Word: pbs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Public Subscriber Network, as it would be known, would charge customers an average $10 to $13 a month, beginning in 1983. It would offer up to three hours each night of high-class entertainment, such as plays and operas, which would be broadcast free over the PBS system, probably many months later. Subscribers would be served, and so would the arts groups, which would receive a share of the profits. But the key point of the plan is that a bigger share would go to PBS and its stations, which would then have an assured income safe from the whims...
Many of the 283 stations in the PBS system look upon the plan as a salvation. Inflation has raised production costs, government at all levels is stingier than it was, and corporate underwriters like the big oil companies say they are giving as much as they can. "Pay public television is unquestionably going to happen," says Tony Tiano, general manager of San Francisco's KQED. "And it's going to happen sooner rather than later." Says Ward Chamberlin, president of Washington's WETA: "The Reagan cuts are a sign that we had damned well better get ready...
Many other stations, however, are just as firmly convinced that PBS President Lawrence Grossman, who sponsored the plan, has made serious mistakes in both math and logic. "The projected revenues are not realistic," complains Lloyd Kaiser, president of Pittsburgh's WQED. "They will add up to a very small amount of money for each station." John J. Iselin of New York's Channel 13 says that PBS might well have to borrow $100 million from banks and insurance companies just to set up the new venture. Even a supporter of the proposal like WETA's Chamberlin...
Still, the Reagan Administration's proposed 25% cut in federal money for public TV and radio-$43 million out of $172 million-makes some such money-making scheme almost mandatory. Even before the election. PBS and local stations had been looking for new funds. PBS now makes $1 million a year by renting out time on its transmitting satellite; five local stations hope to make money soon on their new program magazine, the Dial, which has won all challenges to its nonprofit status. Chicago's WTTW is already making more than $300,000 a year...
...REMEMBER HARLEM (PBS Feb. 1-4) Take the A train to 125th Street, and there it is: the black capital of the U.S., a city within a city. Harlem is not the biggest black community in the country, but it is the most important, and even today there are memories of the golden days when tourists came from all over the world for a night at the Cotton Club or the Apollo Theater. This four-part series is both a history and a celebration of those storied blocks of uptown Manhattan, a fascinating scrapbook of a lost and almost forgotten...