Public Stations See Continued Insecurity in Federal Funding
Fighting cuts proposed by President Bush for the eighth straight year, public broadcasters said they would welcome a more secure funding source like the ones enjoyed by their European counterparts. But station executives we interviewed said they hold little hope in the near term of a public- broadcasting trust fund or tax-based funding that would offer a consistent source of funding.
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In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy recently proposed to tax commercial stations’ ad revenue and impose levies on Internet and mobile phone operators to pay for public TV stations. Sarkozy did so to get advertising, which accounts for 40 percent of public TV revenue, off public airwaves. Bush proposed in his 2009 budget cutting public broadcast funding in half (CD Feb 5 p1).
Sarkozy’s proposal is a “great idea,” but “there would be significant lobbying against it” in Washington, said Allen Weatherly, general manager of the Arkansas public TV network. A trust fund is needed to pay for work toward the public service mission of public radio and TV, he said. “But I'm pretty skeptical that would ever get passed” in Congress, Weatherly said.
Steve Bass, president of Oregon Public Broadcasting, said he doubts a Sarkozy-style system will take hold in the U.S. “There are probably four or five major corporations with very deep pockets that probably wouldn’t like the plan too much,” he said. Public broadcasting’s problem in the U.S. is that “we get caught between the free market proponents and the regulation proponents,” he said. Some want public broadcasting purged of corporate money, and others want no government funding, with all support coming from private sources, he said. “We oftentimes see the most restrictions possible and the least money possible,” Bass said. What’s “interesting” about the French proposal, he said, is that it involves no direct government appropriations, but money coming from a tax on commercial services.
The French proposal is unlikely to work in the U.S. but would provide “consistent” funding, said Larry Smith, general manager of KUED Salt Lake City. That approach or a U.K.- style TV tax should have been brought up in 1967, when Congress passed the Public Broadcasting Act, he said: “That water is under the bridge.” Public broadcasters “missed a golden opportunity” to get a trust fund from the analog spectrum auctions, said Rob Bates, general manager of the Nebraska network: “It was a great idea, but I don’t think public broadcasting could come to an agreement on what it would look like.” It’s “too late” now to get money from the auction set aside for a trust fund, he said. “There are designs on the proceeds of the sale of that spectrum by a whole host of legislators.”
Meanwhile, a proposal to fund education and training making use of advanced technologies and public broadcasting was included in a higher education bill (HR-4147) that is on the House floor. Digital Promise, the bill’s backer, couldn’t get funding tied to spectrum auction proceeds. No funding is proposed in the bill, said Anne Murphy, co-chair of Digital Promise, adding that the program would be paid for through appropriations. Her group has sought an amount but isn’t ready to make it public, she added.