Word: public
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Instead of seeking that BBC ideal, the commission has sought the possible-something that, like Carnegie I, would have a good chance of being enacted into law. Looked at that way, the report is politically astute. President Carter, for instance, has already said that he wants public broadcasting to be more independent; he is expected to be sympathetic to proposals that would limit his own power. Representative Lionel Van Deerlin, chairman of the House Communications Subcommittee, has also suggested that commercial broadcasters be taxed to help their noncommercial brethren, and he will doubtless support that proposal...
...their shrewdness, however, the commissioners may have underestimated the public's desire for a much stronger alternative to the commercial networks, whose faults are on display every night of the week. While it has tried to insulate the system from politics with several bureaucratic changes, Van Deerlin notes, the report still leaves the public broadcasters dependent on regular appropriations. These must be approved by Congress as well as the President, and Congress this year has appropriated only $120 million, or a little more than a fifth of what Carnegie II eventually wants. Says he: "To have a first-rate...
Equally troubling is the report's demand that local stations continue to go begging to corporations and the general public. Already, the administrators of many stations spend most of their time passing the hat, and controversial programming is often shelved for fear of offending donors. Says Jay Iselin, president of New York's WNET (Channel 13): "It's humiliating to spend most of your time getting up the dough rather than becoming involved in programming...
Frank Mankiewicz, president of National Public Radio, a network of 217 stations, doubts that these stations, which lack TV's glamour, could ever attract much money from listeners. "It's hard to get an audience for fund raising," he says, "let alone raise the funds." For NPR, the matching grant scheme could be a death sentence...
...chief complaints of the Carnegie Commission is that public television is too dependent on British imports. Coincidentally, PBS is about to broadcast the longest and most ambitious British series of all, the 37 plays of William Shakespeare, spread out over six years. The series, the Carnegie Commission to the contrary, will be public TV's greatest monument, a fitting demonstration of what television can be, should be and, in Britain, often...