August Recess
Best Practices Guide
2015 Edition
1|Page
Table of Contents
Federal Lawmaker Meeting Request Letter………….............................................................Page 3
Tips on Meeting with Your Federal Lawmakers
Best Practices for Meeting with Your Federal Lawmakers………………………………………………Page 4-5
Best Practices for Alternative Opportunities to Engage with Your Federal
Lawmakers………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….….Page 6-7
Leave Behind
The Importance of Federal Funds for Public Broadcasting…………………………………...……...Page 8-13
2|Page
Dear Representative/Senator [INSERT NAME]:
I am writing on behalf of [INSERT STATION NAME] to invite you to visit our station when you are home during
the August Recess.
My colleagues and I would be honored to show you what we’re doing here in [INSERT CITY, STATE OR
REGION] to promote education, public safety, civic leadership and the preservation of local history and culture
for the benefit of your constituents.
There is so much more to the public media mission than what’s on the television screen today, and I believe
you would find a brief exploration of our broadcast, online and on-the-ground services enlightening and
encouraging.
All of these services are made possible by the federal investment in public broadcasting which is the
foundation of our successful public-private partnership.
I hope you will come see for yourself the impact federal funding for public broadcasting is having in our
community, I am certain you will like what you see.
In particular, [INSERT PROJECT OR SHOW NAME] is a project that we have been working on here at [INSERT
STATION NAME]. This program concentrates on [INSERT TOPIC OF SHOW OR PROJECT], and we’re especially
proud of it.
I look forward to showing you around our facility, and if you have time, we’d like to interview you while you’re
here for a segment of our [INSERT PUBLIC AFFAIRS PROGRAM NAME] series.
We would be honored to host you at our station on [INSERT DATE & TIME OPTION 1] or on [INSERT DATE &
TIME OPTION 2]. If neither of those times work for you please have your scheduler contact me at [ENTER
CONTACT PHONE NUMBER AND EMAIL] to find a good time for a visit during the August Recess.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration, and we look forward to welcoming you to [INSERT
STATION NAME].
Sincerely,
[INSERT NAME]
[INSERT TITLE]
[INSERT STATION]
3|Page
Best Practices for Meeting with your Federal Lawmakers during August Recess
When Congress leaves Washington for August, each Member of Congress will be spending time in his or her
home district or state, meeting with constituents and hosting community events. This provides a valuable
opportunity for your station to invite your Representatives and Senators to spend some time with you and
showcase the unparalleled services you provide to your local communities. Meetings such as these can have a
significant impact in helping Members of Congress understand the great work you do in your community and
the essential role federal funding has in the success of your station. This is particularly important given that
Congress will likely be finalizing funding levels for many programs, including the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting (CPB), the Ready To Learn (RTL) program, and public television’s interconnection system when
they return in the fall.
As a reminder, our funding requests are:
CPB Two-Year Advance: level funding at $445 million for FY 2018
Ready To Learn: level funding at $25.7 million for FY 2016
Interconnection: funding at $40 million for FY 2016
Here are our tips for maximizing your meetings with your federal lawmakers during August recess:
Schedule your Meetings ASAP

It is critical for you to submit your scheduling requests to your Senators’ State offices and your
Representatives’ District office(s) as soon as possible. When you submit your scheduling request,
please send the request to your federal lawmakers’ district or state schedulers. Please do not send
your request to the general inbox. Let us know if you have trouble identifying the correct office or
person with whom to be in touch. Also, please follow your elected officials’ offices scheduling protocol.
Some offices require that you submit a scheduling request through their official website. If you don’t
hear from your Congressional offices, please follow-up with their schedulers. If your lawmaker is
unable to meet you due to scheduling constraints, please refer to pages six and seven for alternative
opportunities to engage with your federal lawmakers.
Prepare Accordingly

Research your Members of Congress. Prior to meeting, check your Members committee assignments
to see if they sit on key committees for public broadcasting (generally, the Appropriations, Education
and Commerce committees.) Check their past support for public broadcasting by looking at past voting
records. You can always reach out to the APTS Government Relations Team for assistance. Please
“like” and “follow” your Members of Congress on Facebook and Twitter on your station’s social media
accounts. Look at their accounts weekly to monitor and identify the issues your Members are most
interested in so you can highlight your station services that are related to those topics.

Leverage your lay leaders in your meetings. It is critical that you include your local community leaders,
lay board members, and other local voices in your meeting. Their participation shows your federal
lawmakers how important your station is to your community because these influential people are
willing to provide their time and support to your station. It is especially helpful when you include
station supporters that already have relationships with or are financial supporters of the Member of
4|Page
Congress. The APTS Government Relations Team is more than happy to work with member stations to
identify these people.

Keep the meeting concise and manageable. Invite no more than four or five of your colleagues and lay
leaders to attend. Prior to your meeting, decide which participant will cover each issue or portion of
the station visit or tour. A handout is provided at the end of this packet to leave with lawmakers and to
reference in your meeting.
The Meeting

Don’t let the meeting veer off course. Convey your expertise and try to keep the meeting on track by
going through your elevator speech.

Say thank you. Thank your federal lawmaker for the opportunity to engage with them during August
recess and any past support they have given the station.

Relay local impact. Articulate the unparalleled services you provide to your community and their
constituents, particularly the unique services that are only available through your station in the
community. It is also useful to mention services beyond the broadcast that the Member of Congress
might not know about like on-the-ground education activities, partnerships with public safety
agencies, and other community outreach. Explain what losses your station would sustain without
federal support, and be specific. Provide impact data on how federal dollars help you provide these
great services to your community.

Make your ask: Will you or your boss vote to continue full federal funding for public broadcasting?
After the Meeting Follow Up

Send an e-mail to thank your federal lawmaker and staff for their time and provide any relevant
supplemental information.

Send APTS an e-mail with details of your meeting, so that the Association can follow up and serve you
better in the future.
5|Page
Alternative Engagement Opportunities
Public affairs tapings at your station. Your federal lawmaker may not have been able to fulfill your official
meeting request; however, you may already have a scheduled opportunity for your federal lawmaker to come
to your station for a public affairs program taping or other event. Prior to, or following the event or taping,
take a few minutes with your federal lawmaker and explain the value of your station to your local community.
You could also have a supporter of the federal lawmaker and the station (lay leader, active station volunteer,
community leader, etc.) greet your federal lawmaker and express the value of the station to the community.
Attend town hall meetings. Some Members of Congress hold town hall meetings during August recess. These
events are public forums for the Member to provide their constituents with an update on their work and for
constituents to ask their Member questions. To obtain a schedule of your Members’ upcoming town halls,
contact your Senators’ State offices and your Representatives’ District offices or check their web page. If they
don’t have a schedule the first time you call, remember to call back to check whether the public schedule has
been released yet. Once you have identified a town hall you would like to attend, put together a group of
community allies to join you at the town hall. The more people you have in your group, the greater chance you
will have of being recognized. Also, you should prepare a brief, meaningful statement on the importance of
federal funding to your local public television station. You could also pose a question to your federal lawmaker
on their position on federal funding for public broadcasting. On the day of the town hall, your group should
arrive early and get seats up front. Everyone in your party should be briefed on your statement, should they be
called upon during the event. Following the town hall, send your federal lawmaker an e-mail thanking them for
hosting the town hall, and reinforce the concerns you presented at the town hall or would have liked to
present (if you were not called upon). Also, be sure to include any statement of support or commitments that
the Member made during the event.
Attend your federal lawmakers’ scheduled office hours. Some Members hold community office hours events
either in their local district offices or at central community locations. At these events constituents may usually
wait in line to speak with the Member for a few brief minutes about the issue of their choice. To obtain a
schedule of your Members’ upcoming office hours, contact your Senators’ State offices and your
Representatives’ District offices or check their web page. For this engagement opportunity, you should prepare
a brief, meaningful statement on the importance of maintaining level federal funding to your local public
television station. You should also invite one or two community allies to accompany you to this event.
Participate in tele-town hall calls hosted by your federal lawmakers. Reach out to your Representatives’
District offices and your Senators’ State offices for a schedule of upcoming tele-town halls hosted by your
federal lawmakers. When the call begins, follow the moderator’s instructions to virtually ‘raise your hand’ to
ask your federal lawmaker about their position on funding for public broadcasting and urge them to support
public broadcasting. If you ‘raise your hand’ immediately, it is likely you will be forwarded to a staffer who will
screen your question. When you present your question to the staffer make sure your question is concise,
thoughtful and respectful of your federal lawmaker. Further, if the call features a poll question, it’s a good idea
to tie your question into the poll question. Presenting your question in this manner increases your chances of
being selected to pose your question to your federal lawmaker. If your question isn’t selected, wait until the
end of the call to leave a voicemail for your federal lawmaker.
Write an op-ed. Federal lawmakers and their district staff read through the local papers every day. Ask one of
your community allies to write a thoughtful op-ed on the importance of your station to the community.
6|Page
Promote the grassroots campaign, Protect My Public Media. August recess is an ideal opportunity to grow our
grassroots advocacy network, and add new public broadcasting supporters who can weigh in with their federal
lawmakers during critical times. Here’s a few ways you can promote the Protect My Public Media campaign
during August:
o
Run the Protect My Public Media spot featuring Amy Brenneman.*
o
Add a Protect My Public Media banner to your website.*
o
Add a Protect My Public Media acknowledgement in your newsletter.*
o
Distribute Protect My Public pamphlets and bookmarks at your community and station
events.*
o
Promote Protect My Public Media on social media.*
o
Promote Protect My Public Media’s upcoming awareness campaigns.
*Protect My Public Media partner stations can access these materials at
http://protectmypublicmedia.org/partnerstations/. This portion of the website is passcode protected. Partner
stations needing login information can contact Derry Earle at dearle@apts.org.
7|Page
Public Service Media: Pursuing the Missions of Education, Public Safety and Civic Leadership
As the last locally-owned, locally-controlled media in America, reaching more than 99 percent of the American
people, public television stations are uniquely positioned to provide education, public safety and civic
leadership services – not only on television but in the classroom, the emergency response network, and the
community.

The federal investment in public television underwrites these public services and ensures that they are
available to everyone, everywhere, every day, for free. The Government Accountability Office has
found that there is no substitute for this federal investment in the commercial world.

Majorities of Republicans, Democrats and Independents support federal funding for public television,
place more trust in us than any other public institution, and consider the federal investment in public
television the best use of taxpayer resources after national defense.
CPB Advance Funding

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s (CPB) annual two-year advance appropriation is an essential
part of public television’s success in pursuing its public service missions of education, public safety and
civic leadership.

At the national programming level, producers such as Ken Burns work with very long lead times to
develop the educational programming that the American people value so highly. Between now and
2020, public television will broadcast Ken Burns’ specials and series on the history of the Vietnam War,
Jackie Robinson, Ernest Hemingway, and the history of country music. It would be impossible to
produce such programs, and create the standards-based, curriculum-aligned educational components
that accompany them, without the assurance of advance funding.

At the local level, CPB advance funding is essential to stations’ ability to leverage the federal
investment to attract six times as many resources from State, local and private contributors to support
our education, public safety and civic leadership missions.

President Ford first proposed an advanced-funding mechanism for CPB in 1976 to insulate
programming decisions from political influence. Congress reduced President Ford’s request from a
five-year advance to a two-year advance and has maintained this advanced-funding regime for almost
40 years, with excellent results.
8|Page
Public Service Media: Education
Public television stations are educational institutions committed to lifelong learning for the American people.
This work begins with the most successful early childhood education ever devised and continues with unique
classroom services and teacher professional development resources, high-school equivalency preparation,
workforce training and adult enrichment.

Public television’s free, universally available, children’s educational content has been proven to close
the achievement gap and has helped more than 90 million pre-school age kids get ready to learn and
succeed in school.

More than 1.5 million teachers serving 30 million students are registered to use PBS LearningMedia – a
partnership between PBS and local stations – in K-12 classrooms around the country. This unique
service provides nearly 90,000 standards-based, curriculum-aligned, interactive digital learning objects
adapted from the best of public television programming and the resources of the Library of Congress
and National Archives, among others.

Public television brings world-class teachers of specialty subjects to some of the most remote schools
in the country through “virtual high schools” operated by stations across the United States.

Public television runs the largest non-profit GED program in the country, serving hundreds of
thousands of people whose high school education was interrupted prior to graduation.

Public television stations are helping retrain the American workforce, including veterans, by providing
digital learning opportunities for training, licensing, continuing education credits, and more.

Through CPB’s American Graduate program, public television stations are helping reduce the high
school drop-out rate and keeping America’s young people on track to complete their education and to
compete successfully in the 21st century economy.
Ready To Learn

Ready To Learn uses the power of public television’s on-air, online, mobile and on-the-ground
educational content to build the math and reading skills of children between the ages of two and eight,
especially those from low-income families.

First authorized in 1992 and reauthorized in 2001, Ready To Learn is a competitive grant program
administered by the US Department of Education. RTL investments have enhanced the academic rigor
of Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Martha Speaks, SuperWhy and other iconic programming for
children.

Ready To Learn supports a national-local partnership among CPB, PBS and local public television
stations that helps teachers and caregivers make the most of these media resources – including online
and mobile apps as well as television – in schools, pre-schools, homeschools, Head Start and other
daycare centers, libraries, mobile learning labs, Boys and Girls Clubs, and community centers.
9|Page

Ready To Learn has proven to be particularly helpful to low-income pre-school students who have
access to Ready To Learn’s innovative learning tools through targeted on-the ground outreach funded
by the grant.

Ready To Learn’s math and literacy content is rigorously tested and evaluated to assess its impact on
children’s learning. Since 2005, more than 80 research and evaluation studies have shown that Ready
To Learn literacy and math content engages children, enhances their early learning skills and allows
them to make significant academic gains, helping close the achievement gap.

Some legislative proposals would eliminate Ready To Learn as a stand-alone program, but this
national-local partnership could not be replicated if Ready To Learn were consolidated with other
grant programs or eliminated entirely. This is a federal grant program that has worked – and worked
very well – exactly as it was intended to, with well-documented results to prove its enormous value to
all American children.
10 | P a g e
Public Service Media: Public Safety
Public broadcasters are focused on maximizing the broadcast spectrum for the public good. Public television
stations are the backbone of the WARN system of presidential alerts in time of national emergency, and they are
increasingly effective partners with state and local public safety, law enforcement and first responder organizations
– connecting these agencies with one another, with the public and with vital data-casting capabilities in times of
crisis.

Public television provides critical backbone infrastructure for the nation’s alert and warning systems.

Public television has partnered with FEMA to provide the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system that
enables cell subscribers to receive geo-targeted text messages in the event of an emergency – reaching
them wherever they are, even when the power is out.

This same digital infrastructure provides the backbone for emergency alert, public safety, first responder,
and homeland security services in many states and local communities.

Stations are partnering with local emergency responders to customize and utilize public television’s
infrastructure and broadcast spectrum to meet public safety needs in a variety of critical ways: securely
transmitting critical information (like school blueprints) to police cars in the event of a crisis, providing
access to 24/7 camera feeds to address a variety of security challenges, connecting public safety agencies in
real time and more.

Many local stations are serving as their states primary Emergency Alert Service (EAS) hub for severe
weather and AMBER alerts.
Interconnection

For more than 20 years Congress has provided separate funding for public broadcasting’s interconnection
systems—the backbone of public broadcasting.

Public television’s lease on the current interconnection system is coming to an end, and federal funding is
needed in FY 2016 to update the interconnection infrastructure to ensure continued public television
service to all Americans, particularly those in the most rural and remote regions.

The public television interconnection system is used by PBS, other national public television distributors,
state and regional public television networks, individual stations and individual producers to distribute
television programming and related materials to the 172 non-commercial, educational licensees in all 50
states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories.

The interconnection system is critical for public safety, providing key redundancy to the communication of
presidential alerts and warnings. And ensuring that cellular customers can receive geo-targeted emergency
alert and warnings.

The Public Television Interconnection System has needed to be replaced several times to ensure universal
and reliable service, and each time the system upgrade has been funded by the federal government. Since
1988, Congress has supported a separate appropriation for this periodic interconnection replacement.
11 | P a g e

PBS’s proposed new interconnection system, supported by a dedicated high-speed terrestrial fiber
connection, would bring high-speed internet connectivity into some rural and remote communities and
would allow for greater collaborations amongst stations – enhancing partnership opportunities around
programming, education and public safety initiatives.
12 | P a g e
Public Service Media: Civic Leadership

Public television regards its viewers as citizens rather than consumers. Many political leaders are
concerned that a lack of fundamental civic education – understanding how government works, who
makes it work, and the issues they must confront – is undermining Americans’ ability to perform their
duties as self-governing citizens.

Public television is committed to thorough and thoughtful historical and public affairs programming
that provides all Americans with a better understanding of our country and its place in the world.
Public television stations, all locally owned and locally operated, are also helping citizens and
communities understand the issues they face locally and regionally, enabling them to develop
solutions based on facts and rooted in community partnerships.

Local public television stations serve as the “C-SPAN” of many state governments, providing access to
the state legislative process, Governors’ messages, court proceedings and more.

As virtually the only locally-owned and operated media remaining in America, public television
provides more community public affairs programming, more local history and culture, more candidate
debates, more specialized agricultural news, more community partnerships to deal with issues of
concern and more civic information of all kinds than anyone else in the media universe.

And through such programming as American Experience, American Masters, PBS NewsHour, Frontline
and the works of Ken Burns, public television tells the story of America more thoroughly and
authoritatively than anyone else in the media world.

President Reagan hailed Ken Burns as “the preserver of the national memory,” and Mr. Burns has
often said he could not do his work anywhere but in public television.
13 | P a g e