Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 2, 1995                   TAG: 9503040040
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

IT'S A POLITICAL VENDETTA, IMPURE AND SIMPLE

The elite is made up of newly and previously elected conservative members of Congress who have attacked public TV with all the subtlety and dignity of a torch-bearing mob. They threaten the existence of a system that, for all its faults, has served America well for decades and provided an alternative to the clatter and clutter and ceaseless clamoring of commercial TV.

But along the way, a documentary or two on public TV has stepped on establishment toes, as indeed documentaries ought to do, and that, more than any imagined savings to taxpayers, has precipitated the assault. It's a political vendetta, impure and simple.

Charges of elitism leveled against public TV are ironic considering the elitism of the chargers. In this pursuit, they represent their own interests only, since no statistical evidence exists to suggest that the public is mad at public TV, nor even dissatisfied with it.

No member of Congress was elected on a platform built around the extinction of public television. Nobody campaigned against the evils of MacNeil and Lehrer. Nobody said, ``Send me to Washington so I can clip the wings of Big Bird.'' In leveling guns at public TV, congressmen are speaking only for themselves and their political agendas. Poll after poll has shown the American public is happy with public TV, certainly not in a snit about it.

``This is an agenda very narrowly directed,'' says activist Andrew Jay Schwartzman, director of the Media Access Project. ``This is an ideological challenge. This is not something the American people voted for, not something parents voted for, not something students voted for, not even something commercial broadcasters voted for.''

Would Schwartzman characterize it as a vendetta? ``Oh sure.''

The latest buffoonish broadside was fired by, appropriately enough, Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), chairman of the Commerce Committee. On Feb. 24, Pressler sent a letter to Henry Cauthen, chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting enumerating ways in which public TV ``can reinvent itself'' and ``become self-funding.'' What Pressler means is for public TV to reinvent itself into commercial TV.

One of his half-baked recommendations: That PBS start running commercials. Pressler insists that surveys show PBS audiences ``willingly would accept commercial advertising.''

Thus under the Pressler plan, and this is no exaggeration, ``Sesame Street'' could be interrupted for commercials hawking sugary cereals and candy bars and ``Masterpiece Theater'' could be peppered with ads for underarm deodorants and adjustable beds. What a great leap forward for American culture. Maybe there should be billboards and neon signs between the paintings in the National Gallery of Art, too.

If the punishment contemplated for public television were to affect only the swollen public TV bureaucracy in Washington - a place where snooty arrogance does indeed flourish - that might almost make it worthwhile. But withdrawing federal money will have ripple effects throughout the system, a kind of trickle-down deprivation.

``The big-city stations would probably suffer the least,'' says Schwartzman, ``but in many states, if the federal money goes, the states will pull the plug, too, because the system's not going to work anymore. You change the dynamics tremendously if you take that federal money off the top.''

We're not talking about a lot of federal money. According to the latest figures available, the United States allocates very few tax dollars to public broadcasting compared to other countries. In the United Kingdom, the per capita cost is $38.56. In Canada, $32.15. In Japan, $17.71. And in the United States? $1.09.

It's sad and absurd that a battle for public TV's very existence has to be fought at this point in our history. Public TV deserves more money, not less, and it needs less interference from politicians, not more. What the PBS-bashers want is precisely opposite the national interest and counter to improving the quality of American life.

Public TV adds to that quality. It gives more than it takes. It shouldn't be destroyed in the name of a political fad. Let the Philistines and the Luddites look elsewhere for their victims. Leave MacNeil and Lehrer and Barney and Kermit and the Three Tenors and Mister Rogers the hell alone.

- Washington Post Writers Group