Financing Public Broadcasting

Abstract

When the Public Broadcasting Act1 passed in November I967 there was joy in the land-at least among the aficionados. The jubilation was understandable: The legislation followed by only eleven months the report of the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television2-an impressive Congressional lap-time. Circumstances were most favorable: The concept of educational broadcasting was widely supported; the Johnson Administration and key Congressional leaders of both parties were ardent backers; the highly prestigious Carnegie Commission was unanimous and persuasive; and commercial broadcasters were supportive, as shown by a CBS gift of $i million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. However, there was one flaw. The Administration, while embracing almost all of the Carnegie Commission's recommendations, sidestepped the most perplexing issue, long-term financing. It urged Congress to establish the new structure and provide seed money from general appropriations, promising to return within the year with proposals for subsequent funding.3 The strategy appealed to everyone, for it permitted immediate and very substantial progress. Congress approved and wrote into the Public Broadcasting Act the basic principle that a greatly expanded public broadcasting system was needed in the public interest. It also authorized the establishment of a nonprofit, nongovernmental Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stimulate and foster educational broadcasting. Additionally, the Congressional Committees on Commerce recognized the inevitable need for large-scale federal funding, although not agreeing on the required level of support or the specific techniques for raising the money. In the interim the Administration changed, and the climate for new tax measures chilled. To win support for new expenditures within the traditional framework of general appropriations is sufficiently difficult. Far harder to realize is public broadcasting's objective of obtaining substantial annual federal funding without resort to the customary appropriations procedures. While accomplishing this goal has become more difficult, it remains, in view of the alternatives, an imperative.