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.

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.

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...

Educators never made up the ground they lost during the 1920s and 1930s. They were outspent, outmaneuvered in Washington and outproduced on the air.

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. It would have been a boost for public radio — but the report fizzled 3. Rival lobbies fought for regulators’ nod 4. The Cooperation era: Alliance with broadcasters puts education on the air 5.

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.

Congress  limited CPB’s  discretion in spending the federal appropriation. The corporation’s authorizing law imposes a budget allocation formula that divides the appropriation as indicated in the chart. Dividing CPB funds between TV and radio had been a repeated struggle until 1981, when Congress imposed a peace-making formula proposed by Rep. Tim Wirth (D-Colo.), chair of the House authorizing subcommittee. The 75-25 percentage split between TV and radio was based on experience, though with public radio’s later growth, it made radio stations  more dependent on private-sector fundraising than public TV is. Robben Fleming, then president of CPB, complained that the formula “emasculates” CPB, and his successors periodically have objected to the loss of discretion over spending.