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Don Checots
Don Checots (CHEE-CAUGHTS) is a native of Pennsylvania. He left there in 1965 to join the United States Air Force. While in the Air Force Mr. Checots became involved with Armed Forces Radio and Television, and helped install AFTN radio and television services in Thailand. From there, he assumed more responsible management positions in public broadcasting stations and eventually moved to Bemidji, Minnesota where he built a full-service public TV station. While there, he received a Bush Foundation Summer Fellows Award and attended the Harvard Business School's Public Broadcasting Executive Management Program. After Bemidji, he moved to South Bend, Indiana as President/General Manager of public television station WNIT. In January 1997, he moved to Wichita as President/General Manager of KPTS and works with the Board and community to reinvent public broadcasting in South-Central Kansas. Don may be contacted by phone at (316) 838-3090, or by e-mail at dchecots@kpts.org.
Media
2002-05-01 08:53:00
They sound the same
Don Checots Question:  What is the difference between the Public Broadcasting Service and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting?Answer:  Primarily, it's the difference between who is making and distributing what you watch on KPTS and who is paying for those programs and services.  The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is a program and information distribution service.  The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), in turn, helps stations and producers by giving them some of the funds needed to create their programs and services.  The CPB also provides direct financial support to stations through Community Service Grants.The ownership of PBS consists of the member stations in the network, while the CPB is a private corporation created and funded by an act of Congress.  Your local public television station creates some of its own programs, and may also pay producers and distributors directly for what you watch. Creating any TV program is an expensive process.  Even relatively simple shows such Kansas Week or On The Record, produced by your local PBS station KPTS, require dozens of hours of crew labor per week. Electricity for lights, cameras, studio air conditioning, videotape machines and our transmitter is another expense.  That's just for our local programming.  Now compare these to something like the recently broadcast Mark Twain by Ken Burns or the upcoming Frontier House that begins April 29th.  Major documentaries such as these or The American Experience begin with months of research and writing. This is followed by more months of filming and taping including recording narration's and music, finally hundreds of hours of material has to be distilled down to one or two hours of the program you see.  Although all of us in public television make sacrifices for "the love of our craft", the creators and crews have to eat, buy textbooks for their children and send their moms flowers, just like you and I.
 
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