For an industry that has “elitist” planted on its back like a hard-to-reach sticky label, the most critical piece of public broadcasting’s campaign to save itself may be the grassroots response. Opponents of CPB funding in Congress complain they’re swamped with calls and some charge that pubcasters, because they get federal funds, can’t legally lobby. Stations argue that they are within their rights as long as they don’t use federal money to lobby. When constituent calls and letters reach a “critical mass,” they penetrate
even the toughest mind-sets in Congress, said Bond. “Constituents always can make a difference.
An inquiry by Sen. Larry Pressler last week put public broadcasters on notice that they face hostile scrutiny during Senate consideration of CPB’s reauthorization. The South Dakota senator’s office sent a 16-page, single-spaced questionnaire to CPB and other major pubcasting organizations seeking a myriad details about the field’s finances and program policies, as well as the political contributions of those working within the field and personal data about all members of NPR’s staff. [Later article on the responses.]
Pressler later withdrew a handful of the more than 200 questions after CPB Chairman Henry Cauthen advised him that answering them would violate individuals’ rights to privacy. People for the American Way also criticized Pressler’s inquiry as a attempt to “chill political speech … not seen since the era of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.”
CPB from its start had always had responsibility for ensuring “objectivity and balance” in programming that it funded, but on June 2, 1992, the U.S. Senate amended the House bill that included CPB’s reauthorization (H.R. 2977) to add related responsibilities. Amendments were accepted by the House and signed by the President in August. Text below is from the act as signed by the President. Objectivity and Balance Policy, Procedures and Report
SEC. 19.
…The announcement is a landmark in a long struggle for public TV producers outside of stations to gain an official place in program funding decisions. CPB bankrolled the service under a 1988 congressional mandate but long negotiations …
The Independent Television Service and CPB signed a long-delayed contract that will pass $23 million of federal money to the St. Paul-based organization through December 1992. ITVS, mandated by Congress in 1988, will give grants to and promote independent PTV productions. John Schott, executive director of the group based in St. Paul, Minn., said the contract guarantees ITVS “its proper autonomy” and provides for CPB’s oversight responsibilities.
The Independent Television Service and CPB signed a long-delayed contract that will pass $23 million of federal money to the St. Paul-based organization through December 1992.
Walter H. Annenberg has returned to CPB with $60 million—and a revised educational purpose — a year and a half after pulling the same amount out of the Annenberg/CPB Project. CPB announced June 19 [1991] that the Annenberg Foundation, chaired by the billionaire retired publisher and philanthropist, has joined CPB in a project to help elementary- and secondary-level students learn math and science. May go nonbroadcast
The project is likely to put more of its money into nonbroadcast technologies than the older college-level venture has. “If you take a careful look at that press release, he is not giving his money to public broadcasting,” says an adviser to the Annenberg Foundation. “It is not a broadcasting program from here on.
A bold strategic study for public TV, commissioned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, recommends that stations spend less on local program production and more on achieving high quality in national and instructional programs.If PTV fails to “invest fully in national programming,” it will see a “downward spiral” in program quality, audience and revenues, according to the report by Boston Consulting Group, a business strategy firm. The study, whose earlier drafts have been discussed for months in high-level meetings, was presented publicly for the first time at public TV’s Pacific Mountain Network and Central Educational Network annual meetings earlier this month. “Most of the managers say, ‘It’s terrible news, but I’ve known it’s there — I’ve felt it,”‘ says Joseph Zesbaugh, president of PMN, who devoted a day and a half of his annual conference to discussions related to the study. Despite the bad news, the consultants’ presentation won “far and away the highest marks” given by attendees in their evaluations of the PMN meeting, Zesbaugh said. The consultants gave public broadcasters an unfamiliar profit/loss sketch of their major functions.
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. Daressa, a 15-year veteran of Newsreel, one of the nation’s oldest nonprofit media centers, said the “solution and answer” was to give the opportunity to independent producers to come up with programming “independently of the priorities of the stations.” We’re different aspects of one urge, kind of a collective personality — for the field, for independents and for the public interest in public TV.
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 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.
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.
Bythe National Telecommunications and Information Administration |
A major part of OTP’s activity in 1971 involved the development of a long-term financing bill for CPB. However, because of disagreements with CPB over details of the draft “Public Telecommunications Financing Act of 1971” and the Administration’s displeasure with public broadcasting’s news and public affairs programming, the Administration did not submit a CPB funding bill to Congress that year. On April 13, Flanigan and Whitehead, now OTP Director, met in Flanigan’s office with CPB Directors Cole and Wrather, both of whom had been appointed to the Corporation Board by President Nixon. The meeting was an outgrowth of Flanigan’s and Whitehead’s correspondence with Cole, dating from November 9, 1970, when Flanigan wrote to Cole complaining about the NET documentary “Banks and the Poor.” On March 15, Flanigan sent Whitehead a memo which said:
Regarding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, we discussed having a meeting of our directors to determine where we go from here with the Corporation.
Bythe National Association of Educational Broadcasters |
These memos from the Nixon Administration cover a period of peak conflict between the White House and public broadcasting. The documents were released by the government five years later in response to a Freedom of Information Act request in 1978 by the second Carnegie Commission. These summaries were prepared and released during the Carter Administration by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the successor agency of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy, a central player in the 1969–74 conflict. The summaries were published as The Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers 1969–1974 by the National Association of Educational Broadcasters. Introduction and Foreword to NAEB printing and NTIA letters of transmittal are shown below.
Statement of Dean Burch, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, before the Subcommittee on Communications of the Senate Committee on Commerce on S.3558, April 1, 1970. A prominent progressive FCC member, Nicholas Johnson, also endorsed the bill. Mr. Chairman, I welcome this opportunity to give you the Commission’s views on S.3558, the “Public Broadcasting Financing Act of 1970”. This bill is designed to carry out the President’s recommendation, as set forth in his Message on Education Reform, to extend Federal support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. S.3558 would authorize annual appropriations for the Corporation through fiscal year 1973.
This study — partially funded by CPB and the Ford Foundation during CPB’s first year and released in April 1969 — recommended creation of a public radio network and a national production center (a year before the founding of NPR), restructuring of the noncommercial FM band, and formation of a radio division at CPB to look out for public radio’s interests. The study was headed by Samuel C.O. Holt, who later served as programming chief at NPR. Holt’s recommendations are here. Summary
The Public Radio Study was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and The Ford Foundation at an important time for the medium. We have tried to gain a feeling for noncommercial educational radio and its problems, to get from the station managers and others who work in the medium something of their attitudes toward their field and its future, and to make recommendations to meet some of the problems we encountered in our field work.
Summary and Recommendations
This study — partially funded by CPB during its first year and released in April 1969 — recommended creation of a public radio network and a national production center (a year before the founding of NPR), restructuring of the noncommercial FM band, and formation of a radio division at CPB to look out for public radio’s interests. The study was headed by Samuel C.O. Holt, who later served as programming chief at NPR. Jump to Recommendations
The Public Radio Study was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and The Ford Foundation at an important time for the medium. We have tried to gain a feeling for noncommercial educational radio and its problems, to get from the station managers and others who work in the medium something of their attitudes toward their field and its future, and to make recommendations to meet some of the problems we encountered in our field work. First, we tried to put noncommercial radio in perspective in a period which has seen great changes in the roles of media.
After three years of conflict between PBS and Nixon Administration appointees at CPB, the boards of the two organizations reached this agreement, securing PBS’s role as operator of public TV’s interconnection. (The pact was adopted May 31, 1973 by the PBS Board’s Executive Committee and the CPB Board. The full PBS Board ratified it June 28, 1973.)
Resolved, by the Boards of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service, that:
In order to effect a vigorous partnership in behalf of the independence and diversity of public television and to improve the excellence of its programs;
to enhance the development, passage by Congress, and approval by the Executive branch of a long-range financing program that would remove public broadcasting from the political hazards of annual authorizations and appropriations;
to further strengthen the autonomy and independence of local public television stations; and
to reaffirm that public affairs programs are an essential responsibility of public broadcasting,
the Boards of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) do hereby jointly adopt the following agreement:
1. CPB will, in consultation with PBS, other interested parties, and the public, decide all CPB funded programs through a CPB program department. The consultation prior to CPB’s decision is vital so that the CPB programming department will understand what the licensees’ needs are and thus avoid any possibility that CPB will fund programs that the licensees do not want.