Journalism

Two ombudsmen will assist CPB in oversight role

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CPB will have not just one but two longtime journalists as ombudsmen, the corporation announced April 5. Ken Bode, former host of the PBS staple Washington Week in Review, and William Schulz, retired executive editor of Reader’s Digest, will monitor public broadcasting content and serve as liaisons for complaints. Appointed for two-year terms, they will cover journalistic programming whether CPB puts money into it or not, but Chairman Ken Tomlinson, formerly a longtime colleague of Schulz’s at Reader’s Digest, told Current they won’t weigh in on entertainment and educational programs — the Buster lesbian-mommies flap, for example. The ombudsmen will initiate their own reports and consider concerns raised by the public and government officials. They will decide which broadcasts or complaints to discuss and post their reports on CPB.org.

System/Policy

CPB’s TV Future Fund was illegal, GAO finds

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A long-anticipated report on public television by the General Accounting
Office, released May 21, advises Congress that CPB illegally diverted
money intended for stations into the now-defunct Television Future Fund. The report, “Issues Related to Federal Funding of Public Television by the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” says CPB operated outside its authority
when it took money from the part of its appropriation that Congress designated
for station grants and used it for Television Future Fund projects. Between 1996 and this year, the Future Fund made grants for R&D projects
to improve public TV operations and fundraising. But GAO said CPB can’t legally
make selective grants from funds allocated for station grants. CPB President Bob Coonrod rebutted that conclusion in a statement printed
as an appendix in the report.

CPB

Did CPB reallocate money illegally to create the Future Funds?

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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.

People

Coonrod’s plan works: Cox will head CPB

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Kathleen A. Cox will step up from chief operating officer of CPB, becoming the corporation’s first woman president July 1 [2004]. Robert T. Coonrod, president since 1997, said he recognized her as a good successor four years ago and groomed her for the job. The CPB Board announced Cox’s promotion Jan. 27. Coonrod will work with her at CPB until October and says he wants to find a new job after that.

System/Policy

TV Future Fund will die, but R&D thrust lives on at CPB

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The Television Future Fund is dead, long live the Television Future Fund. CPB will discontinue the R&D fund this fall, redirecting about $4 million to public TV stations’ Community Service Grants for next fiscal year. The corporation has not decided the future of its Public Radio Public Service Competitive Fund, which gets some of its funding in a similar way. The decision on the TV fund not only aids hard-pressed station but also defuses a political time bomb. Some stations contend CPB reallocated money illegally to set up the Future Fund nine years ago.

Programs/Content

Moyers a flash point in balance talks led by CPB

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CPB has revived debate within public TV about balance and fairness
in public affairs programs, citing specifically Bill Moyers’ dual roles
of host and uninhibited commentator on his Friday-night PBS show. After a vigorous debate among station reps and producers June 9 [2003]
at the PBS Annual Meeting in Miami Beach, CPB President Bob Coonrod
proposed to broaden discussions within public TV on standards of fairness. In a widely circulated letter exchange with PBS President Pat Mitchell,
he put topics from the session–including Moyers’ roles–on the agenda
for future talks between the two. “Specific notions of fairness, or perceptions of fairness, may
vary by individual or by region, but the overall message was clear:
There is a deep and abiding interest among our colleagues to try to
‘get it right,'” Coonrod wrote. After participants in the session
screened a Moyers commentary from Now, “there was serious
discussion .

CPB

Public broadcasting system revenues, 1982–2003

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The system’s revenues passed $2 billion late in the 1990s and $2.3 billion during fiscal year 2003, the latest year for which the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has complete figures. Dollar figures below are in thousands. The portion from private, non–tax-based sources passed 50 percent of the total in fiscal year 1986 and has hovered around 60 percent since FY1999 (see “Private sources row”). Source: CPB’s annual Public Broadcasting Revenue reports. For breakdowns between public TV and public radio and other details, see CPB’s latest full report, for fiscal 2003 system revenues, in a PDF file.

System/Policy

CPB will focus on three initiatives to assist public TV

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Wielding a grim financial analysis of public TV by a big-name consulting firm, CPB has begun a campaign to glue together a consensus supporting three initiatives to end the stagnation:

catching up with other nonprofits in attracting “major gifts” of $1,000 or more from donors;

improving station efficiency, especially by consolidating operations;

using program research more effectively and taking other unspecified steps to re-examine public TV’s “approach to national programming.”

CPB President Bob Coonrod and Chief Operating Officer Kathleen Cox discussed the initiatives in a Current Q&A. Coonrod said the CPB Board called for the consensus building in its statement of objectives adopted in fall 2002. Coonrod told station managers the three initiatives show the greatest potential for improved performance among some 30 possible efforts examined by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. None is a “silver bullet” that could solve public TV’s money problems, he said. Likewise, he doesn’t want to wait for such long shots as Congress endowing a public TV trust fund with proceeds from spectrum auctions.

People

Hull pursues personal history, 72 years ago in Rapid City

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Now that he’s retiring, Ron Hull has time to find out who he is. Not that he or anyone else in public TV is uncertain on that point. Hull is one of the field’s most prominent advocates for good programs and a memorable character who flips his tie over his shoulder when he gets excited, which is often. He worked most of 47 years at the University of Nebraska’s public TV network, leaving periodically and coming back again to its program side, which he tended while Jack McBride built the transmitters, the relationships and an array of ambitious projects based in Lincoln. Hull is retiring from half-time work at the university this month, but his to-do list is full: dedicating a study center for Nebraska author Mari Sandoz at Chadron State College, raising a million bucks for the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Commission celebration in 2004, and tracking down who his parents were.

Obituaries

Public radio hails Rick Madden for life’s work

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Rick Madden, who helped to reinvent public radio during 19 years at
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, succumbed to brain cancer Feb. 21. He was 56. Madden died at his home in Rockville, Md., with his wife and two daughters
close by. He had been diagnosed with the disease in December 2000.

System/Policy

House hearing loomed as CPB panel rushed to fix grant rules

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As Congress threatened to convene a hearing on how CPB distributes its money, a public TV review panel released a proposal last month to change the formula that allocates grants to stations. The fixes ought to please North Carolina’s UNC-TV, which had complained to hometown members of Congress — who pressed for the hearing — that several state networks like itself pay more in PBS dues than they receive in Community Service Grants (CSGs). The proposal would aid state nets by establishing a credit for licensees that operate three or more transmitters. If the recommendation is adopted by the CPB Board, UNC-TV would see an 80 percent increase — about $320,000 — in its base grant in fiscal year 2003, according to CPB. The changes would also reduce the gap between the dues that UNC-TV pays to PBS and the grants it gets from CPB.

Programs/Content

‘For listeners, we’re not the alternative, we’re the ideal’

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CPB broke format in May 2001, giving its top radio honor, the Edward R. Murrow Award, to one of its own employees, Rick Madden, its v.p., radio. Madden delivered this acceptance speech during the opening session of the Public Radio Conference in Seattle on May 17, 2001. I first walked into noncommercial radio at the University of Notre Dame as a freshman and never walked out. That was in 1963, four years before the Carnegie Commission labeled us public radio. My radio passions ran contrary to my father’s notions of what my interests should be.

People

Award honors not only a leader but a philosophy of service

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With this year’s Edward R. Murrow Award, CPB not only honored Richard
H. Madden as key leader in public radio, but also affirmed a set of
ideas closely identified with him, which he helped move from the edge
to the center of thinking in the field. During Madden’s three decades in the field, and especially his 18 years
at CPB, public radio had overcome its earlier aversion to ratings data,
allowed numbers to enter its objectives and learned how to build a focused
format and a larger, appreciative audience. “We’re not a ‘smaller is better’ enterprise anymore, and none of us
can think with that mindset,” Madden said in his acceptance speech May
17 during the Public Radio Conference in Seattle. NPR President Kevin Klose reported supporting evidence during the conference — that
public radio’s weekly full-day cumulative audience had doubled in a decade, from 13.9 million in 1990 to 29.5 million in 2000. CPB did not readily select one its own v.p. of radio for the 25th annual
Murrow Award.

Development

CPB bans list dealings with politicos

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To continue receiving CPB aid, public stations must now certify that they don’t exchange member or donor names with political groups, or sell names to them, or buy names from them. “Our goal is to restore the public’s trust in the work public broadcasting does every day,” said CPB President Bob Coonrod. The new grant rule, issued July 30 [1999], responds to congressional condemnations of the mailing list dealings that apparently involved dozens of public TV and radio stations in recent years. A CPB survey of the 75 largest public TV stations found that 26 had exchanged member or donor lists with political groups and 33 had rented lists from political groups, Coonrod told Congress the week before. Current found that the major stations in the 10 top markets all said they had dealt in swapped or rented lists, though some did it quite infrequently [related story].

System/Policy

Having ‘done the job,’ Carlson will depart CPB

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Richard Carlson, a Republican credited with defending public broadcasting from attacks by members of his party, announced Jan. 24 that he will leave the CPB presidency June 30 or before. He opposed overlapping stations and pushed new rules to limit grants to them–winning support among politicians but losing the backing of many station execs. He spoke up for objectivity and ideological balance in programs, while spurning demands that CPB take a more intrusive role in programming to detect and correct imbalance. He trimmed the CPB bureaucracy and paid a quarter of the staff to leave, changing its human face, with consequences not yet known.

Development

Citizens’ group organizes to back full CPB funding

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A professional campaign firm has begun setting up a Citizens’ Committee for Public Broadcasting to coordinate grassroots support for “full funding” of CPB. Proposed and organized by a New York consumer rights lawyer, Donald Ross, the committee has startup funding from about five major public TV stations, Ross says. The initiative is the latest in a long line of citizen interventions to support or protect public broadcasting. Separate plans for a big-name commission of prominent citizens to resolve “serious issues” in the field’s future were announced by CPB Chairman Henry Cauthen two weeks ago, but have been delayed, according to CPB. The citizen’s committee’s handful of staffers, meanwhile, is starting to recruit field activists and organizers out of the downtown Washington branch office of Ross’s firm, M&R Strategic Services.

Development

The plans that went to Congress

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Here are brutally shortened summaries of proposals in the two funding plans that went to Congress in spring 1995: “Common Sense for the Future” from CPB, and “The Road to Self-Sufficiency” from the quartet of the public stations’ major national organizations, APTS, NPR, PBS and PRI. CPB
APTS, NPR,
PBS and PRI

Trust fund

Recommends a trust fund and says it has examined options for financing it, but doesn’t name them. “We look forward to exploring these and any other alternatives Congress may suggest to make such a trust fund viable.” A temporary financing mechanism would build up trust fund until it becomes large enough to pay out sufficient annual interest. As payout grows, federal appropriations could decline.