were that it could be run

in a non-political, non-partisan fashion.

About this time, Dr. Meade and the Authority began conducting a search for a person to head

up the staff and get the station on the air. After an extensive search, the position was offered to

Dr.

Larry Frymire, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois, who had done a

study for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, worked for the FCC, and worked on the

New Jersey legislation setting up the Authority.

In selecting Frymire, Meade was impressed by his high degree of technical competence and his

intimate knowledge of the administrative steps necessary to put a station on the air. "I didn't

know a tube from a transmitter," Meade said later. In addition, given the potentially

controversial

nature of the effort, the Authority wanted a person of extraordinary integrity and

prudence, someone who did not seek or attract personal visibility but who would rather

concentrate his energies in a steady and

well-

organized way on the launching

and operation of

the station.

Initially Frymire turned Meade down, but by early spring of 1970, with capital funds of $7.5

million and an operating budget of $2.2 million assured, he decided to leave Illinois and take on

the responsibility on June 15, 1970.

By April of 1971, he had Channel 52 in Trenton (the State

capitol) on the air; Channel 23 in Camden followed in October of 1973 and Channels 58 (New

Brunswick) and 50 (Montclair) started operation in June of 1974.

In those first few months, following

the recommendations of the study, the Commissioners made

a number of key policy decisions. First of all, they decided to focus programming on the State

A Change Of Management

3

of New Jersey, rather than on regional, national or international events and interests. They

recognized full well that northern New Jersey was considered by many to be the flagship of

educational broadcasting. Similarly, the southern part of the state had access to the Philadelphia

commercial stations and to Channel 12. Thus they

were faced from the sta

rt with staunch

competition. To make matters worse, they were UHF in a state where few sets were equipped

to pick up that signal; they were brand new; they had to meet the interests of an area with

marked sectional differences, especially between north and south Jersey; and they had no real

constituency, or enthusiastic base of support in the state. Given this situation, the decision to

aim programs at the state itself rather than the region seemed a necessary one.

Secondly, in the face of potential pol

itical difficulties, the Commissioners prohibited staff from

lobbying the legislature in Trenton. Clearly, they could and should respond to initiatives from

elected officials, but the Commission reserved for itself the contacts with the New Jersey

elected

political leadership. (In May, 1977, this prohibition was lifted for Frymire as the

Authority matured and the lack of such contacts began hindering them in the annual competition

for budget support among the various state agencies.)

Third, they decided that they should not

exercise any direct personnel authority themselves.

While they required Larry Frymire to submit a staffing pattern as well as an annual budget for

their review, the selection of people to fill the

various authorized positions was left

solely to his

discretion. Though all staff members came from the state's civil service system, only the clerical

personnel were to come off registers and have tenure. When politicians and other public figures

would suggest people to be appo

inted to the

station, Commissioners would simply accept a

resume and pass it along to Frymire and his staff for decision.

Finally, they determined that they would not involve themselves in specific program decisions,

although program policy -- balance of different kinds of

shows, overall quality, New Jersey

emphasis, etc. --

would concern them. At the same time, they encouraged Frymire to seek

outside funding sources in order to expand their offerings. As part of his early effort, Frymire

worked with a group of people who were

supportive of public broadcasting. Early in 1971, the

Friends of New Jersey Public Broadcasting was formed and incorporated with its own Board

and set of activities in support of NJPTV.

The first years were very difficult indeed. Budgets continued to be small (annual promotion

allocation, for example, was typically $25,000) and added production equipment was hard to

come by. Nevertheless, as the Authority’s 1977 annual report showed, the progress was

steady. Though explicitly not a national

production center, NJPTV believed it was the most

active local-

production educational station in the nation with nearly 30% of its prime-

time hours

filled with its own material. During the first year the station was awarded the Alfred I. DuPont

Columbia Award,

the first in a long run of national recognition that was to come their way.

In 1974, according to an Eagleton Institute survey, NJPTV was attracting 940,000 viewers. By

1977, the number had grown to over 1.5 million New Jersey viewers, plus over 50

0,000

A Change Of Management

4

students being served by the NJPTV educational services division. In addition, over 2,000

students enrolled in eleven New Jersey colleges in televised credit courses, as well as business

and industry, were served by three courses

required for middle

management training purposes.

News and sports continued to do particularly well. All in all, most observers and the

Commission felt NJPTV was doing solid and respectable programming, highlighted by some

especially appealing shows. Annually

established

objectives (1) for the system were regularly

met, with the exception of the implementation of the Commission's desire for a more effective

development program and of the establishment of a new headquarters. But, as Frymire pointed

out, state-supported sys

tems generally have little success raising money from private sources

because they are perceived as being well-supported with taxpayer dollars.

From all appearances, there was no reason for Frymire to feel anything but pleased with the

work he had done and

there was no indication that the Commissioners were anything but

satisfied with the enterprise over which they presided. With few exceptions through the years,

the Commissioners did not appear to him to be participating in any NJPTV activities other than

the Board and Committee meetings, although there were, in fact, a number of informal meetings

and telephone conversations between many of them from time to time. It was left to the

Chairman, Vice Chairman and Frymire to carry on the

business of the Auth

ority. Their public

meetings, held for two or three hours every two months, addressed constraints, reports on the

various divisions of NJPTV, and plans to expand service through both technical additions and

new locations for crews and cameras.

So everyth

ing stood until the election, in 1974, of a new Governor, Brendan T. Byrne. It was

not long before both Meade and Frymire became aware that the new Governor, or at least

some people close to him, looked with considerable disfavor on the nature and direction of

NJPTV:

•

Byrne called Meade shortly after his election on another topic, and did some

probing about Frymire. "How good is that fellow Frymire?" the Governor

asked. “Very good," was Meade's response, "despite fiscal constraints and

freezes on

pers

onnel.”

•

Two close political friends of the new Governor, former CBS-TV

New York

Commentator, Jerome Wilson, who was to become producer-host of WNET's

new weekly program,“Dateline New Jersey," and Richard Leone of Princeton’s

Woodrow Wilson School, and

subsequently State Treasurer (thus a member of

the NJPTV Commission), met with Meade to discuss the situation. Both men

were very critical especially of the quality of the public affairs programming.

Given inadequate budgets and continuing struggles by s

taff to keep a

respectable operation going, Meade was not especially receptive to their

complaints.

A Change Of Management

5

•

Leone, who was interested in the field, and had done a study of cable TV,

showed no confidence in the Eagleton Institute audience studies, stating that he

simply did not believe that NJPTV had the audiences it claimed. He felt it was

not adequately

related to its particular market.

•

At the first formal meeting between the Commissioners, Frymire and Governor

Byrne, the Governor was presented with a tennis bag with the legend: “I Love

New Jersey Public Television.” “Huh,” snorted

the Governor, “I'm

not sure

I

love it!”

In spite of the tone of this encounter, no overtly threatening actions ensued, although the

Governor did begin to appoint a different type of person to the Authority than had his

predecessors (see Attachment 1). Frymire didn’t sense anyt

hing more direct than vague hints

that the new leadership was dissatisfied with his stewardship. The Commissioners, at least the

veteran ones, appeared to Frymire to be as supportive as ever. What he was not aware of,

however, was the rumblings of dissatisfaction being expressed in conversations among the

Commissioners. Since no formal meetings were set up to discuss the complaints with him or to

lodge any formal complaints, Frymire assumed all was well.

Furthermore, Frymire felt some satisfaction and r

elief that the Governor seemed to be very

pleased by the results of his first “call-

in” report to the people over NJPTV airwaves. The

volume of calls was so huge that the telephone company was crippled. Each time the Governor

returned every three or four months to repeat the format, the results were the same, proving to

the Governor, as he said to Frymire, that NJPTV

did indeed have a sizable state-wide

audience.

Then two events occurred which seemed to Frymire to signal that the incipient dissatisfaction

might erupt into specific negative actions. The first came as part of the budget cycle in 1975;

the second was the sudden enthusiasm on the part of the Administration and Commissioners for

a combined news show with WNET

which would replace NJPTV's

own p

rogram.

For years, New Jersey had been able to avoid a state income tax, but Governor Byrne felt, in

view of the State’s perilous financial picture, that the time had come. When it was not

forthcoming, he was faced with a $285 million deficit

in the state

budget and, pointing out New

Jersey’s constitutional balanced budget requirement, he said he would have to cut expenses.

Following precedent established by many political leaders before him, he slashed the most

visible and popular accounts: the extension service, libraries, mental institutions and so on.

Public television's request was cut from $3.8 million to $1 million, a figure clearly below the

minimum needed to maintain operation. Although the Commissioners ultimately persuaded the

Governor and the

legislature to restore their allocation to $3 million, the Authority went through

a painful and debilitating exercise responding to both the threatened cut and to the Governor's

instructions to come up with an alternative

method of providi

ng services to

the people of the

state.

A Change Of Management

6

To many observers, including Frymire, the Governor’s action and attitude appeared to be

something more than standard political budgetmanship. They wondered if it was not a

deliberate threat on the Governor's part, a warning that unless they became more responsive to

his concepts, he would move against them. Some saw his behavior as the first serious attempt

to shake up public broadcasting in New Jersey and force it to rethink its mission. At a

minimum, it seemed to be a vote of no confidence in the Authority’s staff leadership.

The second incident involved the station's news program, far and away the most popular show it

had on the air. Called "New Jersey News Report,” it offered a half-hour week-

night review of

up to 35 "hard"

news stories about New Jersey happenings and personalities, including weather

stations (commercial and educational) which showed virtually no interest in their New Jersey

constituency. There was no attempt at analysis, little feature material, and its budget did not

permit it to become as slick as regular commercial shows. Even so, it was extremely popular in

southern New Jersey, an established, mostly UHF area (unlike its northern counterpart). The

show was clearly the star performer for NJPTV, and represented the best audience builder they

had.

Much to the surprise of Frymire and the staff, in the fall of 1976, Channel 13 suddenly offered

to provide $1 million for a jointly produced nightly

half-

hour show which would be carried on

both WNET and NJPTV. NJ

PTV would contribute $1.5 million. The show would be

controlled by an independent editorial board to be selected by both stations. When it became

very clear that the Governor and his appointees on the Authority favored the idea, some staff

members suspected that

the initiative for the whole idea had, in fact, come from Trenton.

Certainly it was true that Governor Byrne had asked the General Manager of WNET "When

are you guys finally going to do something about New Jersey coverage?"

Dr. Meade and the

staff both took a stand in opposition to the initial proposal, but as it was

refined, the Chairman became increasingly supportive, favoring at least a detailed exploration,

and Frymire became increasingly opposed. In a memorandum to the Commissioners in late

December, 1976 -- nearly two months a

fter the first discussions

of the plan -- Frymire wrote:

We have not, due to time factors, given joint study to any other proposals or to

any budget less than the $2.5 million proposed by Channel 13. There are other

alternatives which would, in my opinion, bring significantly improved coverage

of New Jersey through joint use of the $1 million offered by Channel 13 in the

news proposal. Staff will ask you to consider some of them today.

But first, unless Channel 13

accepts the positions below, I recommend that the

Authority reject the Channel 13 joint news proposal.

The joint news proposal should be rejected on the basis of the requirement for

Channel 13 to provide $1 million contingent upon NJPTV providing $1.5