Bass Clippings

Who Gave It: Harold J. Schnitzer, chairman of Harsch Investment Properties, a real-estate investment company, and his wife, Arlene
[Arlene and Harold Schnitzer]

By request: The funds will go to the endowment of the station, which must raise $6 million by 2012 to receive the entire gift.

How it happened: Support for some public-TV stations has waned as the Web and other new media have taken the spotlight. OPB has bucked the trend. The station's members, who make pledges, have climbed to 115,000 from 109,000 a year ago. But funding remains under pressure. So when Public Broadcasting Service veteran Steve Bass was named chief executive almost two years ago, the Schnitzers were among the first people he called on. Major philanthropists in the Pacific Northwest and loyal OPB viewers, the couple had made multimillion-dollar gifts to Oregon Health & Science University and the Portland Art Museum, but their biggest gift to the station was $30,000.

Over dinner at the couple's Palm Springs, Calif., winter home, Mr. Bass laid out his plans to boost local news, launch a new Web site and create more high-quality shows. (OPB already produces "History Detectives," which is shown by 97% of the 300-plus PBS stations.) "Arlene said, 'We really want to do something for OPB,' " recalls Mr. Bass. He asked if the Schnitzers would consider a gift of $1.5 million. "Arlene said, 'That is about the figure I had in mind.' "

BUSINESS PULSE SURVEY: Subprime meltdown?
New OPB boss reverses course
Steve Bass has solidified finances

Portland Business Journal - September 7, 2007 by Matthew Kish Business Journal staff writer

Despite a nationwide slump in public radio listeners, the number of donors to Oregon Public Broadcasting has hit an all-time high, 18 months after Steve Bass assumed leadership of the organization.

The nonprofit closed the books on its most recent fiscal year in June. Although audited numbers won't be released until November, all signs point to it being an exceptional year. That's quite the change from recent years.

"This past year has been a very, very strong year," Bass said. "It gives us confidence to be investing in more services."

Last year's numbers, which reflect the first six months of Bass' leadership, were the best since the state eliminated its roughly $1 million annual contribution to OPB's budget in 2003. The station had a bottom line of nearly $2.2 million for fiscal 2005, up from less than $1.9 million the previous year and a $380,000 loss in 2003.

The good news follows several years of gloom. In addition to the loss of state funding in 2003, the station had a demoralizing round of layoffs in 2002, letting go of 25 employees, 15 percent of its staff.

"[Steve Bass] has a national reputation as a gifted, strategic thinker and it was a great hire for OPB to get someone of his caliber and with his profile," said Alan Stavitsky, a public broadcasting veteran and associate dean in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. "I'm not surprised the place is thriving under his leadership."

OPB's record 116,000 donors is even more impressive when one considers the declining numbers at public radio stations nationwide. After 30 years of growth, audiences started tuning out public radio in 2003 as iPods and satellite radio started gaining popularity.

It's not the first time Bass has been at the center of a station's changing financial fortunes. He took the reins at Nashville Public Television in 1998. At the time the station was run by the local school system.

By the time Bass left in late 2005, the station had become a private nonprofit and reduced its reliance on government funding from roughly 65 percent of its budget to around 25 percent.

Bass left the station on much more solid financial footing, beefing up corporate underwriting and individual contributions as well as production grants.

"He's one of the most savvy managers in public television," said Beth Curley, CEO of Nashville Public Television, who worked with Bass for more than 15 years in Tennessee and Massachusetts. "He's been very shrewd about making sure the business is funded and at the same time ... that the mission of the station is accomplished."

Bass' early handprint on OPB mirrors his work in Nashville. He wants to continue solidifying OPB's financial base by growing OPB's endowment from $14 million to $20 million over the next six years.

Proceeds from the endowment will be used to provide continuing support for programming and operations. He also wants to continue building support from individual donors.

The improved financial picture has already allowed the station to undertake a $150,000 rebranding and marketing campaign with the help of Portland's Leopold Ketel & Partners.

Last week, OPB announced a new effort known as the Public Insight Network. The program allows listeners to serve as sources on news stories. Mortgage brokers, for instance, might be asked to comment about the slowdown in the housing industry.

"It's another way of engaging the audience and taking advantage of new digital technologies ... instead of just talking at them through the radio," Stavitsky said. "To some extent, it's an offshoot of the Facebook and YouTube media phenomenon."
1 of 2 9/7/2007 8:19 AM New OPB boss reverses course - Portland Business Journal: http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2007/09/10/story2.html?t=p...

The station already has a national reputation for its Web site and use of podcasting, said Stavitsky.

Later this year, OPB will also launch the online component of a new program tentatively known as Town Square. The program will use a variety of old and new media to start community discussions on regional news and culture stories.

The program will have a daily radio broadcast starting after the first of the year. A $325,000 grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will help get the program on its feet.

The station will also continue to develop its digital technology, thanks in part to a $3 million appropriation from the Legislature that will allow it to convert its broadcast transmitters from analog to digital.

OPB is available on more than two dozen radio channels across the state, including 91.5 FM in Portland. The station's televised offerings are available on seven stations across Oregon, including channel 10 in Portland.

OPB also offers four programming services on its digital transmission network, including high-definition programs, OPB Create and the Oregon Channel.

Bass deflects any credit for OPB's success, saying it has as much to do with the state's unparalleled support for public radio as it does with any internal strategy memos.

"This really is public broadcasting nirvana," Bass said. "It is a truly remarkable place to be doing what we're doing."

"Steve's a very open guy, and very understanding," said Fred Barzyk, who created avant-garde videos for Boston's WGBH-TV during Bass's tenure there in the '90s. "He's exactly what you want in a producer."

Bob Shepherd, who led Nashville's public television station until Bass took it over in 1998, agreed. "He did a terrific job. People had nothing but the best things to say about him. I have nothing but good things to say about him."

Call the Nashville Tennessean's editorial department in search of a more objective perspective, and. . .

"Oh, I'll just gush. I swear I will." That's the newspaper's editorial editor, Sandra Roberts. "I was trying to think of something controversial about him, or some issue that arose that he mishandled. But I can think of no such thing."

At least one of Bass' former colleagues in Nashville disagrees, heatedly. But we'll get to him later. Because now that Bass has replaced OPB's longtime chief executive Maynard Orme, who retired at the end of 2005, he's going to need every ounce of his intelligence, energy and charm.

For while OPB remains one of the nation's most successful public broadcasting outfits -- and one of the national system's most prolific producers of original programs -- the statewide system still must confront all of the problems that keep American public broadcasting in such perpetual, and dire, straits.

Consider the vanishing pools of public and private money and the constant partisan squabbles over the politics of the shows and their hosts. Meanwhile, the ever-expanding universe of cable, satellite, DVD and Internet media options fractures the already-distracted audience. And if all that didn't make OPB's horizon seem rocky enough, there's the federal law that requires broadcasters to replace all of their analog transmitters with digital equipment by 2009. Given OPB's statewide reach, and the more than 40 transmitters and repeaters it requires, the price for that one operation could be more than $4 million.

But all of that expensive digital technology could also catapult the system into a new, multimedia world of opportunity. Multiple TV and radio channels; content-rich Internet sites; vast new markets for all of OPB's original productions.

Anything could happen. So given one shot to be the master of its own future, OPB has put all its chips on an ambitious executive who, in more than 25 years in public broadcasting, has never lost a fight or, it seems, a friend.

A sense of direction

It's a misty morning in late January, and Bass -- three weeks into his tenure -- is presiding over a gathering of executives at OPB headquarters on Southwest Macadam Avenue. The subject at hand is the OPB produced "Frontline" documentary on methamphetamine set to air in mid-February. "This show is an absolute home run for us," Bass had said earlier that morning. "It's got a local focus and a national scope, so this is exactly what we should be doing." Now he's eager to make sure all the details are snapping into place.

Tall and thin, with wire-frame glasses and receding brown hair, Bass nods happily as they run through the details: the local discussion panel show that will follow "Frontline;" the ads that will run in The Oregonian; and the precise architecture of the Web sites.

As Bass knows, OPB's future depends on its being able to take advantage of the new, multi-tiered media universe. He has long since come to understand the importance of mixing art with commerce to enhance, rather than corrupt, the value of both.

"He's very quick on his feet," notes OPB board Chairman Douglas Tunnell, who chose Bass from the more than 300 candidates who applied. "He's a technocrat, but an artist, too, and that really appealed to us. He understands where OPB has been, and where it needs to go."

"Running the place"

Bass grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson, a suburban town north of New York City. The Bass family were closer to working class than most of their Westchester County neighbors. Steve's father, Walter, was an emotionally fragile man who pursued a low-pressure career as an inventory manager for a furniture company. Mom Lorrie worked as a secretary and served as the family's gravitational center until her death, of cancer, in 1973. The loss devastated Walter Bass, and 16-year-old Steve became the de facto head of the family. "I was pretty much running the place on my own," he recalls. "And I learned to fend for myself."

An accomplished clarinet player, Bass majored in music at Bucknell University. He was good enough to land some professional gigs but also realistic. "So I picked up an economics major along the way, and double-majored."

Bass graduated in 1979 and moved into a master's program for nonprofit and arts administration at the University of Wisconsin. Required to get an internship in a professional office, he pursued a job at the public TV station in Madison. Bass worked there for the next three years, then jumped to a financial development job at PBS' national headquarters in Washington, D.C. He spent the next decade there -- meeting and marrying his wife, Sara, in 1984 -- then in 1992 decided to get into station management.

Bass' first stop was at WGBY in Springfield, Ma. Because the station is an offshoot of Boston's public TV powerhouse WGBH, the job allowed the inexperienced station manager all the independence he wanted, with the security that went along with being affiliated with the larger station. Moving to Boston in 1995, he took over WGBH's local programming department. Charged with re-invigorating the station's local shows, Bass swung for the fences, canceling one long-running public affairs show and launching three splashy new programs, two of which are still on the air.

Hired to take over the Nashville public TV station in 1998, Bass stepped into a unique situation: After decades of being owned and funded almost entirely by the Nashville school board, the station was on the verge of spinning off into an independent nonprofit. Bass launched the new corporation, changed the station's call letters, restructured its finances and rebuilt the programming to reflect modern Nashville's social and political diversity.

Still, such fundamental change never pleases everyone. This is where we meet Jimmy Holt, host of the station's outdoors show, "Tennessee Outdoorsman" since its debut in 1971. A newspaper columnist and former Nashville city commissioner, Holt spent most of the show sitting on a couch talking with friends about memorable hunting and fishing trips, and occasionally showing pictures sent in by viewers.

Bass wasn't impressed. And his suggestions of how to freshen up the show stuck in Holt's craw. "We had a good ol' down-home Tennessee show and he wanted to ruin it," says Holt, who ended his public TV show rather than make the changes Bass requested. (Holt had his supporters. One radio disc jockey tore into Bass on the air, calling him, "That Yankee, poodle-walking sissy.")

Holt's outrage -- while shared by only a few others -- does reveal something about how difficult change can be in a venerable institution. Particularly when the new boss is an outsider whose plans are just as big as his ambition.

His own nirvana

Since moving here a couple of months back, Bass and his family have been exploring the city -- spending hours at Powell's, taking their Wheaton terrier, Toby, to Tryon Creek Park -- and making weekend visits to Multnomah Falls, Mount Hood and Cannon Beach. Daughters Catie and Caroline have quickly fit in at public schools in Lake Oswego. "They keep in touch with their old friends on e-mail and IM's, and they have their new friends here," Bass says. It's like they're in two worlds at the same time."

Bass, on the other hand, focuses entirely on OPB. Coming from a citywide station whose annual budget of $6 million is a fraction of the $25 million he must find and distribute each year for OPB, it's a daunting challenge. But Bass betrays little doubt that he's up to the task, or that the future will do anything but enhance OPB's success.

His favorite story about Portland goes back to his first visit last year when the rent-a-car clerk noticed Bass was about to step into a vehicle missing its radio antenna. Bass, who swears the clerk had no idea what his business was, recites the guy's next line: "That'll never do. You won't be able to listen to OPB!" What he realized, Bass says, is this: "I must be in public broadcasting nirvana."

Which is good news -- though if Oregonians already love OPB, it's hard to say how much they'll love the guy who comes in to put his own stamp on it.

Stay tuned.

Peter Ames Carlin: 503-221-8562; petercarlin@news.oregonian.com
©2006 The Oregonian

BEST SOON-TO-BE FORMER NASHVILLIAN: STEVE BASS, NPT Folks who have been around Nashville for the past decade can appreciate Steve Bass’ mighty achievements at the helm of Nashville Public Television. Even the name itself reflects his efforts to develop an attractive identity for the station: from clunky, boring WDCN-Channel 8 to nationally recognized NPT. Bass, who did time at Boston public television mecca WGBH before taking over here in 1998, implemented a formula that fostered quality local programming while keeping costs low so the station could wean itself off of taxpayer dollars. The result? Critically acclaimed documentaries about Hank Williams and the Carter Family that have aired nationally, as well as solid local features that keep public TV fans tuning in on a regular basis. Where else but NPT can you watch commercial-free documentaries about Parliament Funkadelic, Saudi oil fortunes or the Ramones and then sit down with your kid to watch Buster, the lesbian-loving bunny? As the ad campaign promises, NPT is television worth watching, and Bass is a big part of the reason why. He leaves to take over Oregon Public Broadcasting; good luck, man, and send us a postcard, just like Buster. —JOHN SPRAGENS

Cast your mind back just a decade ago, to our little public television station, WDCN-Channel 8.

To raise money, they put volunteers in front of the cameras to auction off everything from vinyl flooring to mink coats to lawn mowers. If you wanted one of the items that were listed in longhand on the white board behind the volunteer, you called them up and made a bid.

Programs were chosen cautiously, so as not to offend or annoy any of the politicians who paid their bills. And few people on earth knew, or cared, what the call letters stood for.

Along came a fellow named Steven M. Bass. On Nov. 1, 1998, he moved his stuff into the brick building tucked near the State Fairgrounds.

Bass hailed from a big fancy Boston television job so many locals cast a skeptical eye upon him. He showed up about the time the Metro school board wisely decided to get out of the public television business. But weaning it off the government meant a loss of a million bucks a year in funding. It meant finding a way to pay to go digital. And it meant shaking off the stodgy chains of Action Auction, fishing shows and paint-by-numbers programming.

Mission accomplished. Last week, Bass announced he's outta here, lured away to a new gig at Oregon Public Broadcasting. Second-in-command Beth Curley, whom he hired, will take over as interim president.

• Rebranded the station to be Nashville Public Television, call letters WNPT. People know it now as NPT for short.

• Subscribed to interesting, thought-provoking national programs that are not always safe or predictable.

• Produced stunning examples of local programming, many of which have been shown to a national audience. Among the shows he should be most proud of are documentaries on Hank Williams, Rachel and Andrew Jackson's marriage, Bill Monroe, and the Carter Family. The whimsical pieces on Nashville memories have been favorites.

• Embraced local treasures such as Tennessee Crossroads but put a halt to the goofy shows that made us look like yokels.

• Increased the number of members from 16,000 to 19,500, and dramatically increased the amount of money they contribute. Fundraising has replaced the million dollars a year that came from Metro, and he's nailed down corporate sponsorships and gifts.

• Went to Washington where he helped save federal funding for public broadcasting.

"It's been fun," Bass said. "The thing I feel most proud about is the variety of programs we've done that have taken the treasures of Nashville and put them on a regional or national stage."

Funding, he said, is and will continue to be NPT's biggest challenge. Most things are rolling along rather nicely, he said, making his decision to leave tough. He'll stick around until the end of the year.

"It's a bittersweet sort of thing," Bass said. "I wasn't looking to go anywhere. I really love this community. There is still a lot more here to be done. There is always going to be."

"You betcha," he said. "You are what people think you are. Once people think you are television worth watching, you better be."

When WNPT president and CEO Steve Bass leaves Nashville at year's end, the city's collective energy, IQ and creativity will drop precipitously.

Yet though Nashville should be sorry — sick, in fact — that it is losing this jewel of a talented guy, it takes great solace in the fact that Bass is leaving behind a far different public television station than the one that hired him.

Bass has transformed Nashville's public TV station from an ignored second-cousin of the public school system into an independent, impressive tool of education, information and entertainment. He knew when he accepted the Nashville job in 1998 that his first big challenge was to move the station from its long-time public ownership, complete with public funding, into a self-sufficient nonprofit organization. Bass succeeded by cultivating new supporters, trimming back expenses and reaching out to the community to solicit ideas and input.

With the separation complete, Bass turned WNPT's attention to giving viewers what they wanted — a first-class line-up of diverse, sophisticated programming. Most impressively, WNPT has produced programs on a variety of issues from Nashville's architecture to acclaimed documentaries on Hank Williams and the Carter family. Those locally produced programs also are great billboards for Nashville and the music industry.

Bass is moving out West, taking over as president of Oregon Public Broadcasting. The Oregon network will no doubt flourish under his leadership. Nashville's consolation is that Bass leaves behind his hand-picked top lieutenant, COO Beth Curley, who takes over in an interim capacity. The station remains in good and gifted hands. •

Nashville City Paper - September 21, 2005

“Before Steve Bass.” Those three words essentially defined the wasteland that was public television in Nashville until Bass arrived from Boston in 1998 to take charge of what was then called WDCN.

Last week, Bass announced he will move to Oregon Public Television at the end of the year.

He leaves Nashville richer for his having passed this way. When Bass arrived, WDCN was, quite frankly, an embarrassment for a town this size. Normal fare were homegrown, crudely produced hunting and fishing shows.

Back then, the station was operated by the Metro school board. There was no edgy programming. It was dull, dull, dull.

Bass changed everything. He re-branded the station Nashville Public Television. He began producing quality local programming such as biographies of Hank Williams and Bill Monroe. He fostered the Nashville Memories series. He got rid of the old chestnut WDCN Action Auction and created more sophisticated ways to raise money.

But Bass’ role here went beyond the administration of a public television station. He became part of the fabric of Nashville. He truly loved being in this city and his love of Music City spilled back into NPT’s programming.

Bass leaves at a time when the role of local public television stations is changing. In the wake of an expanding cable menu, the mission of public television is somewhat fuzzy.

Steve Bass leaves us better by far than he found us. It will be interesting to see where the journey leads next.

WDCN-Channel 8, Nashville's public TV station soon to be known as WNPT, is at a critical juncture after gaining its independence last year from the Metro Board of Education.

"What we have here is basically a 37-year-old start-up company with many of the same challenges that new ones have."

Steve Bass, WDCN president and CEO

WDCN At-a-Glance
On the Air: Since 1962
Projected Revenues: $5.8 million, fiscal year 1999-2000
Top-Rated Programs: Nature, Tennessee Crossmads, Antiques Roadshow, This Old House
Viewership: 451,000 households tune in each week

NASHVILLE-When Steve Bass took over as president and chief executive of WDCN-Channel 8, he knew it would be tough to carry out his chief task: helping the public-television station break away from its controlling body, the local school board.

Mr. Bass was flabbergasted when his staff discovered last summer that the staion had a general delivery voice-mail box flooded with 1,300 unplayed phone messages. Many of the messages were from contributors wanting to know when they'd receive program schedules In the mail. Some were from people wanting to contribute money to the station. A few of the messages had been languishing in voice-mail limbo for a year.

The problem, Mr. Bass says. was bureaucracy. "It wasn't that people didn't know how to operate the equipment or weren't .interested In returning those calls." says Mr. Bass. a former Boston public-TV executive who came to Nashville in late 1998 to run the station. "We just didn't know that that mailbox existed."

Until recently, WDCN was among a handful of Public Broadcasting Service affiliates nationwide operated by a local school board which Mr. Bass describes as an old, "deeply flawed" business model that left the station rooted in government red tape and perennially underfunded.

Now, after gaining independence from Nashville's Metro Board of Education last April. WDCN is stepping out of the school system's shadow to be run by a private nonprofit corporation, like the majority of PBS stations in the country.

Mr. Bass and his lieutenants have streamlined station operations, beefed up public affairs programming and dumped some long-running shows. And they're setting up measures to, among other things, re-enlist individual patrons who had stopped contributing to the nonprofit operation and recruit more corporate underwriters. The latter effort is already paying off: The station recently signed up Birmingham-based AniSouth Corp. as one of its largest corporate supporters. To help complete the makeover, the Federal Communications Commission last week granted the station new call letters -WNPT, short for Nashville Public Television.

But WDCN faces serious obstacles now that it's on its own. In the old days, the station could count on regular appropriations from the school board, which provided more than a third of the station's $5.5 million in funding during the past fiscal year. Although the school system's support will continue for at least five years under an agreement, the station faces looming capital expenses to meet a mandate by the federal government that public and commercial TV stations begin broadcasting their signal in a different format. And WDCN has a relatively small contributor base that accounts for one-third of station revenue. A formula used to estimate public-TV contributor goals indicates that the station, given Nashville's demographic profile, should have between 36,000 and 40,000 individual patrons. But at WDCN, while the contributor numbers have risen slightly on Mr. Bass's watch, there still are only 18,300.

When the station was under the school board's control, Mr. Bass says, there was almost a disincentive to raise funds. "The fear was always, if we raised $1 million in private support, it would lead the school board to take $1 million away," he says. Today. there's no such concern, but there's plenty of financial ground to make up.

"What we have here is basically a 37-year old start-up company with many of the same challenges that new ones have." 'Mr. Bass says. "We're just now to the point where we can start focusing on the long term."

WDCN, which stands for Davidson County Nashville, was launched in 1962, a decade after the FCC earmarked part of the local broadcast spectrum for a school board-owned channel. PBS officials estimate that fewer than two dozen of their 180 affiliates were ever managed by local school boards. Today, only a half dozen public broadcasting stations are still run by local school boards. Eighty are run by estate governments or public universities, and 93 are operated by nonprofits.

Talk about divorcing WDCN from the Metro School Board had been circulating at least since the 1970s, station officials say, but serious talks didn't begin until station managers approached school officials with the proposal in the late '80s. By the mid-1990s, the idea was gaining merit in the eyes of school board members, when Nashville's rapid growth began straining the school system's budget.

"As the squeeze came for dollars within the school board. I think it made it much easier to make the decision," recalls Nasliville businessman Ben Rechter, chairman of WDCN since 1998. By March 1998, the school board and the station's board had agreed on basic terms for spinning off WDCN and inked a deal 13 months later. One major reason the school board acted when it did: Schools would have been saddled with almost $5 million In broadcasting equipment upgrades as a result of the FCC's requirement that all TV stations begin sending out their signals in digital as well as traditional analog by 2003 providing a higher quality signal that creates more room on the broadcast spectrum.

But not everyone agreed that spinning off WDCN was the best thing to do. School board member Murray Philip opposed the move because he believed digital broad- casting will create money-making opportunities for the station by enabling it to sell part of its broadcast spectrum space. "We gave the asset away just at a point in history when it was getting valuable," Mr. Philip says. Still, he acknowledges, moving WDCN away from government control "probably makes it a better station."

To run the newly liberated station, the station board through an executive headhunter approached Mr. Bass, vice president and manager of television stations for Boston's WGBH Educational Foundation, which produces such respected programs as "Mobil Masterpiece Theatre," "Antiques Roadshow" and the "American Experience" documentary series.

Initially, Mr. Bass declined. But Mr. Rechter and other WDCN officials persisted and eventually Mr. Bass visited WDCN and was amazed at what lie saw: a public TV station that hadn't changed much in operation and technology since it was launched in the '60s located in one of the region's fast growing cities. "It was kind of like finding a brand new '68 Corvette with 100 miles on it that's been pickled in somebody's garage," Mr. Bass jokes. He came on board in November 1998 at an annual salary that at the time was estimated to be nearly twice the $84,000 paid to the previous station head, who retired.

Cutbacks began almost immediately in anticipation of the school board's plan to spin off WDCN in April 1999. For example. WDCN used to have three workers manning a back-room print shop that produced monthly program schedules, although most public TV stations outsource such tasks because it's cheaper. And the print shop's capacity was so limited, some contributors received schedules late or not at all. The print shop positions were among about 10 jobs that were axed to bring the staff level down to about 50, as employees retired or transferred elsewhere in the school system.

Mr. Bass also ordered some programming changes. As an arm of local government, WDCN managers had long avoided local public affairs programming for fear it would be too controversial. During last year's citywide elections, though, the station kicked off a series of mayoral candidate town hall meetings and interviews.

Mr. Bass, who wants to leverage Nashville's country music industry, is exploring creating musical programming similar to "Austin City Limits," the popular public TV program that originates in Texas. Recently, Mr. Bass approached cable network Turner South, inquiring about rights to broadcast the Nashville-based musical show "Live From the Bluebird Cafe" because the city's cable system doesn't carry Turner South. But, according to WDCN officials, Turner South declined, viewing the show as a key bargaining chip in its continuing efforts to add that area's cable system to its list of carriers.

Not every programming move that Mr. Bass has made has been a popular one. For example, he met sharp criticism last October from some longtime viewers when WDCN dropped "Tennessee Outdoorsmen," a locally produced hunting and fishing show that was its 28th year. The problem. Mr. Bass says, was that "Outdoorsmen," airing in Thursday prime time and rebroadcast on Saturday, wasn't carrying as many viewers on the weeknight as Mr. Bass wanted.

Mr. Bass decided to drop the Thursday show and broadcast the show on Saturday night only. But Jimmy Holt, the show's host and a former member of the city's Metro Council, instead chose to end it, in part because of the schedule shake-up. He was convinced the change would cause the show's audience numbers to drop, and he believed that sportsmen should be provided with advance information on weekend hunting conditions - Saturday was too late. "I wasn't happy at all." Mr. Holt says.

Despite such controversy, WDCN has seen its viewership steadily improve. By November 1999. the average number of households tuning in each weeknight during prime time had risen to 199,000 from 180,000 a year earlier.

Meanwhile, when the 1,300 voice mails were discovered. Mr. Bass instructed staffers to set up a sort of triage unit to determine how many calls weren't too late to return. Even though many of the calls had been sitting there for months, they dutifully returned as many as possible.

Mr. Bass views the effort as just part of stepping up customer service in the wake of government ownership. "Before, we were responsible to the owner and everybody else came fifth," he adds. "We're gradually changing that."