Name: Susan Farmer
Position: President and chief executive officer of WSBE Channel 36 for 12 and a half years.
Backround: Secretary of State for two terms. A Republican, she ran against incumbent Lt. Gov. Richard Licht, a Democrat, in 1986 and lost. (“The best thing that ever happened to me was losing that race”) Before that she was a court appointed advocate for abused children. Involved in various community activities.
Education: Attended Garland Junior College in Boston, Brown University extension division, strategic management institute at Berkeley in California, executive management institute University of Southern California.
Family: Married to Malcolm Farmer, a lawyer who is a former Providence City Councilman, they have two daughters.
Residence: East Side of Providence.
PBN: In twelve and a half years, how has Channel 36 changed?
FARMER: It’s changed a lot. For one thing the physical plant has changed. We were located downtown on the fifth floor of what was basically a four story building on top of the unemployment office. It was sort of this Quonset Hut with totally obsolete equipment. Things that were no longer used at all, like two inch tape machines. There were a lot of problems. There was not much money raised in the community. For three years running it had been somewhere between $275,000 and $300,000 a year. The staff was double the size of what it is today. There were 46 positions when I took this job. But because of the losses we have sustained in state funding, we now have 22. The station had an audience that was fairly small; most of the programs were known in the rating books as BMS, below measurable standards. Our programming has changed. Our physical plant has changed (from the one on West Exchange Street to its current location on Park Lane). The station was basically about to go under back then.
Seifert Systems Invests in Energy Efficiency to Strengthen Operations
For manufacturers, energy is more than just another operating expense. It plays a critical role…
Learn More
When did you move to this facility?
We moved here in 1991.
What was the funding then versus now?
In 1990, for instance, we got almost $2 million a year in operational funding. Now we get about half that.
Where does the rest of the money come from?
Fundraising is close to $2 million a year. The rest of it is federal money. State funding has gone from, when I first started here, from 70.2 percent of our operating budget to about 27 percent now.
Is that a good thing?
No. It’s not a good thing. The thing that makes it difficult is that it means that we can’t do as much as we should be doing.
What was your budget in 1990?
In 1990 it would have been, about $3 million.
And today?
It’s about $4 million.
You’ve gone up about 25 percent in budget, with all of that plus from sources other than the state?
Right. Our private fundraising has gone from 13 + percent of our operating budget to about 58 percent.
How does that compare to other states?
Where the state holds the license for public television, we’re at just rock bottom in terms of financial support, which is really too bad. States like Nebraska, which spend about $7.70 per citizens per year for their public television. Here it’s about, this last fiscal year, it was about 82 cents for each person in the state for a whole year.
Their signal (Channel 2 in Boston) covers this area, so there are people who say we don’t need public television in this area because that signal reaches this area. But they don’t do what we do. They air programming during the course of the day that’s basically PBS programming. Yes, it’s children’s programming and there are some how to’s and that sort of thing, but we’re providing direct educational services to the people of the state of Rhode Island. We’re educating 96,000 school children in classrooms in 14 different curriculum areas. We rank number one for the last eight years or so, number one in the country for per capita enrollment in college tele-courses for credit. We have several thousand Rhode Islanders a year who are working toward their college degrees by taking tele-courses on Channel 36.
They can just do this by tuning in?
They tune in. And at the end of the semester they will take an exam at CCRI. We do GED on TV that allows hundreds of Rhode Islanders who are former dropouts to get their general equivalency diplomas. Then many of those people go on and take college tele-courses and work toward their degrees that way.
While it may be hard to characterize it this way, it sounds like Channel 2 in Boston is geared toward the broader more entertainment type of programming, versus self-help kind of programming here.
Right. And the direct education furthermore we provide toll free dial up access to the Internet for classrooms and teachers. We’re doing more than television. The way I look at it is we educate more people through Channel 36 than any educational institution in the state of Rhode Island, and we do it for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the entire education budget of the state.
Where do those shows actually emanate from?
From a variety of places. We purchase our in-school programming through the national education telecommunications association. Our college tele-courses, in many cases, come from the Annenberg Institute.
Is anything done locally?
We don’t have the capacity to do that. We don’t have the money to do that. Frankly, that makes me sad. We don’t have the money to do as much local programming of any kind as I think we ought to be doing.
The only local programming you do now is the Lively Experiment. What else is being done locally?
We have the 13th State, which is a public affairs show which is done on topics of general community interest. We do Best Sellers, which is about books. We are doing and have done town meeting types of programs. We’re doing one in the fall on Crime in the Community. And we’re rolling out –we’re not announcing it quite yet– but there will be a new local weekly program we’re rolling out in the fall.
Dealing with what subject area?
Basically a medical call-in show. We’re looking at ways of doing more community service kind of program. We’ve done, Rhode Island, just a wonderful scenic Rhode Island set to music. We’re in the process of discussing some other local programs we’ll do if we can get the underwriting for it.
If you had your dream budget, what would you do here?
If I had my dream budget we’d be doing a lot more locally than we’re doing now. I’d be doing things on what’s going on in every city and town of this state. I would do more in programming for diversities. Our demographics are changing rapidly. There are underserved audiences that need to be served. There’s a growing Hispanic community and that’s going to continue to get larger. I’d do more on citizenship issues. But all of these things – it’s so much less expensive to purchase programming than to do it ourselves. We simply just don’t have the ability, we don’t have really the equipment to go out and do a lot of what I’d like to be doing. I’d like to do stuff on the arts. There’s an immense amount of talent in Rhode Island, artistically, musically. To be able to showcase the Rhode Island talent. There are dozens of things I’d love to do.
The legislature I presume cut the budget because
No. The Legislature has been quite good to us.
Where did the budget get cut?
Historically, it’s been the governors’ budgets that have proposed the cuts. The Legislature has gone along with some and restored some. It’s not to single out any governor for criticism. It doesn’t seem to matter what flavor they are, but I think there’s probably less understanding from each of the governors’ points of view, less understanding of the value of what we do.
When was it first cut, under what administration?
The first cut came under the DiPrete administration. Then we had some drastic cuts under the Sundlun administration. In fact when we moved into this building in March of 1991, we’d been in this building for two weeks when I had a call from the state budget office, telling me that we were going to be zero funded for the coming year, and actually gave me a date to close down the station. The budget had not yet gone to the printer and so I tried to get an appointment with the governor and I couldn’t. I tried to get the governor on the telephone and I couldn’t. And so I ended up finding out where he was going to be and going and “throwing myself in front of his car” and got back 70 percent of our funding. It represented a 30 percent cut, but nonetheless it was enough to keep the doors open and keep the station going.
Why is Channel 36 important to Rhode Islanders?
I think it is enormously important to Rhode Islanders because there’s not another opportunity for Rhode Islanders to have access to the educational facilities that we provide. For instance with the college tele-courses, people who are supporting families or mothers at home without child care, or people who for one reason or another can’t get to the campus can continue their education and work toward their degrees where they would not be able to otherwise.
There’s a wonderful story — I love this– I was on the air during a pledge drive and there was a call in from somebody who wanted to wait until I was off the air to give me her pledge and I got on the telephone and it was a 38-year-old female school bus driver. And she said, ‘I’ve never been able to pledge before, but now I can and I wanted you to have my pledge and I wanted you to know why I was pledging.’ She said, ‘I’m 38-years-old, I’m a school bus driver and I was illiterate, and I learned to read by watching literacy programs on Channel 36 and I got my GED on Channel 36 and I’m now taking college tele-courses.’ She said ‘you can’t imagine what this means to me to be able to go into the supermarket and know what I’m buying.’ She told me about ruining her family’s clothes because she bought what she thought was laundry detergent and it was bleach. Just the simple things being able to drive down the street and read the street signs and know where she’s going.
The other thing is talking to people who have gotten their GEDs or learned to read through Channel 36. Half of those people we discovered would not have gone anywhere else to get this kind of help for privacy reasons.
The first year we did it was my first year here. I said this was great. We had 70 something in the first GED class and I said let’s do a televised graduation. These people should have a graduation. We brought in Famous Amos, who was the national spokesperson for literacy and the GED and TV program, and we had the governor there to hand out diplomas. Famous Amos gave the graduation speech on the south lawn of the State House and we had a live televised graduation. Well only half of those people came. The other people didn’t come because they never wanted anyone to know they had never gotten their high school diplomas or that they couldn’t read.
Have you attempted to go to the governor and asked for more money?
Yes. I have, today as a matter of fact, (I had) a meeting with the governor. It was actually the first time that I’ve been there and able to meet with him face to face in his office and it was with the governor and his chief of staff. I think they are, and I hope, they are beginning to become more aware of and supportive of the efforts here. They’re interested in bringing in a consultant to do a study basically to see where Channel 36 should be going. Do we need it? Should we consolidate it with Capital TV and issues like that.
What is the time frame for the consultant and the potential outcome?
It’s hard to say, very hard to say. I think that there probably have been people saying to the governor that we don’t need Channel 36, because Channel 2’s signal gets here. What we need to do is have the governor’s office understand that we really have a very different role, a very different mission and accomplish very different things than Channel 2 and that Rhode Island would be at a very serious disadvantage without Channel 36.
Now, if I go home and flip on my cable TV I can see everything from a grade Z movie to the Discovery Channel to some local programming. Where are the differences? Does it make the need or the perception of the need for public television less?
Maybe it’s the perception of the need. There is look-alike programming available on cable now. First of all one of the really important things about public television is the universal access it provides. It’s true that there’s look-alike programming on cable. Not everybody can afford cable. Not everybody can have cable. So this makes it accessible for free. The other thing is it’s commercial free. It’s the one truly safe haven for children. You know when you put your children down in front of the children’s program on Channel 36 or other public television that they’re going to learn something of value watching it. They’re not going to see violence. They’re not going to be sold sugar covered cereal.
And, of course now we have the controversy of Channel 2 and other public television stations sharing donor lists?
Unfortunately. I think there are probably 40 stations that in one way or another shared the names of their donors with political parties. I don’t share – Channel 36 does not share the names of their donors with anybody. Now, in the non-profit world trading names back and forth, or leasing names of donors is a very common practice. We will buy names for donor acquisition. To me it is a matter of trust between us and our viewers, us and our donors. We don’t give anybody the names of our donors. To me there’s no excuse for what happened in Boston.
If you had to comment on what the future is here, with the state’s reluctance to provide additional funds, with the difficulties caused by the sale of this list by WGBH and others and the fall out, what is the future of Channel 36? Is it here to stay?
I think it is. We’ve made great strides with the Legislature and I hope we’re beginning to make strides with the governor’s office as well. With the coming digital broadcasting there are unbelievable opportunities for public television in the state of Rhode Island, to build partnerships with other institutions, museums, libraries, educational institutions. We’ll have four or five digital channels that we could simulcast on standard television. We could have local C-span; we could have one that is strictly educational services, a kids channel, with quality children’s programming, and do a regular channel. It’s mind boggling and exciting. So if you have an opportunity to have something like that, who would ever want that to go away.
