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

DATE: SUNDAY, March 5, 1995                   TAG: 9503040055
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: G-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PUBLIC STATS

LEAVING ASIDE the merits of arguments about whether government should be funding public broadcasting, one misperception needs to be righted. The audience is not an intellectual, social or economic elite. The very assumption that it is strikes one as, well, elitist.

Yes, critics of the subsidies can say correctly that the higher the level of income or education of a household, the more likely someone in it watches public television. Nielsen statistics, reported recently in The Wall Street Journal, indicate that while 21 percent of U.S. households with TVs earn more than $60,000, these households comprise 23 percent of the public TV audience. Similarly, the 22 percent of the population with four or more years of college make up 24 percent of public television's audience.

The 21.5 percent of the nation's households with televisions in which no one has graduated from high school make up only 20 percent of the audience. Only 20 percent? OK, the proportion of viewers is slightly lower than their percentage of population, but one-fifth of the viewing audience is a healthy slice.

In fact, Nielsen - which measured households that had tuned in to public television an average of at least six minutes a week last season - found that 56.5 percent had incomes of less than $40,000 a year and 53 percent had no members with more than a high school diploma.

Arguments that viewers, however numerous and diverse, can find alternatives to the commercial networks on Discovery or The Learning Channel assume that they have cable. Not everyone does, nor can everyone afford it.

Some of those folks tuning in to "Nova" may be rocket scientists - who have been laid off because of defense-spending cuts and had the cable yanked. More are not rocket scientists. But that doesn't mean they're not smart.

by CNB