History of public media

Tuning out education, Chapter 3

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Rival lobbies fought for regulators’ nod

“If you educators do not hold radio for yourselves,” Judge Ira Robinson told educational broadcasters in June 1930, “it is going to be so fortified by commercial interests that you will never get it.”[41]

The lone pro-education member of the Federal Radio Commission, Robinson had ample grounds for alarm. Since the mid-’20s, dozens of school-operated stations had been driven from the air by a combination of commercial competition, FRC pressures, and their own lack of resources and resourcefulness. In 1930, the mortality rate seemed to be rising; more than 20 educational stations would fall silent by the end of July. During the previous winter, Commissioner Robinson had been involved in a promising initiative that might have brought the federal government to the rescue. But the Advisory Committee on Education by Radio, appointed by the Secretary of the Interior, had pulled back from recommending measures that would do much good for beleaguered educational broadcasters.

History of public media

Tuning out education, Chapter 2

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Education had no ‘inalienable right to part of the air,’ said the spokesman for broadcaster-educator Cooperation in 1930. It would have to prove itself in the marketplace. The struggle had only begun…

History of public media

Tuning out education

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How did advertising-driven broadcasting establish itself as the dominant user of the airwaves in America? A crucial episode occurred in the 1930s when commercial broadcasters argued successfully that they would put education on the air, and educators should stick to their books. Eugene E. Leach, Ph.D., a professor of history and American studies at Connecticut’s Trinity College, tells the story, originally serialized in Current. Chapters
1. The doctrine of ‘Cooperation’ won early battles of ideas

2.

History of public media

A Public Trust: Report of the second Carnegie Commission (Carnegie II), 1979

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In 1977, a decade after the first Carnegie Commission boosted the idea of federal funding for noncommercial broadcasting, the Carnegie Corporation of New York created a second panel to study noncommercial broadcasting. In 1979, the Carnegie Commission on the Future of Public Broadcasting published its report, A Public Trust. Its recommendations for increased federal aid and a Public Telecommunications Trust to replace CPB, had little effect. See also the preface to the report and the list of commission members, below at right. Summary of Findings and Recommendations
The Public Telecommunications Trust | The Endowment | Funding | Television Programs and Services | Public Radio | Technology| Education and Learning | Public Accountability

Members of Carnegie II*
William J. McGill, Chairman
President, Columbia University

Stephen K. Bailey
President, National Academy of Education

Red Burns
Executive Director, Alternate Media Center, School of the Arts
New York University

Henry J. Cauthen
Director, South Carolina Educational Television Network

Peggy Charren
President, Action for Children’s Television

Wilbur B. Davenport, Jr.
Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Virginia B. Duncan
Board Member, Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Eli N. Evans
President
Charles H. Revson Foundation

John W. Gardner
Common Cause

Alex P. Haley, Author

Walter W. Heller Professor, University of Minnesota

Josie R. Johnson
Board Member, National Public Radio

Kenneth Mason
President, Quaker Oats Company

Bill Moyers, WNET/13

Kathleen Nolan
President, Screen Actors Guild

J. Leonard Reinsch Chairman, Cox Broadcasting Corporation

Tomas Rivera
Executive Vice-President, University of Texas at El Paso

*Bill Cosby, actor; Carla Hills, a former secretary of housing and urban development; and Beverly Sills, opera singer; voluntarily resigned from the Commission during the course of this study as their participation became limited by other professional commitments.

History of public media

Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers, Summary of 1971

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A major part of OTP’s activity in 1971 involved the development of a long-term financing bill for CPB. However, because of disagreements with CPB over details of the draft “Public Telecommunications Financing Act of 1971” and the Administration’s displeasure with public broadcasting’s news and public affairs programming, the Administration did not submit a CPB funding bill to Congress that year. On April 13, Flanigan and Whitehead, now OTP Director, met in Flanigan’s office with CPB Directors Cole and Wrather, both of whom had been appointed to the Corporation Board by President Nixon. The meeting was an outgrowth of Flanigan’s and Whitehead’s correspondence with Cole, dating from November 9, 1970, when Flanigan wrote to Cole complaining about the NET documentary “Banks and the Poor.” On March 15, Flanigan sent Whitehead a memo which said:
Regarding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, we discussed having a meeting of our directors to determine where we go from here with the Corporation.

History of public media

Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers, 1969-1974 — Introduction

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These memos from the Nixon Administration cover a period of peak conflict between the White House and public broadcasting. The documents were released by the government five years later in response to a Freedom of Information Act request in 1978 by the second Carnegie Commission. These summaries were prepared and released during the Carter Administration by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the successor agency of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy, a central player in the 1969–74 conflict. The summaries were published as The Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers 1969–1974 by the National Association of Educational Broadcasters. Introduction and Foreword to NAEB printing and NTIA letters of transmittal are shown below.

History of public media

Public Television Program Financing

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This detailed paper was published in the October 1972 issue of Educational Broadcasting Review, the journal of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters. The paper — by Hartford Gunn, the first president of PBS — led to PBS’s creation of an annual program market called the Station Program Cooperative, which became, for nearly two decades, PBS’s main method of aggregating station funds to produce ongoing series. Introductory note by Avon Edward Foote, editor of Educational Broadcasting Review
One of the important functions of EBR is to circulate documents which embody important new concepts, proposals, and suggestions. The values are two-fold: full publication makes it possible to study the actual details of a proposal rather than rumors or speculations about it, and distribution through the EBR engages the entire profession in the process of analysis and deliberation. The article that follows is one of those documents.

NPR

NPR Articles of Incorporation, 1970

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These articles were attached to National Public Radio’s certificate of incorporation filed with the District of Columbia Recorder of Deeds, Feb. 26, 1970. ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO, INC.
We, the undersigned, natural persons of the age of twenty-one (21) years or more, and citizens of the United States, desiring to form a nonprofit corporation pursuant to the District of Columbia Non-Profit Corporations Act (23 D.C. Code Chapter 10), adopt the following Articles of Incorporation for such Corporation:
ARTICLE I.
The name of the Corporation is: NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO, INC.
ARTICLE II. The period of duration of the Corporation is perpetual. ARTICLE III.

History of public media

Articles of Incorporation of Public Broadcasting Service

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On Nov. 3, 1969, four public broadcasters, including the presidents of CPB and National Educational Television (NET), incorporated a new nonprofit organization to interconnect the public television stations, taking on those functions of NET. See also the PBS bylaws, adopted eight days later. We, the undersigned, natural persons of the age of twenty-one (21) years or more, and citizens of the United States, desiring to form a nonprofit corporation pursuant to the District of Columbia Non-Profit Corporations Act (28 D.C. Code Chapter 10), adopt the following Articles of Incorporation for such Corporation:
ARTICLE I.
The name of the Corporation is: PUBLIC BROADCASTING SERVICE. ARTICLE II.

History of public media

The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967

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Enacted less than 10 months after the report of the Carnegie Commission on Educational Broadcasting, this law initiates federal aid to the operation (as opposed to funding capital facilities) of public broadcasting. Provisions include:

extending authorization of the earlier Educational Television Facilities Act,
forbidding educational broadcasting stations to editorialize or support or oppose political candidates,
establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and defining its board and purposes
authorizing reduced telecommunications rates for interconnection
authorizing appropriations to CPB, and
authorizing a federal study of instructional television and radio. Public Law 90-129, 90th Congress, November 7, 1967 (as amended to April 26, 1968)
Title I—Construction of Facilities
Extension of duration of construction grants for educational broadcasting

Sec. 101. (a) Section 391 of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 391) is amended by inserting after the first sentence the following new sentence: “There are also authorized to be appropriated for carrying out the purposes of such section, $10,500,000 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1968, $12,500,000 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1969, and $15,000,000 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1970.”

(b) The last sentence of such section is amended by striking out “July 1, 1968” and inserting in lieu thereof “July 1,1971.”

Maximum on grants in any State

Sec.

History of public media

The Hidden Medium: A Status Report on Educational Radio in the United States, 1967

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With support building for federal aid to public TV, the advocates of public radio found they had to act quickly to make their case. National Educational Radio, a division of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, hired Herman W. Land Associates to study the field and its potential. The resulting book, The Hidden Medium: A Status Report on Educational Radio in the United States, was published in April 1967. Overview and Summary
The oldest of the electronic media, going back in service to experimental beginnings as station 9xm in the year 1919, educational radio, almost a half century later, remains virtually unknown as a communications force in its own right. Overshadowed first by commercial radio, then by television, it has suffered long neglect arising from disinterest and apathy among the educational administrators who control much of its fortunes.

History of public media

President Johnson asks Congress to aid public television, 1967

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A month after the release of the first Carnegie Commission report, LBJ announced legislation to help pay for operations of public TV for the first time. These remarks appear in his health/education proposals to Congress, between the sections on adult illiteracy and computers in the classroom, leading off a section titled “Building for Tomorrow.” Before the end of the year, Congress had expanded the bill to include public radio and Johnson was signing the Public Broadcasting Act into law. BUILDING FOR TOMORROW
Public television

In 1951, the Federal Communications Commission set aside the first 242 television channels for noncommercial broadcasting, declaring:
The public interest will be clearly served if these stations contribute significantly to the educational process of the Nation. The first educational television station went on the air in May 1953.

History of public media

Educational Television Facilities Act of 1962

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With this law, signed by President Kennedy on May 1, 1962, Congress gave the first major federal aid to public broadcasting. The grants for new and replacement facilities and equipment initially were overseen by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare; the successor Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP) was operated by a Commerce Department agency, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Amid budget showdowns, Congress defunded PTFP after fiscal year 2010. PART IV — GRANTS FOR EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION BROADCASTING FACILITIES

Declaration of Purpose

SEC. 390. The purpose of this part is to assist (through matching grants) in the construction of educational television broadcasting facilities.

History of public media

CPB-PBS Partnership Agreement, 1973

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After three years of conflict between PBS and Nixon Administration appointees at CPB, the boards of the two organizations reached this agreement, securing PBS’s role as operator of public TV’s interconnection. (The pact was adopted May 31, 1973 by the PBS Board’s Executive Committee and the CPB Board. The full PBS Board ratified it June 28, 1973.)

Resolved, by the Boards of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service, that:
In order to effect a vigorous partnership in behalf of the independence and diversity of public television and to improve the excellence of its programs;

to enhance the development, passage by Congress, and approval by the Executive branch of a long-range financing program that would remove public broadcasting from the political hazards of annual authorizations and appropriations;

to further strengthen the autonomy and independence of local public television stations; and

to reaffirm that public affairs programs are an essential responsibility of public broadcasting,
the Boards of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) do hereby jointly adopt the following agreement:
1. CPB will, in consultation with PBS, other interested parties, and the public, decide all CPB funded programs through a CPB program department. The consultation prior to CPB’s decision is vital so that the CPB programming department will understand what the licensees’ needs are and thus avoid any possibility that CPB will fund programs that the licensees do not want.