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Markey, Dodd will back trust fund for digital content
A bill introduced in the House May 2 brings the DOIT proposal for a trust fund supporting digital educational content one step closer to “done it.” The legislation introduced by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) proposes to invest proceeds from spectrum auctions in a permanent trust fund for that purpose. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) is preparing a similar bill in the Senate, earmarking 50 percent of all future auction proceeds for such a fund. Markey’s Wireless Technology Investment and Digital Dividends Act (H.R. 4641) also provides for up to $300 million in funding for public broadcasting’s digital conversion. The bill looks very much like the trust fund proposed last April by the Digital Promise Project led by former PBS President Lawrence Grossman and ex-FCC Chairman Newton Minow.Bill McCarter, chief exec of independent-minded WTTW/WFMT, Chicago
Bill McCarter, who headed Chicago’s WTTW for 27 years before retiring in 1998, died of complications from cancer April 21. He was 81. Newton Minow, a former FCC chair and WTTW trustee, recruited McCarter from WETA in Washington, D.C., to run WTTW in 1972. “I have a very high opinion and respect for Bill,” Minow once said. “He is everything you could want in a person, a broadcaster and leader. One of the keys to his success is his exquisite balance and judgment.” Minow said in a WTTW interview that McCarter had been offered the position of PBS president and turned it down on three occasions.
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