bertschmidt

Thanks all. I tend to just be a lurker, but........

While WHRO does receive taxpayer support, it comprises only about 13% of our budget. Of course, those funds allow us to provide services to the Hampton Roads region not addressed by for-profit companies. 24,000 families from throughout the region think so highly about WHRO that they voluntarily provide the station financial support. Imagine that, giving money for something they could otherwise get for free. Clearly, WHRO is a valuable community asset. The DS3 line you refer to is paid, in great part, by the 17 local school divisions that own us. This broadband interconnection allows us to provide a vast array of services to our K-12 students, including on-demand, searchable video, correlated directly to the SOLs, as well as a full blown online school (which includes over 70 teachers) that gives students access to for-credit courses that they would otherwise not be able to take. It would be irresponsible for WHRO to not use any excess capacity from our capital infrastructure to ensure revenue diversity, especially in these dicey economic days. Of course, when we do bid on a commerical job, we pay taxes on any revenue we realize. And since we are primarily charged with using our capital assets for non-profit purposes (as opposed to the commercial companies that get to make money with their assets from day one), we feel pretty comfortable that the playing field is level. Of course we also partner with a great number of for-profit companies to enhance services to the region. Of course, no ratings (TV or radio) are withheld from the public, by law or otherwise. Although it is true that Arbitron provides only commerical radio numbers directly to the local papers (much to our chagrin). When we get access to the numbers, we pass them on to the papers, but that usually happens after the numbers have already been published. Hope that better helps you understand WHRO. On a side note, groups like the Virginia Arts Festival and the Virginia Symphony are two of the many arts groups that make Hampton Roads such a wonderful place to live. Anyone that has lived outside of Hampton Roads for any length of time can see this clearly. Bert Schmidt WHRO

"What Matter's", WHRO's new weekly public affairs program covering important issues to the people of Hampton Roads can be seen Friday's at 8:30pm with a repeat at 10:30pm and numerous repeats over the weekend. It airs both on analog channel 15 and WHRO-HD (Channel 715 on Cox). We also offer "What Matter's" as a video or audio podcast at www.whro.org and iTunes.