Pat, you are picking the wrong battle.

Today (or tonight depending on when you are reading this,) I would like to send a personal message to Del. Patrick McDonough (R) who represents District 7 in Baltimore and Harford Counties…YOU’VE PICKED THE WRONG FIGHT…in regards to Maryland Public Television last year.

In August of last year, MPT decided to use one of its digital sub-channels to broadcast “V-me,” a public television service in Spanish. In response to this, McDonough vowed to write a bill to establish a commission to decide what goes on the digital sub-channels. This was something I could not agree with him on the basis that it is completely un-American to control content of the airwaves, outside of things indecent…make that reasonably indecent. Don’t worry, I still believe that English should be encouraged, immigration laws should be enforced and fencing the border is a waste of time.

Now to recent memory…this past week, where MPT announced that the program “Artworks This Week” would be a mere rehashing of older episodes as the money in which would have been used to produce new episodes will go towards pushing the statewide network into the digital age by February.

This would be all well and good if it weren’t for two things. For starters, Baltimore is starting to grow as an Arts community. This was confirmed by a recent article in American Style magazine in which charm city was in the top ten for big city arts destination (number nine to be exact.)

At this stage in the game, it is disrespectful to the arts community not to have current coverage when you have the Walters Art Museum, Hippodrome Theatre, Lyric Opera House and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for starters. Not covering the arts scene in Baltimore, let alone the rest of the state (where you have the Strathmore in Montgomery County, the Chesapeake Arts Center in Anne Arundel County and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at UMCP) is a slap in the face. If rehashing old episodes with new introductions is a slap in the face to the growing arts community in the free state, you can imagine the next thing I am going to say…

The daily MPT schedule is an insult to everyone’s intelligence. As far as daily programs produced by MPT of local interest, the network provides two hours and 55 minutes of original broadcasts out of the 168 weekly hours of programming, representing almost two percent of it’s total schedule. If Del. McDonough was looking for the waste of a powerful asset, it is not adding V-me to the digital television tier. The waste is that MPT is not producing enough programs of local interest.

McDonough as well as the other elected officials need to call MPT to the carpet when it comes to its lack of local productions with programs specific to Maryland. There is no reason for them not to have a daily statewide newscast. Bob The Vid Tech should still be doing new daily episodes. On a somewhat related note, I find it interesting that Bob “The Vid Tech” Heck who hasn’t filmed any fresh episodes in recent memory, was nominated for an regional Emmy award this year. It should be noted that the daily production of the Vid Tech segments were stopped a few years ago. Whether they restarted production again, I have not heard.

While I understand that the trend in television these days is to keep costs low and revenues high (hence why the only local programming on commercial stations are newscasts,) public television has a historic obligation to fill the void that the commercial broadcasters leave open. Maryland Public Television is currently failing its obligation of local productions.

One can argue that MotorWeek is produced by MPT, but that is a national show produced by MPT. The bottom line is that it’s called MARYLAND Public Television for a reason. So please Mr. McDonough, if anything, get a bipartisan effort to re-insert the Maryland back in MPT.

Now to clear things up…
Last week, when taking The Gazette to task, I said:

“Although the former Baltimore City Police Commissioner and state police superintendent [Ed Norris] was indeed convicted, they might have found that there were some questionable circumstances surrounding it.”

First and foremost, yes, he was convicted. However, he took a plea deal before the case went to trial. The only mention of Norris having an extra-marital affair was in court records in which prosecutors allegedly had proof that he used a supplemental police account to fund his alleged creeping. That was the questionable circumstance.

For The Gazette to add something that was only revealed in court documents was flat out stupid. I remember watching an interview Norris had with WBAL-TV (Channel 11) denying the allegations that he cheated on his wife in 2005. Also around the same time, he denied the trysts in another interview with the St. Petersburg Times in Florida.

You have to remember that even though Norris was convicted, remember who brought it on, an overzealous prosecutor who wanted to be on the front pages. The same said prosecutor would later make himself look bad by wallowing in victimhood in an attempt to prop himself up as an honorable servant. Sorry Mr. DiBagio, you failed in spinning it

kennyburns@marylandpolitics.us