Pinellas and Hillsborough County residents who want their MTV don't necessarily have to subscribe to cable TV to get it. TV viewers in some parts of the Tampa Bay area looking for Canadian news programs or Greek-language soap operas don't need a satellite dish.
By LOUIS HAU
Published August 7, 2003
[Times photo: Scott Keeler]
Sotirios Agelatos, left, and brother Angelos Angelatos are general manager and program director for low-power W48AY..
These and other programs typically associated with pay-TV services are available free over the local airwaves thanks to a handful of low-power TV stations with transmitter signals of 150,000 watts or less on a UHF channel.
"What we're doing nobody else is doing," says Sotirios Agelatos, who with his brother, Angelos Angelatos, owns and operates W48AY-Ch. 48 in Oldsmar, a broadcaster of foreign-language programming, much of it in Greek. "We have a small voice, but we do a great job."
With cable and satellite providers now serving more than three-quarters of all U.S. TV households, low-power stations occupy a small, obscure niche of the TV landscape. But amid recent concerns about the growing consolidation of media ownership, low-power stations stand out because they remain largely free of media-conglomerate control.
The eight low-power stations in the Tampa Bay area are a diverse bunch. Some are publicly owned non-profit enterprises, such as WPDS-Ch. 14, which is owned by Pinellas County Schools and broadcasts educational programming and school board meetings, and WSPF-Ch. 35, which is owned by the city of St. Petersburg and shows a variety of public information programming, city government meetings and other public events.
Others are for-profit businesses, owned locally or by small businesses that own and operate stations in multiple markets. One such operator is Randy Weigner of Meredith, N.H., who owns eight stations, including WARP-Ch. 20 in St. Petersburg. It has a rare agreement with MTV to broadcast its music-video-only sibling, MTV2. The station also airs infomercials, children's programming and occasional local programming.
"You're not making a fortune, which is why you have eight of them," says Weigner.
Weigner declined to spell out how much his private company makes on its mini-media empire, although he said WARP's advertising rates range from $5 to $100 per 30-second spot, depending on the number of spots purchased, a fraction of what full-power stations charge.
Helping keep costs down at WARP is general manager and chief engineer Mike Gray, the station's sole employee. Gray, who keeps a day job as an information-technology technician for another local company, monitors the station's systems from his home in St. Petersburg. He doubles as a producer for WARP's occasional original programs, such as a weekly blues-music show that ended in April after a four-month run.
About twice a week, Gray drives to the station's transmission tower on Gandy Boulevard near the Derby Lane greyhound track in St. Petersburg. There he loads commercials and local programming into the station's video machine, programming the exact day and time those clips will run during the station's MTV2 satellite feed.
Gray says he is putting together a new show that will showcase local music acts, although with WARP's tight budget it will be a pay-to-play arrangement: He will ask featured bands to arrange for a local business, such as a music store, to be one of the show's sponsors.
Gray, a former New York City radio host, says he wouldn't be able to tolerate the internal politics of a typical full-power TV station beholden to a major network.
"With an independent station, we can more or less do what we want," he says.
Not all low-power TV stations are one-person operations. WYKE-Ch. 49 in Lecanto has a full-time staff of six and produces programs focused on local sports and politics. The station is a for-profit business but is owned by the Key Training Center, a non-profit organization that serves the developmentally disabled. One of its most popular programs is Your Citrus County Court, a half-hour program each weekday of edited video from the county courthouse in Inverness that shows a steady parade of local residents charged with speeding, drunken driving and other misdemeanors.
"If we're late in getting it on the air," says general manager Tom Franklin, "we get phone calls."
Low-power TV has been an important means for Spanish-language broadcasters such as Univision and Telemundo to reach viewers in parts of the country that don't have sufficiently large Latino populations to support a full-power station, according to Laura Santos, vice president and general manager of WTMO-Ch. 40 in Orlando, a sibling of WRMD-Ch. 49 in Tampa.
Both are low-power Telemundo affiliates that also produce their own Spanish-language programs. "If it were not for what we do in the community," she says,"there are a lot of people in the community who wouldn't know what's happening."
The Federal Communications Commission established low-power TV service in 1982 to provide more opportunities for locally produced and community-oriented programming. Unlike their full-power counterparts, such as major network affiliates and large syndicated stations, low-power stations in large media markets such as the Tampa Bay area aren't guaranteed a spot on local cable systems. As a result, some low-power stations reach their audiences exclusively through their broadcast signal, which typically reaches a maximum range of 20 to 25 miles, versus 50 to 60 miles for full-power stations, according to Mike Sullivan, executive director of the Community Broadcasters Association, a trade group.
"We represent more diversity in voices because basically 90 percent of our stations are owned locally or by relatively small companies," he says. But, he adds, "they are not big money makers because they are very small stations."
To help improve the economic fortunes of low-power stations, station owners are lobbying for a bill in Congress that would require cable TV providers to carry so-called Class A low-power stations, those whose licenses prevent them from being shoved off their designated channel by a full-power station.
Despite the hurdles involved, the specialized appeal of some local low-power stations have helped persuade cable providers to pick them up. Local cable systems carry Tampa's WRMD Telemundo affiliate, the Pinellas Schools' WPDS, St. Petersburg's WSPF, the Key Center's WYKE and the international programming of W48AY in each station's local market.
Even with the extra exposure, low-powered stations have tenuous economics. W48AY in Oldsmar barely breaks even, according to the brothers who own it, Sotirios Agelatos, 56, and Angelos Angelatos, 51. (Natives of the Greek island of Chefalonia, the two brothers spell their last names differently.)
W48AY broadcasts community-affairs programs it produces, as well as news from foreign sources, such as Canada's CTV, RAI of Italy and Deutsche Welle from Germany. But the bulk of the programming is in Greek, including news programs and soap operas pulled in via satellite from Greece.
The station is a family affair: Sotirios is general manager and chief executive, Angelos is program director, and Sotirios' Canadian wife handles public relations and occasionally serves as an on-air host.
The two brothers also own WPSO-AM 1500, a Greek-language radio station, and WXYB-AM 1520, which broadcasts foreign-language programming in Serbian, Polish, Hindu, Spanish, German and Italian. The radio stations' profits keep W48AY afloat, Sotirios says.
W48AY's next move is to boost its signal from 47,000 watts to about 150,000 watts. Angelos laughs when asked when that might happen.
"As soon as we get some money," he says.
- Louis Hau can be reached at hau@sptimes.com or 813 226-3404.
