Programs/Content
Public TV takes note: health care bills have billions for education
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Health-care legislation now pending in Congress may be one of the best new sources of support for public-service content, public TV’s lobbyists are saying.
System/Policy
Panel gets more specific about new services
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A well-connected panel of business leaders, broadcasters and policy wonks last week got specific about what public broadcasting could do in the future to use its digital signals for the greatest public benefit—and to justify the increased funding that would make it possible. ¶ The Digital Future Initiative panel, convened by PBS President Pat Mitchell a year ago, released its report Dec. 15…
Why public media?
Hundt: System needs openness of 4 kinds
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Attorney and former FCC chairman Reed Hundt , a co-chair of the PBS-appointed Digital Future Initiative, previewed his thinking in a Current commentary seven months before the panel issued its recommendations at the end of 2005. See also Co-chair James Barksdale’s commentary. Jim Barksdale said at the very first meeting of the Digital Future Initiative that one thing that he learned in his different business successes is that the main thing is to make the main thing always be the main thing. I’m going to try to do that today by telling you the main thing on my mind after working for months with our distinguished panel and bringing in lots of other people to talk to us. I’ll tell you straight from the shoulder: I think public broadcasting is in one of those slowly developing, hard-to-spot situations that is, in fact, a real crisis.
Programs/Content
Barksdale: Make literacy your mission
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Corporate leader and philanthropist James Barksdale, a co-chair of the PBS-appointed Digital Future Initiative, previewed his thinking in a Current commentary seven months before the long-delayed publication of the initiative’s recommendations. See also comments by initiative Co-chair Reed Hundt. In a story that has always held meaning for me, Lewis Carroll’s character Alice came to a fork in the road. Which way do I go? she wondered. The Cheshire Cat beamed down from the tree above her and asked, “Little girl, are you lost?”
“Well, I just want to know which way I should go,” she said.