Friday, Aug. 13, 1999 | 11:19 a.m.
Minority programming took a back seat to distance education and keeping valley children in school as the Clark County School Board voted to cut shows and jobs in response to reduced state and federal funding.
The board continued the decision for three weeks at its July meeting hoping that options other than cutting 11 jobs and 13 shows at KLVX-TV Channel 10 could be found.
The board voted 4-1 in favor of the cuts that include "Ventana," aimed at Hispanic viewers, and "Community Matters," aimed at black viewers. Other shows that lost their funding include "Varsity Quiz," "Clark County Spelling Bee" and "African-American History Challenge."
The cuts enabled the district to continue to fund shows that are used to teach students in rural areas of Clark County and students who are in danger of dropping out of school.
"I believe this option is the best choice we can make to preserve jobs and to keep the educational programing," said Board member Mary Beth Scow, who made the motion to accept the cuts. "I think it will be easier to get funding from the community for some of the programs we cut tonight than it would be for some of the others.
"I'm willing to go out and help make the calls and try to get funding for the shows that are now on hiatus."
Barbara Robinson, a local columnist and the host of "Community Matters," had hoped the board would choose one of three other options.
"This was the same plan that was before them at their last meeting and I don't feel they looked closely enough at the other options," Robinson said. "Public television should look like the community that it is shown in and these cuts will create a lack of local shows on Channel 10 that are ethnically diverse."
Robinson was one of about 10 people who spoke out against cutting the shows.
Board member Shirley Barber, who was out of town and made a phone call to make her comments on the issue, called for an investigation into the accounting at Channel 10, but hung up before the vote took place.
Board member Lois Tarkanian was the lone vote against the job and show cuts saying she wanted questions about the financial management at Channel 10 looked at by a school district senior account analyst.
"There have been comments that the station has been running at a significant deficit for six to nine months before this," Tarkanian said. "That's the question I want answered because the board is being forced to make a very difficult decision, and I want to know if better information might have kept us out of this position."
Channel 10 manager Tom Axtell presented the board with three additional options that reduced shows and staffing in response to reduced state and federal funding for the station.
All the options would have cut at least the original 11 jobs and one would have cut as many as 19 jobs. The other choices, while keeping the 13 shows in danger of being cut, would have either ended or cut back on distance education programming, or the station's ability to do contract work that creates money for programming.
"This is a terrible, terrible issue we have to face because $600,000 was cut by the state from our budget," Axtell said. "If we cut more than 11 positions the next to go would be two editors and then we get to a point where we implode.
"There's no nice way to say it. We'd lose too many man-hours and then we'd lose the contract work, costing us money and forcing us to cut more jobs."
The cuts stem from the state Legislature deciding not to fund distance learning programs for the University and Community College System of Southern Nevada. In 1995, the Legislature allocated money to the system, which then contracted with KLVX for various programs, putting $150,000 into the station's coffers each year since then.
The Legislature also did not reallocate about $400,000 to the state's Commission on Educational Technology, which in turn gave it to KLVX for teacher technology training.
Axtell offered to meet with the producers of the 13 canceled shows, and to work with them to solicit funding.
"These shows have not been canceled but are on hiatus until we can get them funded again," Axtell said. "These shows are important to me and if there are leads on funding sources in the community I'll cancel meetings and do whatever I have to do to meet with those sources."
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