MOSCOW — The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has given KUID public television station at the University of Idaho permission to use federal grant money to keep the station on the air until the Idaho Legislature decides its fate.
Station Manager Art Hook said Wednesday that the CPB has sent a letter to the station authorizing budget shifts that will allow the station to use between $44,000 and $54,000 of federal money for personnel and some other operating costs.
The CPB money is normally restricted to programming and equipment uses, and without special permission, cannot be used for payroll and other expenses.
Without the money, KUID could have gone off the air in January. The station might have gone dark, but the screens in the viewers homes probably would not have, Hook said. The state probably would have had enough money to beam the programs from Boise’s KAID to KUID, which would use a translator to send it into the KUID viewing area. That would have required three employees at the KUID station, Hook said.
Even if the CPB money could not have been used, KUID might have stayed on the air, Hook said. Station officials were looking into other funding sources, such as a bank loan to the Friends of KUID.
Such emergency funding may still be necessary, he said.
Gov. John Evans has asked the legislature for a special $290,000 appropriation to keep KUID and KISU at Pocatello on the air for the remainder of the budget year, which ends June 30. Evans has also asked for a budget for all public television of $906,000 for the year that begins next July.
The Joint Finance Appropriation Committee of the legislature will take up that special appropriation request, along with numerous others, at the beginning of the session.
The legislature convenes Jan. 11 at Boise.
Hook said he is not certain how soon the legislature will act on any request for a supplemental appropriation. If it is approved, the money would enable KUID to stay on the air until July, and would reinstate one and a half full-time positions at the station. One position probably would be a cinematographer and the half-time position would be a faculty position, Hook said.
The CPB letter to KUID authorizes the budget shift only for two months. If the legislature does not grant the supplemental appropriation, that does not mean KUID will have to stop using the federal money, Hook said. The CPB would re-evaluate the situation at that time. “There’s no question they won’t let us use these funds forever.”
The CPB was receptive to the fund shift because the Joint Finance Appropriation Committee said it would consider the supplemental appropriation, and because of the strong advocacy of the State Board of Education, public television support groups and the new Commission for Public Television, Hook said.
This story was published in the Dec. 31, 1981, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.
