The Alabama Educational Television Foundation Board voted 5-2 on Wednesday to approve a $39,500 contract with Cygnal to poll Alabamians on the programming provided by Alabama Public Television.
Despite only two commissioners objecting to the survey, tensions flared at the meeting as Commissioner Pete Conroy challenged the process and a group of citizens made their objections known.
The vote to conduct the survey is the culmination of months of discussion about the possibility of disaffiliating from PBS, which provides 90 percent of the programming for APTV.
Conroy said he is afraid that the board is losing the public’s trust.
“I’m afraid that this whole process has been rushed,” Conroy said. “I’m afraid too that we’re using this rainy day fund, which is untested. I don’t know that this contract before us has had legal review … I’m afraid of the political bias; Cygnal might be a terrific group, but they self-disclose as a being a GOP polling firm.”
The specter of political bias hung over the proceedings, as the initial attempts to separate from PBS came shortly after President Donald Trump cut ties with the Center for Public Broadcasting.
One of the questions on the draft survey poses a question about the political nature of APTV’s programming this way: “Based on what you have seen or heard, would you say the programming on Alabama Public Television leans politically liberal, leans politically conservative, or is generally balanced?”
“Y’all see the problem with that question,” asked John Northrop, a resident of Vestavia Hills. “Let me put it this way: I don’t watch public TV, but my next door neighbor does, and he says it’s biased, it’s filthy liberal—and I trust my next door neighbor. So yeah, I’ll answer your question: I think you’re filthy liberal. That’s stupid, folks.”
Ferris Stephens, who chairs the board, is one of two commissioners who led the original push to disaffiliate from PBS and Conroy and meeting attendees said this survey is tilted to rekindle that effort. Gov. Kay Ivey asked commissioners not to make a decision before conducting a survey of citizens.
“I wish this was a staff-led process,” Conroy said. “In the governor’s letter, she said it’s important that this is a deliberative process—what you’re doing here with this survey that is rushed is a snapshot. It’s not the deliberative process that the governor asked for, and I just wish that this committee wold consider the alternate, which would be using our brilliant staff to conduct the survey as we had been doing all along.”
The poll will survey 600 people across the state. Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison, D-Birmingham, asked the commission to make the survey public due to concerns about the framing of the questions.
“I think the crux of the matter is going to be in the questions that are going to be asked and how they’re going to be framed,” Coleman-Madison said. “People can make surveys to get the intended outcome that they want.”
Coleman-Madison also asked for the population sampling of the survey to be made public as well.
The survey should be completed by October 2 based on the contract, but could be done sooner, as the commission urged Signal to start work on it immediately.
The next meeting of the board will be held on September 29.
