The Markle Foundation, then a major backer of public TV, proposed in 1990 that PBS develop the Voters’ Channel, a project planned to make more useful information available to voters. Here are excerpts from the 132-page feasibility study prepared for Markle by the independent production company Alvin H. Perlmutter Inc. Markle offered $5 million to help PBS undertake the project in time for the 1992 election, but the foundation and PBS could not reach agreement on plans. The project was dropped in June 1991. [Current coverage.] Preface | Summary of Recommendations | Introduction | Is It Feasible? Preface American government has become weaker in the age of television.

Lawrence Daressa, Laurence Hall and Lawrence Sapadin are the collective mind and spirit behind the Independent Television Service, designed this year to provide independent producers with new opportunities to air public TV documentaries. The three Larrys attribute their success in developing the ITVS — endowed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with $6 million ordered by Congress — to being prepared when congressional hearings about the state of public broadcasting came to a head in 1987. “Instead of simply complaining and decrying the degeneration of public television from its original public service orientation, we actually had a solution and an answer,” Daressa, 43, explained from his office in San Francisco, where he serves as co-director of California Newsreel.

The new Independent Television Service and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have settled their differences over CPB’s financial support of the organization. Independent producers and CPB engaged in a running dispute over what the Public Telecommunications Act of 1988 requires CPB to pay for the operation of ITVS. The corporation’s “voluntary commitment to provide these funds to the service under its annual budget process reflects CPB’s commitment to the success of this service,” CPB President Donald Ledwig wrote Nov. 1 [1989] to Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif. The letter was made available by Waxman’s office. Waxman, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees CPB, prodded the corporation to settle its differences with independent producers (Current, June 7, 1989).

Independent producers and officials of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have established the new independent television service with another quarrel. The two parties have negotiated — often heatedly — for nearly a year over establishing the service, which will distribute to independent producers $6 million of CPB funds ordered by Congress last year in federal legislation. At the long-awaited first meeting of the ITVS board of directors Oct. 17 [1989] in Washington, board members listened politely to CPB President Donald Ledwig pledge support to the new service but sharply criticized him in interviews following the session. The corporation will provide “overhead expenses” for the ITVS, Ledwig said.

The Public Broadcasting Service reached across the Potomac River and some bad blood to pick Jennifer Lawson, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s television program fund director, to become executive vice president for national programming and promotion at PBS. The senior programming position at the Alexandria, Va.–based PBS has been open since October 1988, when senior vice president Suzanne Weil left PBS to become executive director of the Sundance Institute for Film and Television. A quintet of senior PBS executives, including President Bruce Christensen, has since acted as a programming committee. The new chief will develop a comprehensive program plan and take an active role “to get the PBS schedule into shape, so it can deliver the kind of program power that all of us believe will be the result of the changes we’re talking about occurring over the next few months,” Christensen said.

ITVS was funded through 1988 legislation requiring the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to establish an independent program service “to expand the diversity and innovativeness of programming available to public broadcasting.” The nonprofit was incorporated Sept. 22, 1989 and after extended negotiations with CPB began operations in 1991. See also ITVS bylaws, 1990. To the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, District of Columbia: Each of the undersigned, being a natural person of the age of at least eighteen years and acting as an incorporator for the purpose of organizing a corporation pursuant to the provisions of the District of Columbia Nonprofit Corporation Act, does hereby adopt the following Articles of Incorporation.

Virginia public broadcasters and state lottery officials are hoping for a big payoff in audience numbers by televising the state’s lottery prize show. In an unusual arrangement, officials of public television and the state lottery will broadcast Virginia’s Monthly Million, which hits the airwaves Sept. 30 [1989]. Unlike the regular one-minute daily drawings, the half-hour program will be shown once a month and feature eight contestants and “at home” players and offer prizes of between $10,000 and $1 million. For viewers and others who may fear the Old Dominion’s public TV outlets are ignoring public broadcasting’s “mission,” the program is not just a game show.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and independent producers have agreed to an 11-member board of directors to head the Independent Television Service. The two organizations announced the formation Sept. 15 [1989]. Called the independent production service during negotiations, the board was renamed. During the talks, participants said the new agency would not be confused with the Interregional Program Service, which has the same acronym. CPB and members of the National Coalition of Independent Public Broadcasting Producers have been negotiating the makeup of the board and other details of the new organization since late November 1988. The Public Telecommunications Act of 1988 ordered CPB to distribute $6 million for independent television productions.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday approved a public broadcasting funding bill that would create a separate program service for independent producers and establish a board to evaluate public broadcasting's programming for minorities.

In the Matter of Commission Policy Concerning the Noncommercial Nature of Educational Broadcasting 1992 Reprint excerpted from Public Notice, April 11, 1986 (FCC 86-161), which was published at 51 Federal Register 21800, June 16, 1986 7 FCC Record 827The Commission has become aware of significant uncertainty and controversy concerning various aspects of Commission and statutory policy relating to commercial underwriting on noncommercial stations. As a consequence, we have reviewed the existing policies, focusing on . . . : (1) the broadcast of announcements relating to goods and services for which consideration is received by the station; (2) enhanced underwriting and donor announcements; (3) the offering of program-related materials; .

A 1985 blowup over a trip to Moscow revealed that political animals were again entrusted with shielding public TV from political pressure

NPR was shaken, President Frank Mankiewicz and other top managers toppled and some 60 staffers laid off in the network’s 1983 financial crisis. NPR, then largely dependent on federal aid through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, had expanded activities to generate nonfederal money. But those efforts contributed to NPR’s near-collapse. The U.S. Government Accounting Office found that revenues lagged behind budget, expenditures exceeded budget and management lacked systems to monitor the situation, resulting in a $6.4 million deficit in fiscal year 1983. In this statement, Frederick D. Wolf, director of GAO’s Accounting and Financial Management Division, reviewed factors in NPR’s fiscal crisis and cutbacks that barely enabled it to break even at that point.

The Temporary Commission on Alternative Financing for Public Telecommunications (TCAF) delivered its recommendations to Congress on Oct. 1, 1983, after extensive research, including an Advertising Demonstration Program at a number of public TV stations. Letter of transmittal | Membership of TCAF | Executive Summary   Chairman’s letter of transmittal To the Congress of the United States: In accordance with Congress’ direction in the Public Broadcasting Amendments Act of 1981, Public Law Number 97-35, the Temporary Commission on Alternative Financing for Public Telecommunications hereby submits its Final Report. This report describes the Advertising Demonstration Program in which selected public television stations experimented with the carriage of limited advertising.

Failing to foster lasting Cooperation between commercial broadcasters and educators, but sticking to its rhetoric, NACRE covered up the fatal inertia that plagued U.S. educational broadcasting.