KCPT kills off its Auction; is this on Stanton or Hogstrom?

What would Kansas City Public Television be without its venerable, infernal spring and holiday auctions chewing up hours of prime time, as it has ever since it began broadcasting 36 years ago?

Well, we're about to find out.

KCPT interim CEO Susan Stanton informed members of its online auction site by email this afternoon that "we have made a very difficult decision to discontinue the KCPT Auction." The Auction page of the KCPT website has already been taken down, though elsewhere on the site, they're still taking volunteers for the fall auction.

Stanton's letter went on to cite the station's mission, financial performance and its "brand awareness and perception" -- which tells me it wasn't making enough money. I mean, c'mon, "brand awareness"? Unless KCPT is planning to eliminate its on-air pledge drives, which it isn't, then removing auctions won't do a thing to change the "perception" of longtime members that the station pre-empts way too much programming. No, it had to be about the money.

Here's my question: What's the interim CEO doing ending the auctions? That's kind of a big call to make, isn't it? It couldn't wait?

Auctions date back to 1953, when San Francisco's KQED staged the first one in a last-ditch effort to keep the fledgling educational station on the air. As Current described it in 1997,

"Without realizing it [KQED] put on the best show that has been on a San Francisco station." The telethon had featured, along with civic leaders, physicist Edward Teller and stripper Tempest Storm. During a later auction, someone bought the (unlaundered) sheets in which Kim Novak had slept the night before at the Cliff Hotel for $250, cut them up and made them into ties--in which form they were auctioned again. Shirley Temple, a frequent guest, once led the bidding for a boa constrictor. During his auction stint, Dick Gregory remarked, "One hundred years ago I would have been for sale."

KQED's success in subsequent years with its auction ensured that every station would try it. Kansas City Public Television was incorporated in 1972 and took over Channel 19 from the Kansas City School District; later that year, it held its first auction. At its peak, the auctions raised about 6 percent of the station's annual budget.

According to the most recent Public TV Station Performance Report, published by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- the arm of Congress that actually hands out the money to public TV and radio stations -- auctions were generating about 5 percent of the average station's revenue. However, expenses came to two-thirds of revenues, meaning that auctions were, at best, performing half as well as they once did, and annoying the hell out of stations' regular viewers, who no longer viewed auctions as cute or entertaining but as a local version of something they already had plenty of on TV: home shopping channels.

And yet, auctions continued. Like everything else on public TV, auctions have been slow if not impossible to adapt to the changing television landscape.

That's not to say that the pre-emptions are going away. Next month, KCPT's fall membership drive begins promptly at 1 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5, and continues unabated for the next 11 days, knocking out all afternoon, weekend and prime-time shows during that time.

What's peculiar is that this message is being sent out (on a Friday afternoon, no less) by the interim CEO of KCPT. Stanton has every right to do this, but you have to wonder. Is she mopping up a mess left behind by former CEO, the supposedly cost-conscious Victor Hogstrom? Or was Stanton simply finishing up Hogstrom's old business? Was Hogstrom planning to kill off auction before his sudden departure?

• Previously on TV Barn: Hogstrom out at KCPT; a terrible loss

We will have to keep our eyes on this. Auctions at other stations around the country have sometimes ended badly, with merchandise disappearing and money disappearing and auctioneers disappearing. Hopefully the only unusual thing going on here is that rarest of events in public television: Somebody actually had the nerve to cancel a program.

Comments

[steve]

Wasn't Susan Stanton the CEO of Sutherland's, who all but drove that company into the ground? Great choice for interim...sheesh

[Mark Roberts]

Interesting enough, KQED-TV hasn't done an auction since 1990. But KQED sure loves the pledge drives!

[DKC]

If the website is soliciting workers for the fall auction then it probably wasn't Victor's call. And Stanton was part of the management team for Payless not Sutherlands. As long as KCPT leaves Dr. Who on and alone I don't care what they do.

[Mark Jeffries]

I don't think there's any major market PTVer left that's doing onair auctions. (WTTW in Chicago ended theirs close to 25 years ago and replaced it with a direct mail and now online sweepstakes that's promoted in station break promos every spring.)

I've long suspected that the reason PTV stations in smaller markets have kept their auctions going was because fear of offending the longtime volunteer force, which often included the community rich folk and movers and shakers, especially in instances where a college-run station has its fund-raising done through a "Friends of..." organization, since the college itself can't raise funds. (And fear of angry letters and withdrawal of money from supporters is why too often public broadcasting lets programming run long past its usefulness.) But ultimately what's done in auctions is the fact that they cost too much to put on and provide too small a net to the station, compared to pledge drives or a direct mail campaign.

[Pat Ryan]

I worked at KUHT/Houston Public Television when we cancelled the annual auction back in the early 1990s: the high costs of production, and the rising unhappiness of viewers, weren't worth the revenue it generated. There was hardly a peep of protest.

[WFH]

I can't believe it has taken KCPT this many years to get rid of their auction. Those things are money drains and kill viewership. This step is a positive for your city, not a negative. Should have been done years ago.

[Troy Diggs]

I've volunteered for KCPT's auction, but when I moved to KC, it surprised me how local KCPT's auction is.

WKNO in Memphis had offered things like autographed TV show scripts, big trips, and nice gift baskets... here, it's atlases and gift certs for dry cleaning. (Not that there's anything wrong with that at all - I've gotten some great deals from the thing.)

Speaking of WKNO, it surprised me a few years ago when they actually increased their auction time from one a year -- to three. (A travel auction, an art auction, and a general merch one.)