CPB’s website, as of February 2013, carries this document, “Revised February 1, 2011,” redefining the assignment of its ombudsman. Kenneth Tomlinson, past chair of the CPB Board, had prompted controversy by hiring two ombudsmen in April 2005. Charter Establishing the CPB Office of the Ombudsman
The founders of public broadcasting saw a clear need for a “system-wide process of exerting upward pressure on standards of taste and performance.” (The 1967 Carnegie Commission Report, p.36) In addition, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was expected to become the “center of leadership” with a “primary mission…to extend and improve . . .
Among the 58 possible federal budget savings recommended by the vice chairs of the president’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform are the entire appropriations to CPB, the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program and the Agriculture Department’s facilities grants to rural public stations. That could put public broadcasting in a congressional bull’s-eye, since a number of bigger items on the list would be too politically devastating to okay. Who on either side of the aisle would vote to boost the retirement age to 69, wipe out income-tax deductions for health benefits and mortgage interest or raise the payroll tax? “The current CPB funding level is the highest it has ever been,” the draft says, with no comment on the merits, and notes that erasing the appropriation would save nearly $500 million in 2015 alone. The authors and vice chairs of the panel are former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming, and Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles.
Bills to defund public broadcasting, or at least any radio network that fired Juan Williams, are beginning to seem like a real threat since the Nov. 2 midterm election gave Republicans a 60-plus majority in the House and a mandate to take huge bites out of federal spending. Last week the co-chairmen of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform — assigned to suggest ways to reduce the $13.7 trillion deficit — advised dropping CPB from the budget, along with some vastly bigger federal expenditures that have even sturdier support in Congress (separate story). For conservative talking heads, ending aid to pubcasting would be a high-profile get-tough symbol. And for liberals, giving up CPB could be an attempt to avoid other more widely unpopular cuts.
NPR President Vivian Schiller’s remarks near the end of NPR Board meeting, Nov. 12, 2010. Over the last three weeks, I’ve heard from a lot of people — we all have — challenging what NPR is, what it does, and why we’re here. We’ve heard assaults on our programming, and on our objectivity. We’ve read some critical listener letters and comments posted on NPR.org and elsewhere.
NPR President Vivian Schiller dispatched this apology Sunday evening, Oct. 24 [2010], six days after the network set off a pre-election political firestorm with its firing of news analyst Juan Williams. She stands by the decision but not the way it was handled. Dear Program Colleagues,
I want to apologize for not doing a better job of handling the termination of our relationship with news analyst Juan Williams. While we stand firmly behind that decision, I regret that we did not take the time to prepare our program partners and provide you with the tools to cope with the fallout from this episode. I know you all felt the reverberations and are on the front lines every day responding to your listeners and talking to the public. This was a decision of principle, made to protect NPR’s integrity and values as a news organization.
In 1981, Congress significantly restricted the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s decision-making on spending, funneling fixed percentages of CPB’s federal appropriation to specific spending categories and types of grantees. Before then, CPB had faced repeated struggles, including a rift between TV and radio. In 1981, Congress imposed a formula proposed by Rep. Tim Wirth (D-Colo.), then chair of the House telecommunications subcommittee. The 75-25 split between TV and radio was based on experience. Robben Fleming, then president of CPB, complained that the formula “emasculates” CPB, and his successors periodically have objected to their loss of discretion over spending.
ARTICLE I. BASIC POLICY
It is the basic policy of the corporation to be noncommercial, educational, nonsectarian and nonpartisan. The corporation shall operate for the mutual benefit of noncommercial radio stations, organizations and individuals serving the public radio community, and carry on activities as a business league exempt from federal income tax pursuant to Section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, as amended. ARTICLE II. MEMBERSHIP
Section 1.
The Ford Foundation was noncommercial television’s first big funder, years before Congress contributed large sums — supporting efforts to acquire reserved channels, helping to start stations in major cities, and backing National Educational Television, the system’s major production and distribution organization in its early years.
The act says: “No noncommercial educational broadcasting station may engage in editorializing or may support or oppose any candidate for political office.”
Three years after Latino activists bitterly criticized Ken Burns’s The War for omitting interviews with Hispanic soldiers and sailors, CPB and PBS concluded negotiations to create a Diversity and Innovation Fund to seed new productions, Current reported. PBS issued this RFP on its website. CPB/PBS Diversity and Innovation Fund
Request for Proposals
Weekly, Primetime Television Series
Objective
This RFP, the first from the Diversity and Innovation Fund, is designed to solicit proposals to provide the NPS with a new, weekly, primetime series – content that will expand viewership and usage, reaching an adult audience on-air and online that reflects the diversity of the 40-64 year old US population. Specifically, the DI Fund seeks to:
Diversify the NPS by attracting more racially and ethnically diverse viewers and Web visitors within the target demographic;
Expand the current NPS audience through the increased use of content created by a diverse group of producers and through the effective use of new and emerging technologies;
Leverage the talent and creativity of executive producers and producers from minority and underserved communities;
Build capacity for the public media system from within those communities; and
Encourage innovation in the planning, production and distribution of public media content. The content should be conceived and budgeted with multiple-platform use (broadcast, VOD, Internet, mobile, DVD, etc.) in mind from the outset. As producers develop their proposals and ultimately their pilot programs, they should consider not only the traditional broadcast components but also the digital strategy which may include web presence, mobile applications, social media, inclusion in the Digital Learning Library and/or PBS Teachers, etc.
From PBS’s June 2010 request for primetime series proposals to be funded by the CPB/PBS Diversity and Innovation Fund. See also Current feature on the Explorer Archetype. The Explorer Archetype
Research shows the most successful brands embody a single archetype. To define and fully leverage PBS’s brand, we are employing Archetypal Branding, a proven strategy in which an organization aligns all activities behind a single unifying concept. We believe adopting this strategy will help us increase audience engagement, raise money and build brand loyalty.
The Diversity Committee of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers sent this letter to PBS about its November 2008 Report on the PBS Diversity Initiative on Content. The letter was released by Defend the Honor, a Latino civil rights group that led the protests against Ken Burns’ series 2008 The War. March 4, 2009
Ms. Paula Kerger, Chief Executive Officer
Ms. Haydee M. Rodriguez, Director, Diversity Initiative
Public Broadcasting Service
2100 Crystal Drive
Arlington, VA 22202-3785
Dear Ms. Kerger and Ms. Rodriguez:
We would like to thank you for the PBS Diversity Initiative on Content (November, 2008). As you know, NALIP strongly supports and encourages PBS in its efforts to accurately reflect the diversity of American life in its programming and staffing. While we applaud the effort to generate an assessment of the system’s diversity practices, we are concerned by the report’s statement that PBS “cannot paint the full picture of its ‘diverse’ content or the diversity of its staff.”
The Diversity Committee of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers sent this letter to PBS about its November 2008 Report on the PBS Diversity Initiative on Content. The letter was released by Defend the Honor, a Latino civil rights group that led the protests against Ken Burns’ series 2008 The War. March 4, 2009
Ms. Paula Kerger, Chief Executive Officer
Ms. Haydee M. Rodriguez, Director, Diversity Initiative
Public Broadcasting Service
2100 Crystal Drive
Arlington, VA 22202-3785
Dear Ms. Kerger and Ms. Rodriguez:
We would like to thank you for the PBS Diversity Initiative on Content (November, 2008). As you know, NALIP strongly supports and encourages PBS in its efforts to accurately reflect the diversity of American life in its programming and staffing. While we applaud the effort to generate an assessment of the system’s diversity practices, we are concerned by the report’s statement that PBS “cannot paint the full picture of its ‘diverse’ content or the diversity of its staff.”
When Congress adopted the Public Broadcasting Act 40 years go, it put its contribution to public TV and radio into the hands of the nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting with a structural characteristic and two mandates that have caused conflict and inertia ever since. The law has the President nominate the CPB Board and the Senate confirm the CPB Board. Rather than keeping political appointees off the board, it splits them almost equally. The majority are chosen by the White House from its own party and the minority of board members named, in practice, by Senate leaders of the other party. The appointment has become a mid-level plum for political appointees.
Fans of two now-defunct college stations are pursuing legal actions against the sale of the stations to Minnesota-based American Public Media Group.Two supporters of Florida’s Christian Family Coalition filed suit Oct. 18 [2007] in a state court in Miami to overturn Trinity International University’s September sale of former Christian music station WMCU to APMG, which aims to start a classical music station in Miami. In the Twin Cities area, where a classical station was on the losing side, a group of former listeners to St. Olaf College’s bygone WCAL has questioned its sale to APMG’s Minnesota Public Radio, which converted it to The Current, a contemporary music station. On.
Advocacy groups protesting Ken Burns’ upcoming World War II doc asked PBS and WETA in Washington, D.C., Aug. 20 [2007] for assurance that the producers would work harder to include Latinos in “current and future programming. The statement about Burns’ The War bore the signatures of 53 individuals, ten media, policy and educational organizations and Defend the Honor, the coalition that first challenged Burns. In a response, PBS said it “continues to build upon our track record of inclusion in programming, in front of and behind the camera.” WETA has issued no response. The full statements from Defend the Honor and PBS are below.
Public broadcasting’s five CPB-funded minority consortia sent this letter to PBS President Paula Kerger on April 9, 2007. Dear Paula:
I’m writing to you on behalf of my colleagues of the National Minority Consortia (NMC), which, along with the National Black Programming Consortium, includes the Center for Asian American Media, Latino Public Broadcasting, Native American Public Telecommunications and Pacific Islanders in Communications. We would like to offer our support to you in helping to address in a positive manner what we view as legitimate community concerns over the omission of Latino voices from Ken Burns’ The War. It is not the idea of an intentional exclusion that raises the flag of indignation from the American public – and not only, as has been suggested, Hispanic Americans. It is the idea that the perspective of those within the public broadcasting system empowered to make decisions about what is and is not appropriate for a public television event of this magnitude do not fundamentally represent the diversity of this society.
July 3, 1978
FCC v. Pacifica Foundation: The Supreme Court upheld the FCC’s right to ban indecent speech when children could be expected to be in the audience. Pacifica’s WBAI in New York had aired George Carlin’s “Filthy Words” monologue in the afternoon of Oct. 30, 1973. Upshot: Confirmed both the FCC’s right to regulate indecent language and its definition of such speech as that which depicts “sexual or excretory activities or organs in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium.” Indecent material falls short of obscenities, which are banned at all hours. Aug.
NPR exec Ken Stern sent this memo to public radio stations’ Authorized Representatives as a followup to the New Realities Forum in May 2006. News from Ken Stern – Digital Distribution Consortium Working Group
June 6, 2006
Dear Colleagues:
Last month, about 300 of our colleagues gathered at the New Realities National Forum in Washington. We discussed the future of public radio and our service, and envisioned the benefits of working together differently in the future. It was an exciting and motivating session and we’d like to extend our thanks to all who participated in the forum and the retreats leading up to it. Many retreat discussions and more than a dozen forum breakouts explored the shared notion that we have yet to seize the opportunities of the digital age.
Text of Bill Moyers’ speech May 18, 2006, at the PBS Showcase Conference, Orlando, Fla. He spoke after PBS gave him its third annual Be More Award. Jump to sections where Moyers:
thanks associates for their part in his work,
tells why the best is yet to come,
recalls discussions in the Johnson White House,
lists what public TV could do for democracy, and
explains why CPB didn’t get stable funding
See also Current’s coverage and full text of the speech. Thank you for this moment. I consider your award the singular honor of my long life in public broadcasting.
