ResourcesFROM THE EVANS SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRSThe.docx

Resources
FROM THE EVANS SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
The
Electronic
Hallway
®
Box 353060 · University of Wash
ington · Seattle WA
98195- 3060
www.hallway.org
This
case was prepared in 1987 for the National Association of
Educational Broadcasters by Dan H. Fenn, Jr., retired
faculty of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University, and faculty for the Cascade Center for
Public Service
Executive Programs. This case study is intended as a basis for
class discussion and is not intended to
suggest correct or incorrect handling of the situation depicted.
The Electronic Hallway is administered by the University of
Washington's
Daniel J.
Evans School of Public Affairs. This
material may not be altered or copied without written
permission from The Electronic Hallway.
For permission, email
[email protected]
, or phone (206) 616-
8777.

Electronic Hallway members are granted copy permission for
educational purposes per Member’s Agreement (
www.hallway.org
).
Copyright 1996 The Electronic Hallway
A CHANGE OF MANAGEMENT
After the announcement of his successor as Executive Director
of New Jersey Public Television
(NJPTV) on March 20, 1979, Dr. Lawrence T. Frymire busied
himself cleaning up the loose
ends of the position which he had held since
the system had become operational some nine
years before. Looking ahead to April 30, his last day in office,
he still wondered what had
happened --
why the Commissioners of the Public Broadcasting Authority
had suddenly
requested his resignation some four mon
ths before.
The newspapers thought they had the answer: Governor Brendan
T. Byrne was seeking to
establish political control over the state's public broadcasting
system. As evidence, they noted
that the leading contenders fo
r the job were
Herbert Wolfe,
Byrne's first information director,
and former Democratic Assemblyman Gordon MacInnes, both
politically involved with the
Governor. Frymire thought the pap
ers might be right -- but he was not completely sure.
NJPTV had come into existence in 1969
as the result of a citizens' study made in 1967-68 at
the instigation of then Governor Richard J. Hughes. Governor
Hughes had requested a
distinguished group of 18 men and women including the Provost

of Princeton, the Poetry Editor
of the Saturday Review, five members of his cabinet and TV
personalities like Dallas Townsend
and Dionne Warwick to produce a set "of policies, plans and
recommendations for the
development of public radio and television for the state." To
head the Commission he selected
Dr. Edward J.
Meade, Jr., then Program Officer in charge of Public Education
for the Ford
Foundation.
The Commission issued its report in May, 1968 and the
Governor quickly followed through
with its recommendations, filing the nec
essary legislation
to establish a
Public Broadcasting
Authority. Late that year, the Act was passed and signed, and
the Governor made the first
appointments of ten public members which were duly confirmed
by the Senate. In addition, five
cabinet members (Commissioner of Education, State Treasurer,
Chancellor of Higher
A Change Of Management
2
Education, Attorney General and Commissioner of Community
Affairs) served ex officio. The
first Chairman was Dr. Meade; the Vice-Chairman was George
Connett, Vice President for
personnel administration of the Prudential Insura
nce Company. (Other members, and those
appointed by subsequent Governors, are listed in Attachment 1.)
The Commission plan recommended a capital budget of $16
million, half to be raised in a bond
issue and the other half to come from federal funds, and an

annual operating budget of about $6
million. However, the plan was reduced to $7.5 million in
capital, financed totally by a bond
issue, and the operating budget to barely $6 million. By the fall
of ‘69, a new Governor,
William J. Cahill took office.
While somewhat interested, Cahill was not as enthusiastic about
the project as had been his predecessor. Wanting to see the
station for himself, the new
Governor made a visit to the rebuilt bowling alley in a rural
area outside Trenton which served
as headquarters for the fledgling operation. To make sure he
saw something more than just
empty space, Chairman Meade persuaded RCA to lend some
equipment to provide the flavor
of an actual operating station.
The Governor then decided to proceed with the idea,
but more slowly than had been originally
planned because of the financially and politically controversial
nature of the undertaking. As
with any major new program in New Jersey, the legislature was
especially wary of this one,
uncertain as they were that it could be run
in a non-political, non-partisan fashion.
About this time, Dr. Meade and the Authority began conducting
a search for a person to head
up the staff and get the station on the air. After an extensive
search, the position was offered to
Dr.
Larry Frymire, a professor of communications at the University
of Illinois, who had done a
study for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, worked for
the FCC, and worked on the
New Jersey legislation setting up the Authority.
In selecting Frymire, Meade was impressed by his high degree
of technical competence and his

intimate knowledge of the administrative steps necessary to put
a station on the air. "I didn't
know a tube from a transmitter," Meade said later. In addition,
given the potentially
controversial
nature of the effort, the Authority wanted a person of
extraordinary integrity and
prudence, someone who did not seek or attract personal
visibility but who would rather
concentrate his energies in a steady and
well-
organized way on the launching
and operation of
the station.
Initially Frymire turned Meade down, but by early spring of
1970, with capital funds of $7.5
million and an operating budget of $2.2 million assured, he
decided to leave Illinois and take on
the responsibility on June 15, 1970.
By April of 1971, he had Channel 52 in Trenton (the State
capitol) on the air; Channel 23 in Camden followed in October
of 1973 and Channels 58 (New
Brunswick) and 50 (Montclair) started operation in June of
1974.
In those first few months, following
the recommendations of the study, the Commissioners made
a number of key policy decisions. First of all, they decided to
focus programming on the State
3
of New Jersey, rather than on regional, national or international
events and interests. They
recognized full well that northern New Jersey was considered
by many to be the flagship of
educational broadcasting. Similarly, the southern part of the

state had access to the Philadelphia
commercial stations and to Channel 12. Thus they
were faced from the sta
rt with staunch
competition. To make matters worse, they were UHF in a state
where few sets were equipped
to pick up that signal; they were brand new; they had to meet
the interests of an area with
marked sectional differences, especially between north and
south Jersey; and they had no real
constituency, or enthusiastic base of support in the state. Given
this situation, the decision to
aim programs at the state itself rather than the region seemed a
necessary one.
Secondly, in the face of potential pol
itical difficulties, the Commissioners prohibited staff from
lobbying the legislature in Trenton. Clearly, they could and
should respond to initiatives from
elected officials, but the Commission reserved for itself the
contacts with the New Jersey
elected
political leadership. (In May, 1977, this prohibition was lifted
for Frymire as the
Authority matured and the lack of such contacts began
hindering them in the annual competition
for budget support among the various state agencies.)
Third, they decided that they should not
exercise any direct personnel authority themselves.
While they required Larry Frymire to submit a staffing pattern
as well as an annual budget for
their review, the selection of people to fill the
various authorized positions was left
solely to his
discretion. Though all staff members came from the state's civil
service system, only the clerical
personnel were to come off registers and have tenure. When

politicians and other public figures
would suggest people to be appo
inted to the
station, Commissioners would simply accept a
resume and pass it along to Frymire and his staff for decision.
Finally, they determined that they would not involve themselves
in specific program decisions,
although program policy -- balance of different kinds of
shows, overall quality, New Jersey
emphasis, etc. --
would concern them. At the same time, they encouraged Frymire
to seek
outside funding sources in order to expand their offerings. As
part of his early effort, Frymire
worked with a group of people who were
supportive of public broadcasting. Early in 1971, the
Friends of New Jersey Public Broadcasting was formed and
incorporated with its own Board
and set of activities in support of NJPTV.
The first years were very difficult indeed. Budgets continued to
be small (annual promotion
allocation, for example, was typically $25,000) and added
production equipment was hard to
come by. Nevertheless, as the Authority’s 1977 annual report
showed, the progress was
steady. Though explicitly not a national
production center, NJPTV believed it was the most
active local-
production educational station in the nation with nearly 30% of
its prime-
time hours
filled with its own material. During the first year the station
was awarded the Alfred I. DuPont
Columbia Award,
the first in a long run of national recognition that was to come
their way.

In 1974, according to an Eagleton Institute survey, NJPTV was
attracting 940,000 viewers. By
1977, the number had grown to over 1.5 million New Jersey
viewers, plus over 50
0,000
4
students being served by the NJPTV educational services
division. In addition, over 2,000
students enrolled in eleven New Jersey colleges in televised
credit courses, as well as business
and industry, were served by three courses
required for middle
management training purposes.
News and sports continued to do particularly well. All in all,
most observers and the
Commission felt NJPTV was doing solid and respectable
programming, highlighted by some
especially appealing shows. Annually
established
objectives (1) for the system were regularly
met, with the exception of the implementation of the
Commission's desire for a more effective
development program and of the establishment of a new
headquarters. But, as Frymire pointed
out, state-supported sys
tems generally have little success raising money from private
sources
because they are perceived as being well-supported with
taxpayer dollars.
From all appearances, there was no reason for Frymire to feel
anything but pleased with the
work he had done and
there was no indication that the Commissioners were anything
but

satisfied with the enterprise over which they presided. With few
exceptions through the years,
the Commissioners did not appear to him to be participating in
any NJPTV activities other than
the Board and Committee meetings, although there were, in fact,
a number of informal meetings
and telephone conversations between many of them from time to
time. It was left to the
Chairman, Vice Chairman and Frymire to carry on the
business of the Auth
ority. Their public
meetings, held for two or three hours every two months,
addressed constraints, reports on the
various divisions of NJPTV, and plans to expand service
through both technical additions and
new locations for crews and cameras.
So everyth
ing stood until the election, in 1974, of a new Governor,
Brendan T. Byrne. It was
not long before both Meade and Frymire became aware that the
new Governor, or at least
some people close to him, looked with considerable disfavor on
the nature and direction of
NJPTV:
•
Byrne called Meade shortly after his election on another topic,
and did some
probing about Frymire. "How good is that fellow Frymire?" the
Governor
asked. “Very good," was Meade's response, "despite fiscal
constraints and
freezes on
pers
onnel.”
•
Two close political friends of the new Governor, former CBS-

TV
New York
Commentator, Jerome Wilson, who was to become producer-
host of WNET's
new weekly program,“Dateline New Jersey," and Richard Leone
of Princeton’s
Woodrow Wilson School, and
subsequently State Treasurer (thus a member of
the NJPTV Commission), met with Meade to discuss the
situation. Both men
were very critical especially of the quality of the public affairs
programming.
Given inadequate budgets and continuing struggles by s
taff to keep a
respectable operation going, Meade was not especially receptive
to their
complaints.
5
•
Leone, who was interested in the field, and had done a study of
cable TV,
showed no confidence in the Eagleton Institute audience
studies, stating that he
simply did not believe that NJPTV had the audiences it claimed.
He felt it was
not adequately
related to its particular market.
•
At the first formal meeting between the Commissioners,
Frymire and Governor
Byrne, the Governor was presented with a tennis bag with the
legend: “I Love
New Jersey Public Television.” “Huh,” snorted
the Governor, “I'm

not sure
I
love it!”
In spite of the tone of this encounter, no overtly threatening
actions ensued, although the
Governor did begin to appoint a different type of person to the
Authority than had his
predecessors (see Attachment 1). Frymire didn’t sense anyt
hing more direct than vague hints
that the new leadership was dissatisfied with his stewardship.
The Commissioners, at least the
veteran ones, appeared to Frymire to be as supportive as ever.
What he was not aware of,
however, was the rumblings of dissatisfaction being expressed
in conversations among the
Commissioners. Since no formal meetings were set up to discuss
the complaints with him or to
lodge any formal complaints, Frymire assumed all was well.
Furthermore, Frymire felt some satisfaction and r
elief that the Governor seemed to be very
pleased by the results of his first “call-
in” report to the people over NJPTV airwaves. The
volume of calls was so huge that the telephone company was
crippled. Each time the Governor
returned every three or four months to repeat the format, the
results were the same, proving to
the Governor, as he said to Frymire, that NJPTV
did indeed have a sizable state-wide
audience.
Then two events occurred which seemed to Frymire to signal
that the incipient dissatisfaction
might erupt into specific negative actions. The first came as part
of the budget cycle in 1975;
the second was the sudden enthusiasm on the part of the
Administration and Commissioners for
a combined news show with WNET

which would replace NJPTV's
own p
rogram.
For years, New Jersey had been able to avoid a state income
tax, but Governor Byrne felt, in
view of the State’s perilous financial picture, that the time had
come. When it was not
forthcoming, he was faced with a $285 million deficit
in the state
budget and, pointing out New
Jersey’s constitutional balanced budget requirement, he said he
would have to cut expenses.
Following precedent established by many political leaders
before him, he slashed the most
visible and popular accounts: the extension service, libraries,
mental institutions and so on.
Public television's request was cut from $3.8 million to $1
million, a figure clearly below the
minimum needed to maintain operation. Although the
Commissioners ultimately persuaded the
Governor and the
legislature to restore their allocation to $3 million, the
Authority went through
a painful and debilitating exercise responding to both the
threatened cut and to the Governor's
instructions to come up with an alternative
method of providi
ng services to
the people of the
state.
6
To many observers, including Frymire, the Governor’s action
and attitude appeared to be
something more than standard political budgetmanship. They

wondered if it was not a
deliberate threat on the Governor's part, a warning that unless
they became more responsive to
his concepts, he would move against them. Some saw his
behavior as the first serious attempt
to shake up public broadcasting in New Jersey and force it to
rethink its mission. At a
minimum, it seemed to be a vote of no confidence in the
Authority’s staff leadership.
The second incident involved the station's news program, far
and away the most popular show it
had on the air. Called "New Jersey News Report,” it offered a
half-hour week-
night review of
up to 35 "hard"
news stories about New Jersey happenings and personalities,
including weather
stations (commercial and educational) which showed virtually
no interest in their New Jersey
constituency. There was no attempt at analysis, little feature
material, and its budget did not
permit it to become as slick as regular commercial shows. Even
so, it was extremely popular in
southern New Jersey, an established, mostly UHF area (unlike
its northern counterpart). The
show was clearly the star performer for NJPTV, and represented
the best audience builder they
had.
Much to the surprise of Frymire and the staff, in the fall of
1976, Channel 13 suddenly offered
to provide $1 million for a jointly produced nightly
half-
hour show which would be carried on
both WNET and NJPTV. NJ
PTV would contribute $1.5 million. The show would be
controlled by an independent editorial board to be selected by

both stations. When it became
very clear that the Governor and his appointees on the Authority
favored the idea, some staff
members suspected that
the initiative for the whole idea had, in fact, come from
Trenton.
Certainly it was true that Governor Byrne had asked the General
Manager of WNET "When
are you guys finally going to do something about New Jersey
coverage?"
Dr. Meade and the
staff both took a stand in opposition to the initial proposal, but
as it was
refined, the Chairman became increasingly supportive, favoring
at least a detailed exploration,
and Frymire became increasingly opposed. In a memorandum to
the Commissioners in late
December, 1976 -- nearly two months a
fter the first discussions
of the plan -- Frymire wrote:
We have not, due to time factors, given joint study to any other
proposals or to
any budget less than the $2.5 million proposed by Channel 13.
There are other
alternatives which would, in my opinion, bring significantly
improved coverage
of New Jersey through joint use of the $1 million offered by
Channel 13 in the
news proposal. Staff will ask you to consider some of them
today.
But first, unless Channel 13
accepts the positions below, I recommend that the
Authority reject the Channel 13 joint news proposal.
The joint news proposal should be rejected on the basis of the
requirement for
Channel 13 to provide $1 million contingent upon NJPTV

providing $1.5
The Management of Human Resources
Using the Case Study: A Change of Management (PDF), prepare
a PowerPoint Presentation of 6 to 8 slides addressing the
following:
1. Identify and explain four (4) key attributes of Larry
Frymire’s leadership style.
2. Identify and explain four (4) major influences from the tug of
war between Frymire’s role as leader and the newly elected
governor.
3. Select and assess four (4) of Frymire’s responses to the
budget issues in the changing political environment.
4. Research and cite at least four (4) peer-reviewed academic
sources.
The format of the assignment is to be as follows:
· Six to eight (6-8) PowerPoint slides, with one or two devoted
to each of the topics in items 2–4 above. Slides should
abbreviate the information in no more than five or six (5 or 6)
bullet points each.
· In the Notes View of each PowerPoint slide, incorporate the
notes you would use when presenting the slides to an audience.
· Slide titles should be based on the criteria described above
(e.g., “Four Key Attributes,” “Responses to Budget Issues,”
etc.)
· In addition to the content slides required, a title slide and a
reference slide are to be included. The title slide is to contain
the title of the assignment, your name, the instructor’s name,
the course title, and the date. The reference slide should list, in
APA format, the sources you consulted in writing the paper.
The specific course learning outcomes associated with this
assignment are:

· Analyze and apply concepts of planning and human resource
management essential to the study of public administration as it
relates to political choice.
· Analyze and apply concepts of public leadership and
management essential to the study of public administration.
· Use technology and information resources to research issues in
modern public administration.
· Write clearly and concisely about modern public
administration using proper writing mechanics.
Click here to view the grading rubric.

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