WQPT looks into procuring license
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By David Burke | Tuesday, June 19, 2007 |
The advisory board to WQPT-TV took steps Monday to become the group that may operate the Quad-City public television station.
The Greater Quad-Cities Telecommunications Corp. voted unanimously to form committees — of its own members and interested people in the area — to investigate procurement of the station’s license, and look into the cost of operating the station and its activities.
WQPT has been operated by Black Hawk College, Moline, since the station signed on in 1983. The college, however, cut all of its funding to the station, which is housed on its campus, effective at the beginning of the new fiscal year on July 1.
The college’s board of trustees, scheduled to meet Thursday night in Moline, will vote whether to give college President Keith Miller the authority to negotiate for the sale of WQPT’s license and its operating equipment.
Fred Leggett, Kewanee, Ill. — chairman of the Black Hawk board of trustees and the board’s representative on the WQPT group — said the cost of the license and operations of the station is estimated at $2.5 million.
“This organization is going to try and buy the license,” said the Rev. Richard Pokora, Bettendorf, a member of the telecommunications board. “We will mount a community process to save this station.”
When Miller announced budget cuts for WQPT in the current and upcoming fiscal year, he said the station did not fit into the college missions of education and workforce training.
Leggett said Miller and the board of directors did not want to lose WQPT for the sake of the community.
“No one wants to necessarily see WQPT go away,” he said. “No one is out to get WQPT.”
The decision to pursue the possibilities of running the station came after an hour of strategizing by the board and eight of the 18-member WQPT staff who attended the meeting at Black Hawk.
As WQPT general manager Rick Best stood at the front of the room with a marker and paper, staff and board members listed the benefits the station has to the community, including broadcast programming, lifelong learning and involvement and promotion of community activities and culture.
“I just believe so passionately in what we do, that I think the community would be at a huge loss if we didn’t have it anymore,” said Ana Kehoe, the station’s educational outreach director.
The station does more than any other broadcaster to highlight events at the Putnam Museum and Figge Art Museum, Kehoe said, through its locally produced “Life & Times” and “Perspective” series.
“I think we’re valuable to all community organizations,” she said. “They’re not going to get more than a sound bite on any other station.”
Board chairman Ed Slivken, Rock Island, said backers of the station need to stress its importance.
“If we believe in WQPT and want to continue WQPT, we need to focus on the things that make us unique to the community,” he said.
David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com.
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