Public Broadcast System Funding (hell, service, Article)

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PBS' Future Post-Moyers

By Jeffrey Chester, AlterNet. Posted December 14, 2004.

As PBS lobbies for a billion-dollar trust fund, it's time to challenge the status quo.

It's fitting that as Bill Moyers formally ends his 30-year journey working at PBS, the noncommercial network itself is about to embark on a new effort to determine its own future. This Friday, Moyers signs-off as the host of his "NOW" program, and also leaves PBS. At the same time, public broadcasting's new "Enhanced Funding Initiative" advisory committee is about to hold their first public meeting. Its goal is to "develop ... sustainable ... funding for public service media in the digital era." At issue is whether public broadcasting will finally succeed in securing what has been an endless Holy Grail-like quest since its founding in the 1960s: to secure ongoing and independent funding for noncommercial radio and TV.

For decades, public TV and radio have been buffeted by political forces of Congress, which controls the key federal contributions to its annual budget. It's always been kept on a very short funding leash, which has helped keep both PBS and NPR from engaging in the kind of programming that would significantly challenge the status quo (both of media and of politics). But PBS President Pat Mitchell believes that there is now a serious opportunity to create a permanent trust fund worth billions of dollars. The new funding initiative will recommend how PBS (and presumably NPR and public TV and radio stations) can gain the revenues made possible from the sale of publicly owned airwaves.

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