Word: cpb
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...public television stations across the nation comprise the Public Broadcasting System--a non-commercial network. The presidentially appointed Corporation for Public Broadcasting organizes and channels government, foundation, and private funds to PBS to pay for their programming. With a determined tug on the pursestrings, the government can use the CPB to strangle a bold PBS into docility...
...programs. The Administration's instrument has been the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an independent Government board that used to be little more than a conduit for the limited federal funds devoted to public TV. But after Nixon appointees gained a majority on the board last fall, the CPB suddenly took on a new purpose. It not only withheld funds for many public-affairs programs but also demanded the power to kill privately financed programs that would be transmitted on Government-financed interconnection facilities. In protest, the heads of many of the 233 local stations gathered in Washington last month...
Curtis apparently thought that the compromise would be acceptable to the President. Not so. After 48 hours of intense pressure from the White House, which continued to demand total control by the CPB, ten of the 14 members rejected the plan. Discouraged, Curtis resigned last week, leaving public TV even more embattled than before...
...whole controversy revolves around so many individual personalities and bureaucratic anomalies that oversimplified statements about First Amendments rights, executive power, and private ownership rights can be not only dangerously inaccurate but also inadequate as explanations. The CPB has provided so little reasoning for its actions that conjecture too often intercedes where fact should prevail. And we still question exactly where the White House stands and who, if anyone, is the mastermind behind the current explosion in governmental influence...
...Loomis up on his desire for more documentaries. The viewing public, along with 232 public TV stations, could profit from an in-depth study into why public broadcasting is becoming so politicized. The documentary might begin by examining why Senator Brooke was compelled to say on the Senate floor, "CPB is setting a very dangerous precedent. For when one hand controls the Federal funds and also controls distribution power for public television we will have in appearance and perhaps in fact a domestic Government network...