Word: local
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...real problems began in June 1972, when then-President Richard M. Nixon vetoed a bill that would have provided long-term funding for public broadcasting. Nixon charged that broadcasters had deserted the essential concept of local programming recommended by Carnegie I. Yet recently released documents show that underneath its public statements, the administration was really criticizing public broadcasters for their anti-Nixon viewpoints. A memo to H.R. Haldeman from Clay T. Whitehead, then head of the Office of Telecommunications Policy, reveals a plan to quietly purge public television's anti-administration spokesmen. John Erlichman advised that the "best alternative would...
...policies against concentration of power in the media, destroyed already weak ties between existing public broadcasting bureaucracies. Relations between the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), both vying for financial and creative supremacy, deteriorated. When organizational conflicts subsided, Nixon signed a bill authorizing increased local funding. Decisions in 1975 stabilized the system further. Institutional reorganization coupled with a new multi-year funding plan "helped stimulate public broadcasting's recovery and renewed development." Under this system, as a barrage of figures indicate, public television experienced a renaissance of sorts...
...budget (by 1985) of $1.2 billion. Of this total pool, the federal government would provide $590 million, a recommended increase of over 300 per cent from 1978 funding levels. To supplement this, the commission proposes a system in which Congress would provide two dollars for every three dollars a local station gathered...
...course of its hearings, Carnegie II heard from writers, directors and independent producers, "who almost unanimously complained of an overly complicated structure, lack of authority to make decisions, and bureaucratic rivalry that stifled creativity." Yet by partially centralizing programming decisions--in effect limiting the pool of programs that local stations have access to--the commission seems to step backward. In the past, local stations--which produced 60 per cent of programs broadcast in 1976--were responsible for the system's best programming. "Public broadcasting," argues The Wall Street Journal, "has evolved along lines that suggest the greatest impetus for creativity...
...close reading of the report also reveals contradictions. "Without leadership that is respected at the grass roots and is respectful of local processes, the system as a whole is incapable of defining its mission to serve the public," the commission notes. Is this the same group that says that in order to attract the best minds, it cannot require public financial disclosure for those nominated to serve on the Trust's board...