Preparing this year’s taxes will provide your best chance yet to see how much money you’re spending on television — something that long ago was “free.”  If your like most you pay a monthly subscription fee to a satellite or local cable company.

I was shocked to discover what I’m paying each year for TV.  Many of friends are paying close to $200 a month … that’s $2,400 a year.  In today’s economy, we’re all looking to save a dollar — if not a quarter, a dime, nickel or a penny.

That’s the moment we realized how we could save $600 to $2,000 or more each year on television.  How? The savings begin the moment you cancel your satellite or cable subscription (note:  Check any term associated with your current subscription to avoid paying a cancellation penalty.).  Next you can begin taking advantage of the new digital TV channels being provided over-the-air by local broadcasters.

Consider that most homes can receive local over-the-air television with an indoor or outdoor antenna.  And with the switch to digital television — DTV in both standard and high-definition (HDTV) — picture quality has improved.  Gone are the “ghosts” and “snow” that filled screens long ago.  In fact, the picture quality you receive over-the-air may well be better than that provided from satellite or cable services because of what are called “compression artifacts” that result from additional signal processing.

Most cable and satellite subscribers aren’t aware that with the switch to digital television, local television stations are actually broadcasting up to four channels — where they’d provided only one channel in the past.   This means that even in small cities with five stations, you may now be able to receive up to twenty over-the-air channels for free.  Satellite services won’t provide you with all of those new channels.  Local cable companies may (or may not), but if they do, chances are you’ll be required to pay an additional monthly fee for a digital cable box for each television in your home.

While cable and satellite TV services are offering discounted subscription rates for those who sign up now (note the ads in the left column), those rates won’t last forever.  Most subscribers are shocked to learn the ultimate cost of their monthly subscription.

Stunned, some of my friends asked, “What about all the programs I’ll miss?”  Think hard about how much and exactly what television you’re watching, then start trimming your monthly bill.

Remember, most people’s favorites are on the four major commercial networks (NBC, ABC, CBS & FOX) and PBS — almost everywhere you can watch those programs for free using an antenna and a DTV set, or a conventional TV set and a DTV Converter Box.

Well, what about those programs my friends love that are only available on cable or satellite?  There are more options than you might think — especially if you’ve just saved the cost of your annual satellite or cable subscription.

First, many television programs can be viewed via the internet on your computer. Just go to network’s websites like PBS.org, NBC.com, CBS.com, ABC.com, FOX.com, and programs from a variety of networks on HULU.com.  You can watch programs on all of these sites for free.

Second, you can pay to watch other programs — without commercial interruption from Apple’s iTunes Store ($1.99  to $2.99 per show) or you can spend a few of those saved dollars and buy Blu-Ray or standard DVD’s of your favorite series or rent them from a service like NetFlix (they mail your selected DVD’s to you and you mail them back).  Some new Blu-Ray DVD players even allow you to download NetFlix films as part of your modest monthly subscription at no additional cost and view them as you would a high-definition DVD.

Confusion about who, when, and how to receive digital television is growing. Adding to the confusion are competing messages from the government, consumer electronics retails, broadcasters, cable and satellite subscription television services.

To quickly understand why being able to receive over-the-air television signals is better, read my July 25, 2008 post, “DTV > Why Over-The-Air Is Better . . .”

Enjoy your free, over-the-air digital channels . . . and remember, the nationwide switch digital television (DTV) provides a chance to save more than just a few dollars!

Thank you.

Strong Marketing of a Weak Success Measure:
Charity Navigator Vital Mission Hides Flawed Rankings

Everyone wants to figure out how to evaluate nonprofits. Grantmakers, donors, volunteers, journalist, and nonprofit leaders.

Individuals who contribute and the nonprofits that use those funds to provide vital services would both benefit from ranking of effectiveness and efficiency. Such evaluations would encourage nonprofits to constantly improve their performance and allow funders to make smarter investments.

Those were the driving motivations behind the creation of Charity Navigator and other nonprofit rating / ranking services. Yet, if you believe Charity Navigator or others have found the holy grail of evaluating nonprofit organizations you’re sadly mistaken — and I encourage you to keep reading.

For-profits have one thing nonprofits do not — a clear set of financial measures of success. Across for-profits is it relatively easy to measure and compare profits. Yet, it is much tougher to measure effective and efficient service – the mission and goal of all nonprofits.

Charity Navigator’s rankings are the result of gross oversimplifications. For example, Charity Navigator’s:

• Evaluation process begins and ends with creating ratios based on almost any two numbers found in nonprofit organizations’ IRS Form 990.
• Presumption is that all nonprofits complete their IRS Form 990’s in the same manner, using precisely the same definitions of what income and expenses are reported in response to a given question on Form 990.
• Ratings do not include an “affirmative confirmation” from nonprofits’ top management to guarantee the accounting basis of specific figures or that the resulting ranking is both correct and fair.

Imagine a nonprofit institution raising capital funds for a new facility. Simply looking at the IRS Form 990 could lead one to believe the organization had a dramatic increase in revenues. That’s good news to the nonprofit — unless, for example, Charity Navigator decides to use that year as a “base year” on which to evaluate future year’s revenues. Future ratings and rankings could show the nonprofit in decline as a result of the decreasing revenue.

Or, consider how you would rate a nonprofit whose mission is to care for people during and immediately following natural disasters? Funding for the organization is like winding a clock-spring. All of the investments in infrastructure are “waste” if there are no disasters.

On the other hand, if there is a disaster and the expensive infrastructure doesn’t exist, the organization will fail to react instantly when conditions demand nothing less. Only when the spring is wound can the organization deploy resources and services when they are most needed.

These situations have me reflecting on the age-old loaded-question, “Are you still beating your wife?” Charity Navigator’s ratings, rankings, and top ten lists are all presumed to be true as published until and unless they are challenged a nonprofit that was damaged by an overly simplified ranking system that is not based on an apples-to-apples comparison.

In my view, Charity Navigator, its ratings, and its top ten lists are nothing more than great merchandising of a weak underlying product.

For example, wouldn’t any donor or nonprofit be interested in the following “Top Ten” Charity Navigator lists?

• 10 of the Best Charities Everyone’s Heard Of
• 10 Highly Rated Charities Relying on Private Contributions
• 10 Charities Routinely in the Red
• 10 Charities Stockpiling Your Money
• 10 Charities Expanding in a Hurry
• 10 Charities in Deep Financial Trouble

These lists — while attractive — are the “National Enquirer” approach to a topic that demands more substantive evaluation of nonprofits’ effectiveness and efficiency. While not as quick or easy as Charity Navigator’s overly simplistic rankings, it’s fascinating to see Charity Navigator’s own recommendation on how to evaluate nonprofit institutions that it does NOT rate (listed below) far more closely represent the time, questions, and interaction with nonprofits that are required to evaluate their effectiveness and efficiency.

Charity Navigator’s Suggestions On Evaluating Nonprofit Success

1. Can your charity clearly communicate who they are and what they do?
2. Can your charity define their short-term and long-term goals?
3. Can your charity tell you the progress it has made (or is making) toward its goal?
4. Do your charity’s programs make sense to you?
5. Can you trust your charity?
6. Are you willing to make a long-term commitment to your organization?

I give up! If these are the questions that Charity Navigator recommends you and I ask of nonprofits, why don’t they use these same questions themselves?

I can think of four answers:

• It would require an enormous investment of time and money to gather the answers.
• Even if answers to the above questions were collected, they don’t lend themselves to numeric ratings;
• Without numeric ratings, it is next to impossible to produce apples-to-apples rankings, and, finally;
• Without low-cost, easy to produce nonprofit rankings, there is no Charity Navigator.

Regardless of their size, the rating of a nonprofit’s service is complicated and highly subjective. The list of provided above by Charity Navigator is a good starting point for discussions with a nonprofit’s leadership, top management and key professionals.

But here in all this complexity and subjectivity is the beauty of making an individual decision to support a specific nonprofit organization.

Over time, you learn about those organizations dealing with the causes you care about most – and are passionate about their mission.

After all, if it were that easy to determine the most successful nonprofits, everyone could invest in nonprofit mutual funds and fund managers would make the investments in only those organizations’ services rated at the top of the list in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.

Large donors and small donors. Very well funded and not so well funded nonprofits. In all of these cases, half of the fun of investing in nonprofits – in giving away your hard earned cash – is learning about the similarities and differences between the half-dozen organizations meeting needs you believe are essential.

In the end, a significant contributor only has two good options.

• They can become involved, get engaged, and learn about the organizations they fund.
• Or, they can simply hire me (just teasing) – or any other consultant with substantial hands-on, nonprofit experience, to collect information on nonprofits of interest and provide them with a thoughtful narrative report.

My real concern is that Charity Navigator’s rankings appear to be so powerful and easy to use that:

• Individuals will fail to take the time and gather the information to determine which ratings may be solid and which are gross oversimplifications or just plain wrong.
• Potential contributors will simply discard a deserving nonprofit from their list of giving priorities, and / or;
• Donors will fail to use the rankings provided by Charity Navigator as one of many topics to discuss with the top management of the nonprofit that interests them.

Charity Navigator’s (and other data aggregators / information providers) current ratings, rankings, and practice of publishing the “truth” until proven otherwise fails potential donors, some nonprofits, and its own mission.

I’m not suggesting that every poor rating of a nonprofit by Charity Navigator is incorrect or undeserved. I am urging the nonprofit industry to create better measures and / or methods of evaluating nonprofits’ mission-driven services in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.

Until that time, I would urge all nonprofits to be open and accountable and all current and potential contributors to become more involved with and knowledgeable about the nonprofits engaged in the causes that interest them the most.

<http://www.charitynavigator.org>

Thanks to those of you who took action based on my previous post about DirecTV and The Dish Network’s failure to include local public television stations new, High Definition (HD) channels in their “local station packages” as they do for commercial TV networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX.

When will the two satellite subscription services begin carrying PBS member stations HD signals? We don’t know. But, to illustrate the challenge, this post describes what DirecTV and the Dish Network had to say when I contacted them as a loyal public television viewer.

I talked or exchanged e-mails with both companies’ customer service teams. On July 6th, DirecTV replied to my inquiry with, “Thank you for writing to inquire about receiving PBS HD in your area. I’m sorry for any frustration this causes you, and I’m happy to respond to your e-mail.”

They continued, “While I do not have any information specifically about PBS in your area, we do value programming like this and realize PBS in HD is important to our customers. Unfortunately, due to limits in bandwidth, we are not able to offer all of the local channels we provide to the Salt Lake area in HD. I have entered a request for PBS HD to be offered in your area. Our programming department take channel requests like yours into account when deciding on new programming to offer.”

And they concluded, “As mentioned in our previous e-mail, we are launching new satellites to increase the number of HD channels that we are able to offer. It is possible that PBS HD may become available at that time; however, I wouldn’t want to speculate on any dates for this or our service provided by other companies.”

The Dish Network reply was more concise, “Thank you for your e-mail. At this time, we do not have specific information when the PBS stations will be launched in HD. We are currently working on offering more HD channels in the future. Please log-on to our website for more information about new programming and services being added to Dish Network.”

Increasingly, public television stations are the only stations in that are owned, governed, and operated within the communities they serve and not by far away profit making corporations.

Yes, many satellite subscribers can receive a digital / HD public television signal over-the-air if they install an indoor or outdoor antenna (if zoning permits it) and plug it into their satellite receiver box. Frankly, I would suggest everyone consider this option if they can receive over-the-air signals.

However, in a world of vastly more choices in television programming services — what were once called “channels” — there is a difference between what people can do to receive a signal and what they will do.

DirecTV and the Dish Network are now providing the commercial network stations’ HD signals as part of their “local channel packages.” Now it is time for them to do the same for local public television stations.

In my August 7, 2007 post, I expressed the concern that some viewers may be left behind when all of U.S. television transitions to digital transmission on February 17, 2009 — just 537 days from now. While cable and satellite viewers won’t notice the change, viewers with conventional TV sets and rabbit ear antennas will find nothing but a snow-filled screen.

As it turns out, some viewers have already been left behind. Those viewers who value their local PBS / public television stations and who subscribe to satellite television services DirecTV and the Dish Network.

DirecTV’s and Dish Network’s include the traditional analog and new digital program services of your local ABC, CBS, NBC, and the FOX commercial network stations. Local public television stations’ digital signals can only be received via cable or over-the-air with an antenna and digital (HDTV) receiver.

Both DirecTV and Dish Network’s have decided NOT to include the new digital / HD program services of local PBS / public television stations in their “Local HD Channel Packages.”

Obviously, DirecTV and the Dish Network are carrying the commercial network digital signals because they believe the digital and often High-Definition (HD) programming provides “value added” for their subscribers.

Given the nature of many PBS programs, the digital service would provide enhanced picture and sound quality. You have to wonder if I can watch a commercial network “game show” in digital high-definition, why would DirecTV and the Dish Network not want to provide the same enhanced viewing experience to NOVA and NATURE viewers?

Because no one demands it. This must change. We must demand that the new digital / HD services from our local PBS stations be treated equally with the local commercial network stations.

Want to make a difference? Call one or both subscription satellite services and let them know you want your local PBS station’s high-definition, digital programming included as part of their local HD channel package lineup. Call them now:

DIRECTV – Phone: 888-777-2454

DISH NETWORK – Phone: 888-825-2557

Share your passion for the new high-definition (HD) programs available from your local PBS / public television station.

In 560 days, television broadcasting, as Americans’ have always known it, will cease to exist. At that moment, local television stations will take the last step in the transition from analog to digital broadcasting.

On February 19, 2009 this change — of which far to many Americans are totally unaware — is both exciting and potentially troublesome.

Digital television is exciting because it promises theater quality viewing in your own home. The sound quality is similar to moving from LP’s to CD’s — stunning.

At the same time, the shift to digital only signals could be a problem, leaving many viewers, especially those in rural areas and those with low disposable income, without television at all. That’s a problem.

If you’ve already purchased an HDTV set, tuner, and antenna, you’re probably already receiving over-the-air digital signals. If not, you’ll be able to buy a converter that will pick up the new digital television signals and convert them so they can be viewed on your old receiver — admittedly at lower picture and sound quality. If, as most Americans, you subscribe to a cable television service, you won’t notice the change from analog to digital television because your set-top converter box will function just like the decoder described above.

If you own or purchase an HDTV set, you’ll be able to connect it to the cable converter box and view the highest quality signals available. If you still own a conventional analog set, you won’t lose service — but you won’t get improved quality either.

Most homes in America will notice one impact of all these changes. And they’ll feel it on any conventional TV set in the home that is using an antenna to receive an over-the-air signal (e.g., not connected to a cable converter box).

Many of these conventional / analog TV sets will still be in use in 2009. And if viewers watched a favorite program on February 18, 2009 on one of those sets, they’ll find the set’s screen blank the following morning.

Television is changing and the change will be easier on some than others. There are special challenges facing public media, including your local PBS member station. We’ll hit those issues in a future post.