New York City ethnic broadcasters take their protest to Washington (03/03/96)

New York City ethnic broadcasters take their protest to Washington

by Yaro Bihun
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

WASHINGTON - In a last-ditch effort to prevent the "ethnic cleansing" of television broadcasting in the New York City area, representatives of various ethnic programs on WNYC-TV Channel 31 came to Washington Feb. 28 to lobby Congress for a public hearing before the Federal Communications Commission on the sale of this city-owned station to ITT-Dow Jones.

WNYC-TV, which broadcasts some 60 hours of multicultural programs a week - including the Ukrainian program "Kontakt"-was sold recently for $207 million to bolster the city's depleted treasury, according to Gita Bajaj, the chairperson of the Coalition of Ethnic Broadcasters. The new owners of the station, ITT-Down Jones, plan to turn it into an all-sports and news station, she said.

"If the station is sold, it will be, plain and simply an ethnic cleansing of the airwaves," said Ms. Bajaj, who is the producer of "Eye on Asia" on WNYC-TV, which carries some 20 programs serving the area's Ukrainian, Polish,

African-American, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Haitian, Indian, Israeli, Italian, Japanese, Nepalese, Pakistani and Sri Lankan ethnic communities.

New York City has offered to carry ethnic programs on its cable television service "Crosswalks," but Ms. Bajaj pointed out that this is not an acceptable alternative because the cable service would reach only 20 percent of its present audience.

Steven J. Kovaliw, president of Ukrainian Television Entertainment and producer of "Kontakt," told a news conference at the Longworth House Office Building here that his parents and many Ukrainian American immigrants in the United States for many years were denied news from their homeland by a repressive government there.

"Now that Ukraine is moving toward democracy and we have access to events in Ukraine, we are going to be denied this access a second time," he said.

"Kontakt," a one-hour weekly program, includes news and features from Ukraine and the diaspora, entertainment, sports, a children section, information about local community events and advertising.

The program began broadcasting four years ago in New York and Toronto and has since spread to Chicago, Cleveland, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Saskatchewan and Thunder Bay. According to Mr. Kovaliw, the program will begin airing in Detroit and Philadelphia within half a year.

Mr. Kovaliw pointed out that the original mandate of WNYC stipulated that it would provide educational and cultural programming as a non-commercial station. Twice in the past, he added, the city argued for maintaining the non-commercial station "that broadcasts foreign-language programming for unserved and underserved communities within the city, programming intended to bring the city's cultural and artistic resources to those who might otherwise be unable to profit from them, and educational and cultural programming designed to unify and serve the disparate ethnic, cultural, racial and linguistic groups which comprise New York City."

As they did then, the needs of the city's multicultural community today far outweigh the need for "a quick fix for New York City's budget woes and yet-another 24-hour news and sports super-station," Mr. Kovaliw said.

The sale of WNYC is "contrary to the public interest," Mr. Kovaliw added. "There is no available alternative for ethnic programmers to reach the diverse community they now reach."

The station could change hands very soon, within a week or two, Mr. Kovaliw said, and that is why the broadcasters were lobbying New York City area congressional representatives in Washington.

Two representatives appeared at the news conference and spoke on behalf of the coalition's efforts: Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), respectively, of the 14th and 18th Congressional Districts.

The group has also received the support of Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr.(D-N.J.), and New York's former mayor Ed Koch, who protested the sale of this "irreplaceable treasure" in an interview on WNYC and said that "this is the dumbest thing Rudy (Mayor Rudolph Giuliani) has ever done."

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