Word: nonprofitability
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Such an impressive debut would normally be cause for bouquets. But the Dial is not just another magazine. It is published by the Public Broadcasting Service through a new nonprofit corporation, Public Broadcasting Communications Inc. If PBS stations continue to print advertising in the Dial, the House voted, they will lose their federal funding. Explained Maryland Republican Robert Bauman as he introduced the measure: "I do not believe that the Federal Government should be in the commercial publishing business...
...House decision followed months of controversy over PBS's ambitious plans to pack high-tone ads-Tiffany & Co., Cuisinart, Merrill Lynch-into its new nonprofit publication and use any "surplus" revenues, a euphemism for profits, for public-TV programming. Last July Washingtonian (circ. 101,000) magazine Publisher Philip Merrill asked the Federal Communications Commission to stop the Dial's four sponsoring stations -WNET in New York, KCET in Los Angeles, WETA in Washington, WTTW in Chicago-from giving the magazine free on-the-air promotion. The Dial, he argued, will compete against other magazines at an unfair advantage...
...Erickson, Dial's editor, disagrees. "For years the Government has granted tax advantages to organizations that use their profits for socially useful purposes," says he. "And public television serves a useful purpose." Nonprofit publications are exempt from most taxes and save up to 50% on postal rates -a big edge over for-profit magazines, whose postal bills have increased some 450% since 1971. These concessions are enjoyed by an increasingly broad range of publications. Of the 35,000 periodicals regularly sent through the mails, 10,000 or so now get some nonprofit subsidies. They range from shoestring religious...
Though few citizens would argue that nonprofit subsidies should be eliminated altogether, commercial publishers are not happy about them. Last March Entrepreneur Mortimer Zuckerman purchased the small Atlantic Monthly (circ. 337,000) only a few months before his main competitor, Harper's, went nonprofit. "How does the Government expect privately held magazines to survive?" asks Zuckerman. Geo, an expensively produced monthly introduced in the U.S. last year by West Germany's Gruner & Jahr, goes up against the nonprofit National Geographic, Natural History and Smithsonian. It is not easy. As a for-profit enterprise, Geo finds it must charge...
...flap over the Dial grew, the U.S. Postal Service at week's end retreated from its earlier decision to allow the Dial's sponsoring stations to use their cheap mailing privileges to distribute the magazine. Instead, Public Broadcasting Communications Inc. must now apply for its own nonprofit mail permit. Vows Dial Publisher Morton Bailey Jr.: "We're going to fight this thing to the very end. We're going to play hardball on this because we're right." As Bailey comes to the plate, however, he is likely to face some smoking fastballs...