Word: public
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ELEMENTS of the plan are two new organizations--dubbed the Public Telecommunications Trust and the Program Services Endowment--and a massive increase in federal funds for public broadcasting. Citing lack of finances dedicated exclusively to programming, the commission suggests that the Endowment, a semi-autonomous division of the Trust, exist solely to concentrate on developing and financing new programs for noncommercial television and radio. The commission also suggests marked changes in nominating procedures for Trust officers to replace "the uneven and politically vulnerable process" which currently governs appointments...
Some charge that the commission tailored its recommendations to accomodate the ideas of certain influential politicians. It is no coincidence, for example, that President Carter, who labels the report "the focal point" for future dicussions, has consistently advocated further "insulation" of the public broadcasting network. Nor is it accidental that Rep. Lionel Van Deerlin (D-Cal.), who chairs the House Communications Subcommittee, had his funding proposals incorporated into the Carnegie plan. But the report is flawed by an almost-embarassing literary and political naivete. At one point the commission says it "recognizes the danger of lapsing into fuzzy-minded ecstacy...
Under all the rhetorical window dressing, however, there is a simple though painful message which says the cure for our sick public broadcasting system is more money--lots of money. In fact, the commission recommends an annual 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...
Needless to say, proposed increases in federal funding have not gone unchallenged. Familiar arguments about the cultural elitism of public television have been dredged up. "When working-class Americans are being pitched off Amtrak passenger trains to save a few bucks," notes former White House speechwriter Pat Buchanan, "it approaches the obscene to demand that taxpayers triple their subsidy to this playpen of the penthouse proletariat." Never one for subtlety, James J. Kilpatrick says he "sees no reason on God's green earth for taking the taxpayer's money in order to nuture those happy hotdogs of the intellectual left...
More specifically, the commission argues that the only viable way to maintain such high levels of federal funding is through the imposition of spectrum fees--charged to those who use the "public" airwaves. The argument goes as follows: Public broadcasting, if properly funded, provides a vital, public service, producing enriching and artistically sound programs. Commercial television, on the other hand, produces some sort of inferior, mind-rotting drivel--all in the name of the advertising market. Because commercial broadcasters limit access to a valuable resource, they should help fund the public system. Spectrum fees will provide a politically insulated, long...