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.
Good Riddance.
Why? This is the 21st century and I will bet that every place with electricity has internet access and probably Dish Network. Even if not, in a few months Starlink will come on line starting at $99 per month and cover the planet. Just because we always did it this way is no reason not to be smarter now. Do we still pay for the horse manure scrapers to clean the streets? Just a rhetorical question, if some city budgets are closely scrutinized there are still probably expense lines for it.
Long overdue. Story is told of an ARCS director demanding the State pay the lease for a transmitter site in a village. State administrator asked a local friend to photograph the site. Photograph showed the shack with no door or windows, off its piling foundation, no antenna on the rust tower. That, and one has to wonder about public money paying to rebroadcast commercial TV signals – complete with advertisements – 24/7 while rural teachers complain the students stay up all night watching game shows. Thank you Dept. of Admin for at least taking this to bid to see what’s what.
We tried to turn our attention to APBI and APBC back in the Murkowski Administration, and even questioning them got you called a racist and worse. We could have written most of the same words about their poor performance and non-existent accountability back then. We basically broke our pick on it and in the waning days of the Administration, people just had other things to do – like taking retirement and getting out. Obviously, Palin, Parnell, and Walker didn’t address it. So, kudos to the Commissioner of Administration if she’s actually made something work. Now cue the screeching about racism and discriminating against rural Alaska in 3 – 2-1.
ARCS is obsolete, also the state can’t afford the price tag. I grew up in the bush and only had AFRN military radio. Today the villages have more options.
Television is the reason my generation struggle with reading comprehension and weak reading skills. I think Rural Alaskans imcluding all Alaskans will be better off, even a bit smarter, if we chose discarding the t.v. screens and cut back on the YouTube and Netflix time. Hahahaha. Although after Netflix little child porn show, no one decent should still be subscribed.
Now, if the same rural crowd can get fired up how low their community’s reading scores dive. (Airplane noise dive. boom!) Hahahaha
People born after 1933 sure like their T.V more than reading books and reading stories to the children around them.
By the way I appreciate Must Read Alaska’s resource development and business reports. The business matter goes right over my head. At least i cant get snarky after reading it cause the subject make think too hard. Hahahaha
It would appear that contracts with the State were broken. 1.6 mil for administration? Who’s riding this gravy train?
Petroleum revenues allowed all of us to ignore the inconsistencies between what is paid by state government in the bush and what residents of many municipalities provide for themselves. And it’s not just the bush that has state government pay for local government services; it’s Gustavus, Tok, Hoonah, and many other places. And it’s not only communications and entertainment, it’s PCE, REAAs, sewer and water, airports, and municipal streets and roads. Beginning next month the legislature will look at hundreds of millions of dollars in additional state debt, and the proceeds from selling those bonds will go for local government infrastructure in many rural communities that are instead paid for with bonds paid by local taxpayers in places like Ketchikan, Fairbanks and Anchorage. Grappling with these inconsistencies must come sooner or later, and many people believe that the best way to begin is to first reduce the size of the state operating budget. So far that has not happened, and state government has been held harmless from the decline in petroleum income by spending savings and reducing the PFD. I would not bet that 2021 will be the year when we will begin to address the inconsistencies, but I would bet that each year we postpone doing so makes the problems larger, as does increasing the amount of state debt. Does anyone disagree or have a different perspective?
I personally installed the digital equipment for the ARCS system in Bettles/Evansville at the Bettles Fire Hall – years ago. I’ve been taking care of the system here for 30 years. The City of Bettles ays for the electricity and all the maintenance. I’ve had a great working relationship with their technical support and programming staff. And I don’t watch it, since football has become politicized and all the other broadcast shows are simply leftist trash.
We depend on ARCS. Not all of us have funds to pay for sat TV, and cable is not available – and not all of us would consider either worth the cost. Bettles has no truly high-speed internet, and we are awaiting Starlink to finish Beta to see if $99/month is worthwhile. Oh yeah – we can order Velocity from Microcom at an outrageous install price and $350/month… but with that one, at least I could attend Zoom meetings.
Despite the bellyaching from the above comments, we choose to live out here. Please don’t take away one of the very few programs designed for the bush. I hear a lot of grousing from folks in Anchorage about how the bush is “subsidized” by the State – you are far more subsidized than us. Stop the NIMBY lies and let’s work together to equitably cut the State budget.
Not the first time a State Contract has been over scoped and under funded. Anybody that has worked in the Bush understand the difficulty in coordinating with 185 different villages and entities. ARCS is needed until there is at least 3G capability in every village
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