Public Broadcasting Act of 1967

Public Law 90-129, 90th Congress, November 7, 1967 (as amended to April 26, 1968)
This law was enacted less than 10 months after the report of the Carnegie Commission on Educational Broadcasting. The act initiates federal aid to the operation (as opposed to funding capital facilities) of public broadcasting. Provisions include:

extend authorization of the earlier Educational Television Facilities Act,
forbid educational broadcasting stations to editorialize or support or oppose political candidates,
establish the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and defines its board,
defines its purposes,
authorize reduced telecommunications rates for its interconnection,
authorize appropriations to CPB, and
authorize a federal study of instructional television and radio. Title I—Construction of Facilities
Extension of duration of construction grants for educational broadcasting

Sec. 101.

Accounting problems cost WNET $1 for every $7 in federal grants

WNET’s accounting problems have cost it $1.96 million out of a series of production grants totaling $13 million, following  a two-year federal investigation of the big New York station’s grant accounting. Federal lawyers and the licensee — Educational Broadcasting Corp., now officially known as WNET.org — signed a settlement in which the station gave up 15 percent of the grant money:

$950,000 to be paid back to the feds for inadequately documented or prohibited costs, and
$1,015,046 that the station has spent on the productions but agreed to give up. By the time of the settlement, the growing sum of unreimbursed expenses had cut a $7.8 million hole in the station’s financial fabric. To keep federally backed productions going, the nonprofit continued spending money on them but stopped asking for reimbursements. Robert Feinberg, general counsel, said it was a voluntary decision by the station: “If we have done something wrong, we didn’t want to compound the error.”

“It’s definitely been a drain,” Feinberg said.

‘Sloppiness,’ not wrongdoing, led to probe, says WNET chair

The leadership of WNET said a federal investigation into the station’s use of federal grants totaling almost $13 million is wrapping up, and the organization is financially sound. “There was sloppiness as opposed to real wrongdoing in terms of our accounting systems, which has been addressed,” said James Tisch, chairman of the WNET Board, in an interview. The station has hired a new chief financial officer and created the position of executive director, financial control, to ensure compliance with federal grant rules, said Neal Shapiro, president. “We have a new CFO. We have a new compliance person to make it very clear we take all these rules very seriously,” Shapiro said.

New CPB chair sees watershed for public media

Maybe we’re at a 1967 moment again,” says Ernest Wilson III, shortly after his election as chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on Sept. 16 [2009]. He’s making a hopeful comparison with the year when a Carnegie Commission report slid into President Johnson’s in-box in January and  returned for his signature as the Public Broadcasting Act in November. Wilson, who is dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, admires the way the stars are aligning for an advance of federal policy on public media:

Foundations are examining the plight of journalism and reengaging with public media. Congressional leaders are supportive.

Shadows in the corridors

The scene: a small conference room of the Senate Committee on Commerce, late on a February afternoon. The players: a senior committee staffer and her longtime acquaintance, a public broadcasting general manager. The author is president of Colorado Public Television (KBDI) in Denver. Illustration: Elene Usdin. ‘Well, the bastards have you right where they want you!” growled the aide, barely looking up from her papers spread across the conference table.

Citizens’ group organizes to back full CPB funding

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.

Public ranks pubcasting high in value per dollar

In a Roper Poll taken March 18-25, Americans ranked public TV and public radio among the services that provide the best value for the tax dollar. Only military defense of the country and the police had higher percentages of the sample calling them an “excellent value” or a “good value.” Highways, public schools, environmental protection and the court system ranked lower. The pollsters asked: “Here is a list of some different services that the government provides using tax dollars it collects from the public. Thinking of what you get for what you pay in taxes, would you read down that list and for each one tell me whether you feel you get excellent value for the dollar, or good value, or only fair value for the dollar, or poor value for the dollar?” These were the results:

Rank
Services provided with tax dollars
Percent excellent or good value

1
Military defense of the country
60

2
Police and law enforcement agencies
59

3
Public TV broadcasting
57

4
Public radio broadcasting
53

5
Medical, technological,d other research
52

6
Overseeing the safety of food products
50

7
The space program
49

8
Overseeing safety of prescription drugs
49

9
Highways, roads and bridges
45

10
Public schools
41

11
Environmental protection
41

12
Public transportation
40

13
Sponsorship of the arts
39

14
Overseeing soundness of financial institutions
35

15
The courts
33

16
International intelligence gathering
31

17
Contributions to the United Nations
30

18
Social welfare programs
28

 

“Quite frankly, I was really surprised,” said CPB researcher Janice Jones.

The plans that went to Congress

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.

House leader demands a plan; Senate backs higher numbers

Having emerged from the first 100 days of the 104th Congress with most of its advance funding intact, public broadcasting is entering the most crucial stage in renegotiating its relationship with the lawmakers. Rep. Jack Fields (R-Tex.), chairman of the House telecommunications subcommittee, moved up the schedule for that stage in an April 5 meeting with top pubcasters, asking them to submit by the end of the month their plans for replacing the annual CPB appropriations that congressional Republicans want to eliminate. The Senate, meanwhile, declined to accept House leadership, voting April 6 to continue CPB funding at this year’s $285.6 million level for the next two years. CPB funding was one of the major sticking points that delayed final action on the Senate bill, as conservative Republicans sought bigger cuts and Democrats pushed for smaller ones. The legislation goes next to a House-Senate conference committee, which will have to hammer out substantial differences in the two chambers’ proposed cuts for CPB and other programs. (The conference will be scheduled after the House returns from recess May 1; the Senate returns a week earlier.)

While substantial CPB funding for fiscal years 1996 and 1997 seems likely, the big question is now whether the field will receive any federal aid at all in 1998 and beyond.

How much of the funding gap would individuals fill?

In this time of unprecedented threat to public broadcasting, people are responding with unprecedented generosity to station’s pleas for support. TV station WPBA in Atlanta beat its $75,000 pledging goal by 39 percent, with pitching help from hometown boy Newt Gingrich. The boon fell just short of doubling WPBA’s in-take during last year’s March drive — $42,000. If donations to the system expand permanently by 15 percent,  the increase would amount to about $58.5 million — one-fifth of this year’s federal appropriation to CPB. Pacifica station WBAI in New York broke a record for community radio stations with an $820,000 January drive.

‘Tell them Newt asked you to help’

Fundraising pitches by House Speaker Newt Gingrich drew unprecedented media coverage and helped to boost March pledge receipts at WPBA, Atlanta, home-town public TV station for the powerful Georgia Republican who has vowed to end federal aid for public broadcasting. Gingrich taped a series of spots urging national and local viewers to “open your wallets” and support public television. “Tell them Newt Gingrich asked you to help make sure that PBS stays on the air and Channel 30 stays strong because more than ever it’s going to need our support as individuals to make sure it has the funding it needs,” the congressman said in a self-scripted 45-second message for Atlanta viewers. Late last week, only a handful of stations elsewhere had begun to use national versions of the spots in their on-air campaigns. WCET, Cincinnati, reported that viewers had responded negatively to its use of the pitch.

Pressler gets three boxes of especially dry reading

Public broadcasting’s response to a detailed inquiry by Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) arrived on Capitol Hill the evening of Feb. 10, accompanied by three boxes of supporting material. All but one of the major national organizations submitted responses to the Senate Commerce Committee chairman’s 16-page, single-spaced questionnaire, which included more than 200 questions about the field’s financing, program policies and interrelationships [earlier story]. Pressler earlier had withdrawn some of his queries about political contributions by public broadcasting employees and personal data on NPR staffers. CPB said collecting the information by the senator’s deadline cost $92,000 for staff time, legal fees and copying.

Public view on CPB funding: favorable but also ‘soft’

Three polls taken last month gave majorities of 62 to 84 percent favoring CPB’s federal funding. Then, a few days later, comes one showing the public 63 percent okaying cutbacks. Why such a flip-flop? “Question wording can move poll results very drastically,” replies John Brennan, polling director at the Los Angeles Times, which published the fourth poll. In the first three polls, the questions about CPB appropriations simply asked whether the funding should be continued or eliminated or, in the case of PBS’s own commissioned poll, whether it should be increased, maintained or decreased.

Pubcasting finds itself put ‘in play’ — briefly

When public broadcasters awoke on Jan. 23 [1995], they saw the headlines and their heads started spinning. Newspapers reported that Bell Atlantic [later renamed Verizon] was interested in a partnership with CPB “that would have the Baby Bell step into the funding role now played by the federal government,” as the Wall Street Journal put it. That news came from Sen. Larry Pressler who revealed on CBS’s Face the Nation that the company and other telecom firms were interested in buying or partnering with public broadcasting after Congress privatizes it. To people who thought they understood media economics, it made no sense.

Pressler stocking up on ammunition

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.”

Twentieth Century Fund panel seeks more federal aid for PTV, but would halt CPB grants to stations

With the warning that public television must “reinvent itself” if it is to “meet the needs of the American public in the 21st century,” a task force appointed by the Twentieth Century Fund recommended fundamental restructuring of the existing public television system in a report issued [in July 1993]. [Task force members included former PBS President Lawrence Grossman; Ervin Duggan, soon to be appointed to head PBS later in 1993; and other prominent national-level figures in media and finance.]

Completing what task force members characterized as a reexamination of the basic purpose and principles of public broadcasting on the 25th anniversary of the field’s creation, the 21-member group envisioned a significant role for public television in the multichannel environment of the future — one that calls for an expansion of educational programming, strengthening of its mission at all levels, and a redirection of federal funds toward diversified national programming. Most controversial among the panel’s recommendations is a proposal to cut off federal funding to local stations within three years and aggregate those dollars for national programs.
“A feeling of ‘entitlement” is rampant within the system,” wrote Richard Somerset-Ward. “There are 351 local stations to be accommodated, and they (or their 175 licensees who receive [grants] from the CPB each year) effectively hold most of the purse strings.” That would mean the end of the Community Service Grants (CSGs) to public TV stations, which consumed half of CPB’s federal appropriation in 1992 and amount to 13.5 percent of the public TV system’s total income, according to the report.

Scholar comes from Right to diagnose public TV

A scholar working with the right-wing Heritage Foundation is looking into ways to improve public TV, privatizing it if necessary. Laurence Jarvik, a new Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles, made his Washington debut