History of public media
CPB-PBS Partnership Agreement, 1973
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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.