The association includes public broadcasting stations licensed to colleges and universities — largely public TV or TV/radio joint licensees. It is one of several “affinity groups” within public TV that are consulted by national organizations making policy decisions. It is a member of the Affinity Group Coalition. The association also adopted a set of Core Principles, below. Mission
The mission of the University Licensee Association (ULA) is to assist public broadcasting stations licensed to colleges and universities in efforts to fulfill individual missions and goals through the sharing of ideas within the association and to speak for the special needs and interests of the licensees during times of national planning and decision-making.
Jim Lehrer, co-founder and host of PBS’s NewsHour, spoke April 12, 2005, at the PBS Showcase meeting in Las Vegas, where he accepted the PBS Be More Award. At one point, he refers to CPB’s appointment of a pair of ombudsmen, announced a week earlier. Thank you. It is always a pleasure to be among the professionals who make up my public television family, and have done so for more than 30 years. There are indeed many familiar friendly faces in this room, but few that would have been in a comparable place when I began my life in public television.
Margaret Spellings, secretary of education in George W. Bush’s administration, complained to PBS in 2005 about an episode of the animated Postcards from Buster children’s series with funding from her department. In the episode, Buster visits a Vermont family that has two moms. See also Current story. January 25, 2005
Ms. Pat Mitchell
President and Chief Executive Officer
Public Broadcasting Service
1320 Braddock Place
Alexandria, Virginia 22314
Dear Ms. Mitchell:
The Department of Education has strong and very serious concerns about a specific Ready-To-Learn television episode, yet to be aired, that has been developed under a cooperative agreement between the Department and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The episode — “Sugartime!” — is part of the “Postcards from Buster” series, and would feature throughout the show families headed by gay couples. As you know, the cooperative agreement that PBS is using to support these programs is designed to prepare preschool and elementary age children for school.
NETA, a successor of Southern Educational Communications Association, provides a range of services to public TV professionals and stations, including program distribution, specialized councils for the various disciplines in stations, and an annual conference. It is based in Columbia, S.C.
ARTICLE I: PURPOSE
The purpose of the Corporation is exclusively educational: to develop, exchange, and share on a nonprofit basis the educational, instructional, and cultural resources of and with participating members of the Corporation so as to assist the development of instructional, educational, and cultural activities of educational television and radio stations: to produce, distribute, or otherwise exploit, or any combination thereof, for broadcast by radio, television, or otherwise, or any combination thereof, material which is instructional to the public on subjects useful to the individual and beneficial to the community; to further the utilization of other forms of electronic communications of educational material; to aid in developing and implementing interstate exchange of instructional, educational, or cultural material designed or intended for broadcast by radio, television, or otherwise, or any combination thereof; and to aid in developing and implementing interstate exchange of materials and information relating to the educational use of electronic communications. In the event of dissolution of the Corporation, the residual assets thereof will be conveyed or transferred to one or more organizations which are exempt from federal income taxation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, as amended, or any successor section thereto; or to the Federal Government or to a state or local government, for public purposes exclusively. ARTICLE II: Membership
Section 1. The Corporation may accept for membership any eligible organization, agency, or individual, if such membership is consistent with the basic purposes of the Corporation.
Ride the school bus on the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona and you’ll hear Shooting Stars, a program for kids produced mostly by volunteers at KUYI, the three-year-old public radio station on the reservation. Tune in during the day and you’ll hear an update on living with diabetes or asthma. Keep listening and you’ll hear junior- and senior-high school interns reading the news. Stop to chat with someone on the reservation about what they’ve heard on the radio. Everyone knows you’re talking about the same station.
Public TV stations adopted this statement of mission at the PBS Members Meeting, Feb. 23, 2004. For more information. See also Current’s coverage, published March 8, 2004. Public television is the only universally accessible national resource that uses the power and accessibility of television to educate, enlighten, engage and inform.
Under the spending formula imposed on CPB by Congress in 1981, does the corporation have the authority to spend some of the portion reserved for stations by selectively giving out Future Fund R&D grants? When CPB created the TV Future Fund in 1995, it took half of the money from the 6 percent of its appropriation that the formula allocates to “system support” (see yellow portion of graphic at right). There is no dispute about that. The dispute is about the half that CPB spent from the 73 percent of 75 percent of 89 percent (no kidding!) that is allocated to grants for stations (the pale blue portion at right). The latter is often called the CSG pool because the station grants are called Community Service Grants.
After an all-out legal and public-relations war for control of the five-station Pacifica Radio chain and its national network, the winning activists established one of the most complex and democratic governance systems in broadcasting. AMENDED AND RESTATED BYLAWS OF PACIFICA FOUNDATION
A California Non-Profit Public Benefit Corporation
ARTICLE ONE IDENTITY AND PURPOSE
SECTION 1. NAME SECTION 1. NAME
The name of this corporation is the PACIFICA FOUNDATION, and it shall be referred to in these Bylaws as the “Foundation”. SECTION 2.
The CPB Board of Directors adopted these goals as part of the corporation’s fiscal year 2004 budget, July 22, 2003. I. LOCAL SERVICES AND CONTENT
Strengthen the value and viability of local stations as essential community institutions by improving their operational effectiveness and fiscal stability, and increasing their capacity to invest in and create sustainable services and content that will advance their local mission. To achieve this Goal, CPB will pursue the following objectives:
Measure the value of local service as perceived by the intended beneficiaries – Conduct research to understand how various media are used by the audiences that stations serve or hope to serve in the future, and how the pattern of use is changing as new platforms and media emerge. Create mechanisms that can be used to evaluate the success of local content and services, and inform the local/national conversation. Improve station practices and institutional effectiveness – Assess the performance of individual stations and station cohort groups within public broadcasting to identify opportunities to increase stations’ income earning capabilities and reduce the cost of current operations, through improved practices and new operating and service models.
This revised statement was adopted in July 2003 by Public Radio News Directors Inc., the association of journalists working in public radio. Public Radio News Directors Inc. is committed to the highest standards of journalistic ethics and excellence. We must stand apart from pressures of politics and commerce as we inform and engage our listeners. We seek truth, and report with fairness and integrity. Independence and integrity are the foundations of our service, which we maintain through these principles:
TRUTH
Journalism is the rigorous pursuit of truth.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Board of Directors adopted this statement in November 2002, according to CPB. I. Local Services and Content
Strengthen the value and viability of local stations as essential community institutions by improving their operational effectiveness and fiscal stability, and increasing their capacity to invest in and create sustainable services and content that will advance their local mission. To achieve this Goal, CPB will pursue the following objectives:
A. Measure the value of local service as perceived by the intended beneficiaries-Conduct research to understand how various media are used by the audiences stations serve or hope to serve in the future, and how the pattern of use is changing as new platforms and media emerge. Create mechanisms that can be used to evaluate the success of local content and services, and inform the local/national conversation. B. Improve station practices and institutional effectiveness-Assess the performance of individual stations and station cohort groups within public broadcasting to identify opportunities to increase stations’ income-earning capabilities and reduce the cost of current operations through improved practices and new operating and service models.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Board of Directors adopted this statement in November 2002. I. Local Services and Content
Strengthen the value and viability of local stations as essential community institutions by improving their operational effectiveness and fiscal stability, and increasing their capacity to invest in and create sustainable services and content that will advance their local mission. To achieve this Goal, CPB will pursue the following objectives:
A. Measure the value of local service as perceived by the intended beneficiaries-Conduct research to understand how various media are used by the audiences stations serve or hope to serve in the future, and how the pattern of use is changing as new platforms and media emerge. Create mechanisms that can be used to evaluate the success of local content and services, and inform the local/national conversation. B. Improve station practices and institutional effectiveness-Assess the performance of individual stations and station cohort groups within public broadcasting to identify opportunities to increase stations’ income-earning capabilities and reduce the cost of current operations through improved practices and new operating and service models.
We should not be surprised that most of television enters our people and our body politic, not as food for thought, but as an embalming fluid, a relaxing and displacing system of entertainment for those too exhausted, inert or numb to want more. But our place — your place, my place, the place of public television — is to offer an alternative to that, to serve the actual young and the forever young, the open and curious, those who still want to learn.
On June 10, 2002, Sens. Christopher Dodd and James Jeffords introduced a bill (S. 2603) to authorize the investment of spectrum auction proceeds in public-service content for digital media, apparently inspired in part by the Digital Promise Project of 1991. Rep. Edward Markey earlier introduced a similar bill in the House. The Senate bill was referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
On May 2, 2002, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a bill to authorize the investment of spectrum auction proceeds in public-service content for digital media, apparently inspired in part by the Digital Promise Project of 1991. See also his remarks about the bill and Current coverage of the bill. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. A BILLTo allocate spectrum for the enhancement of wireless telecommunications, and to invest wireless spectrum auction proceeds for the military preparedness and educational preparedness of the United States for the digital era, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
UNC-TV released this Q&A to explain its request for changes in the formulas for CPB grants and PBS dues that it took to the North Carolina congressional delegation in 2001. The strategy raised controversy in Congress and in the system [article] but brought quick resolutions by CPB and PBS. 1. Does UNC-TV believe that the CPB/CSG and PBS formulas should be linked? Not necessarily.
Jon might say that his prime legacy is this television station. What Jim Day and Jon Rice created from nothing more than a dream is an enviable monument. He loved KQED without reservation. He loved it with a passion that didn’t waver for 47 years.
1) We believe standards matter. We don’t compete with tabloid television, shock-jock radio, or the kind of newspapers found at supermarket check-out stands. We believe public radio must adhere to the highest journalistic principles, ethics and standards for accuracy, balance and fairness. 2) We believe journalists should make decisions about important news coverage. We don’t make news decisions based on the use of focus groups, seeking to find out what kind of lifestyle news people may say they want.
Facing the first major station struggle of her 16 months as PBS president — over the perennial public TV issue of common carriage — Pat Mitchell introduced a “Declaration of Interdependence” at the network’s annual meeting June 14, 2001. The document summarizes major public TV objectives, gives a deep bow to stations’ local role and refers to a recent refinement: the aim to build “social capital” in American communities. See also Current coverage of the 2001 meeting. There comes a time in the history of public television, when the people we serve demand of us something more;
Because, they hold these truths to be self-evident:
Americans are first and foremost citizens, not consumers. Americans have an unalienable right to free access to content that challenges their minds, lifts their spirits, and stirs their souls.