Recasting the Public System

New Carnegie report asks more money, increased independence

Twelve years ago, a Carnegie Commission report became the basis for the public broadcasting system in the U.S.

By many standards the Carnegie model was an astonishing success. The number of TV stations grew from 126 to 280; more than 40% of all families in the U.S. now watch public TV at least once a week. In other respects, the Carnegie report paved the way to failure, and the organization Congress set up has become a bureaucratic maze and a frustration to everyone who enters it.

Last week a second Carnegie Commission issued another report to correct the system's "fundamental flaws." Though it has some good ideas, Carnegie II is, like Carnegie I, excessively timid, short on vision and long on words--particularly long words.

The major organizational fault of the current system is that it virtually assures conflict between the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is a kind of guardian of federal funds, and the Public Broadcasting Service, which represents the individual stations. There is wholesale duplication of effort, and far too big a percentage of the TV budget is spent on administration rather than on programming. The CPB, whose members are appointed by the President, is overly sensitive to prevailing political winds, moreover. There is always a danger that a determined President will try to influence public television for his own purposes, as Richard Nixon did when he packed the CPB with his political pals.

Carnegie II recommends abolishing the CPB and putting in its place something called the Public Telecommunications Trust. The nine-member PTT board would still be appointed by the President. To protect the panel's independence, however, he would be permitted to consider only those names submitted to him by a committee of such notables as the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and the Librarian of Congress. To do away with the internal bickering, the PTT would also be deprived of the programming authority that the CPB now has. Programming on the national level would be the sole function of a new organization called the Program Services Endowment. The PBS would remain in place, and the individual stations would retain the right to originate material of their own.

The most visible change Carnegie II recommends would be the enormous increase in funding. Public broadcasting now receives $540 million from all sources; the report wants to raise that to $1.16 billion a year by 1985, about half of which would come from Washington. To offset a new drain on the Treasury, the commission proposes that commercial broadcasters be charged between $150 million and $200 million for the right to use the public air waves. Local stations would be expected to drum up $1.50 for each $1 that they received from the Government.

When he started out on the project, says Commission Chairman William J. McGill, he thought that the U.S. should have a public network like the BBC. But that, he now believes, should have been done more than 50 years ago, at the time broadcasting began. Public TV in Amer ica is now too diverse for planners to consider a centralized network. "You have to build out of the bedrock of existing structures," insists McGill, who is also president of Columbia University.

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.

For all 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, fearless system, including news and public affairs programming, you have to take people out of political hock."

Van Deerlin questions whether the commission merely wants one unwieldy bureaucracy in place of another: "Maybe the change would be more cosmetic than real."

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.

Neither Mankiewicz nor the other critics need worry, however, at least not for the moment. Congress and the President will have the final decision, and they may take their time before acting on this large but disappointing report.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.