After decades of operating ARCS — Alaska Rural Communications Services — Alaska Public Broadcasting Inc. has thrown in the towel.
The nonprofit operator did not even bother to submit a bid to continue the contract that is supposed to provide television and radio signals to 192 communities in rural Alaska.
At one point there were 192 ARC sites across the state, but after spending $5 million in the past seven years, only between 70-80 of them are thought to be operational, according to sources in the broadcasting industry.
It’s a guess, because APBI has not been able to provide the Alaska Public Broadcasting Commission or the Department of Administration with a verifiable number of the sites where they have mailed digital upgrades to, because APBI says it did not keep the records. How many are up and running, no one really knows.
See what’s on today on the ARCS station.
APBI describes its mission as providing engineering services to rural public radio stations and managing ARCS.
The contract was put out to bid by the Department of Administration in October, after it became apparent that for years, APBI has been providing minimal value. At the State level, procurement laws had not been followed, and money kept getting poured into APBI coffers. The bookkeeping at APBI was lax, and the state and Commission on Public Broadcasting oversight was also laissez-faire.
According to APBI’s IRS 990 report, it had an annual budget of $1.3 million in 2018.
What did APBI do with the $5 million? It bought transmitters, shipped them to communities, but did not ensure the transmitters were ever installed in many of the sites. At one location, the satellite receiver had been sitting idle for so long that it was hauled away because no one knew what it was for.
The decision to put the ARCS contract out to bid came after a blistering report earlier this year about APBI’s failures.
Now, it appears that Alaska Public Media may be the only bidder for the contract, which has not yet been awarded.
Although the bidding document specifically says “News releases related to this RFP will not be made without prior approval of the project director,” Alaska Public Media has told a television reporter that his organization got the contract. A call with the Department of Administration verified that the bid has not been awarded.
The contract has three parts:
- Collecting and assembling programs into packets and shipping them to the satellite for ARCS programs, and maintaining the uplink. The satellite is operated under a separate contract with a private company.
- Digital upgrades to meet a new FCC law that prohibits non-digital television broadcasting after July of 2021. As many as 100 sites were left uncompleted by APBI and need to be done in the next six months.
- Running a troubleshooting help line for rural communities so that when they experience failures, they can get help to accomplish the repairs.
Bidders were told they could bid on one, two, or all three of the components of the contract. At this point, it’s unclear if Alaska Public Media wants to take on all three of the items, or will only provide two of the three.
