Broadcasting

Besides investigating developing technologies, the government and the FCC find themselves revisiting issues that have received attention from Congress, the broadcasting industry, and the public. One such issue is public television.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was established in 1967 as the official, nongovernment allocator of federal money to public television and radio stations across the United States. In 1992, less than 30 years after its creation, the corporation became a political issue for conservatives who objected to the content and perceived philosophy of public programming and to its partial reliance on U.S. tax dollars.

The attacks began after the House of Representatives approved a bill in December 1991 that would increase spending for the corporation from $825 million to $1.1 billion in a three-year period (H.R. Res. 2977, 102d Congress, 1st Sess. [1991]). (The bill was also passed by the Senate and signed into law in August 1992.) Political conservatives claimed that public broadcasting had a liberal bias, a bloated budget, and offensive programming. Complaints ranged from protests about two frank Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) specials on homosexuality, Tongues Untied and The Lost Language of the Cranes, to a claim that the Children's Television Network program Sesame Street was educationally ineffective and no better than network cartoons.

Public broadcasting claimed that without federal funding through the CPB, its more than 1,000 television and radio stations would cease to exist. Most experts agree that this is not true. Only 14 percent of the operating costs for public broadcasting is supplied by the federal government; the remainder comes from corporations, member donations, and other sources. In 1995, the CPB allocated $285.6 million to public broadcasting, and since 1968, Congress has budgeted more than $4 billion to that concern. Yet, if these funds were cut off, public broadcasting, although wounded, probably would survive. Polls showed that most people like public television and want it to continue, but as opposition gathers in Congress and the Senate, it appears that if public broadcasting is to continue, it may have to do so without federal funding.