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WEDU-TV steps in after a CBS affiliate opts for network programming over a Bush-McBride debate.
By WES ALLISON, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 25, 2002
Friday night's gubernatorial debate will air live in the Tampa Bay area after all, thanks to public television.
WEDU-TV Ch. 3, the local PBS affiliate, agreed to air the debate after learning that WTSP-TV Ch. 10 planned instead to show the season premier of 48 Hours Investigates.
Paul Grove, director of national programming and production at WEDU in Tampa, said his boss called WTSP Tuesday morning after reading in the St. Petersburg Times that the commercial station would not air the debate.
Republican Gov. Jeb Bush and Bill McBride, the Democratic nominee, will meet at 8 p.m. Friday in Jacksonville. It is the first of two debates that will be televised before the Nov. 5 election.
"We obviously want to be the station in the largest market in Florida that has this coverage. Otherwise it wouldn't have been aired," Grove said. "They were thrilled about us taking it."
WTSP is the local member of the Florida News Network, a consortium of TV stations sponsoring the debate. But it also is the local CBS affiliate, and station officials had said the network would not allow the debate to pre-empt 48 Hours, with new anchor Lesley Stahl.
But the ultimate decision was the station's, not the network's, acknowledged WTSP general manager Sam Rosenwasser.
"It's a gray area. The network really wants us to run their programming," Rosenwasser said.
Rosenwasser said the situation was complicated by changes in the debate schedule: Until late last week, the debate was set for 7 p.m., during Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, and WTSP was going to air it. But the hosting station, WJXT-TV in Jacksonville, moved it to 8 p.m.
WJXT, a former CBS affiliate that's now independent, denied requests from WTSP, WINK-TV in Fort Myers and WCTV-TV in Tallahassee -- as well as the Bush and McBride campaigns -- to hold it at 7.
"Because we're in premiere week, and we had planned for 7 p.m., it was tough to move things around and to tell CBS we weren't going to air their program," Rosenwasser said. The Tallahassee CBS affiliate, however, plans to run the debate instead of 48 Hours.
WTSP will rerun the debate at 9 a.m. Saturday.
"This was not a financial decision," said Rosenwasser, whose station got $1.2-million from political advertising since January, more than any other station in the market. "For what it's worth, the amount of money we make in Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy is considerably more than what we do in an hour of prime time, simply because there's more commercial time available."
Manny Lucoff, a retired communications professor who taught broadcast law for 37 years at the University of South Florida in Tampa, said local stations can pre-empt national programming at any time, especially for public affairs.
The networks can fuss, cajole and threaten, but the station makes the decision, he said.
"There is always the out that allows the local station to pre-empt the network at any time," Lucoff said. "It may antagonize the network, it may alienate it, but it has 100 percent the right to pre-empt anything."
Executives at WCTV-TV in Tallahassee said CBS understood its decision to air the debate instead of 48 Hours. Like WTSP, WINK-TV in Fort Myers, also will not air the debate.
WEDU covers 17 counties, from just north of Naples, east to Orlando, and north to Yankeetown. Grove said the station will package the debate with its regular political round table, Tampa Bay Week, which airs at 9 p.m. Fridays. Six political experts will watch the debate in the studio and then discuss it.
"This is what we're supposed to be doing, and we're glad to do it," Grove said.