VANCOUVER: The former general manager of Knowledge Network, fired from his position May 14, warns operational changes to B.C.’s 20-year-old public broadcaster will dramatically impair its ability to serve its audience.

Bohdan Zajcew, who had been GM for three-and-a-half years in a 15-year career with the Knowledge Network (KN), says he was let go for ‘apparently irreconcilable differences regarding the future strategic direction of Knowledge Network.’

In fact, the board of the Open Learning Agency (OLA) – a provincial education provider and KN’s parent organization since 1988 – has gone in the completely opposite direction from the business plan he presented Jan. 30.

Zajcew’s plan pushed for a stronger public-private partnership for the broadcaster and more autonomy as a freestanding crown corporation or special operating agency. It proposed to increase KN’s budget from $11 million per year to $18 million through alternative sources such as private minority ownership, program sales, and new growth services such as the Interactive division.

Zajcew says right after he left KN, the OLA began making radical changes to the network’s operating division, ‘cannibalizing its parts and hiving resources into other parts of the organization under the guise of integration/restructuring.’ He says he doubts the viability of the business plan and the network’s overall strategy.

Not surprisingly, the interim GM ‘totally disagrees.’

The OLA board has opted for an integration strategy that melds at least four operational areas of OLA and KN, says Sid Segal, who is also OLA’s VP Administration and is set to retire in January. He declined to comment about Zajcew’s termination.

There will be no sale of KN’s equity or licence, explains Segal, but the broadcaster will seek partnerships with local production companies.

The comments highlight the troublesome marriage for the OLA and KN.

‘OLA is in the education business, trying to carve a role for itself in the formal, credit-driven e-learning space,’ explains Zajcew. ‘KN is a television-network engaged in public educational broadcasting. The two have almost nothing in common. Their policies, practices, timelines, and organizational cultures are unique. In fact, they often work at cross-purposes. Television is not an efficient way to deliver educational courses.’

Unique Linkages

Segal admits that the OLA has done a poor job integrating the two organizations, but insists that the board wants now to implement the original vision outlined when the merger took place 13 years ago. He says the plan is to capitalize and rationalize the ‘unique linkages’ available to OLA as a credit-granting educational institution with broad reach.

Segal says efficiencies will be realized by merging four departments: marketing and communications (which is responsible for fundraising and membership), Web development, production, and programming.

‘We need to bring together all the producers of courses, Web material, computer material and television,’ says Segal. ‘It’s more efficient and it allows us to develop things once for many uses.’

Segal says there will be no dilution of efforts to maintain KN’s fundraising and membership drives, contrary to comments by Zajcew. The 65 staff members of KN, subject to a ‘hands-off’ agreement with the B.C. Government Employees Union, will not be forced to join the union like the rest of OLA’s 535 employees. There has been no firm decision whether to phase out the GM’s job when Segal retires.

Meanwhile, KN’s budget of about $11 million ($2.7 million of which goes to OLA as an overhead charge) will be maintained or enhanced by the new regime, says Segal.

The OLA as a whole has an annual budget approaching $60 million, $20 million of which comes from the provincial government, with the balance coming from OLA course fees. The Knowledge Network gets about $7 million per year from the OLA and raises $2 million from program partners and another $2 million from viewers each year.

By comparison, TVOntario has an operations budget of about $55 million per year, TeleQuebec about $80 million and the privately run Access Alberta about $14 million.

After all the charges, salaries and satellite transmission costs are accounted for, KN has about $750,000 per year for programming. Such a tiny budget, says Zajcew, makes it difficult for KN to maintain a program inventory that minimizes repeat airings and that meets its CRTC obligations.

He adds, the station needs a cash infusion of up to $1.2 million to upgrade technology and that doesn’t include the $5 million required to switch Knowledge Network to digital. Segal is going to commission a study of the technical requirements.

‘A review by the B.C. Assets and Land Corporation concluded last year by PriceWaterhouseCoopers stated that KN was an under-valued, under-resourced and under-utilized public asset in dire need of burnishing,’ says Zajcew. ‘What’s being done to Knowledge Network is wrong.’ Zajcew says he wonders how much input has come from the new government, the B.C. independent film and television production community, or the public. ‘People deserve to know.’

The Knowledge Network generates a weekly audience of one million viewers. Segal says there are no changes to the coming fall schedule.