THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 26, 1994 TAG: 9412240008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: By ERVIN S. DUGGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines
Support for public broadcasting will be on the agenda when the new Congress convenes in January. Last October, $7 million was slashed from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides substantial funding for the nation's local public-television stations, and now some in Washington are proposing eliminating federal support altogether.
Why should you be concerned? Because, at a time when every tax dollar does indeed need to be carefully and frugally spent, America's annual federal investment in public television - amounting to only about 80 cents per person - generates a tremendous return. Because public television is actually a model of public/private partnership - of using a relatively small infusion of federal dollars to call forth many more private dollars. And because, at a time when we face a crisis of quality in public education and a crisis of violence and exploitation in the commercial media, public television, like the public school and the public library, is a cultural institution that promises much good: an institution, moreover, that simply can never be duplicated by commercial media.
Federal funding for public television accounts for about 14 percent of public television's total budget. We take that modest but crucial seed money and make it grow. With funds from other sources such as corporations, foundations and individual viewers, we attract $4 or $5 for every federal dollar. The result is a valuable educational and cultural institution using television as its delivery system - an institution whose mission and whose accomplishments cannot survive if public television is forced to become just another commercial enterprise.
Would commercial television have brought you a live broadcast of ``The Three Tenors,'' for example? Or taken a chance on Ken Burn's acclaimed 18 1/2-hour series, ``Baseball''? Or on ``Jihad in America,'' which uncovered explosive evidence of terrorist activities here in America? Public television did. And that's not to mention ongoing series such as Nova, The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour, Sesame Street, Nature, The American Experience and Great Performances, which deliver excellence week after week.
Amid all the hype about the promise of the ``500 channel universe,'' it's important to remember a few important facts.
Only noncommercial public television addresses its viewers as citizens - as complete human beings - and not merely as targets for commercials. And at a time when ``tabloid television'' seems to be taking over the airwaves, public television may be our last, best hope for television that takes its mission, and its audience, seriously.
Public television, unlike cable television, doesn't send out a monthly bill. It is as different from commercial channels as the public library is different from a bookstore, or the public museum from a commercial gallery.
Public television means quality for everybody. It is the only television service that consistently offers high-quality programs for a variety of ages, tastes and interests: news; drama; children's programs; documentaries and cultural fare. The largest cable channel reaches fewer than two out of three households; public television reaches virtually every home in America, and more than 100 million people tune in every week.
Moreover, the programs you see on your home screen are just the tip of the iceberg. PBS is the leading provider of classroom video programming for grades K-12. We are the chief national source of video-related study material, including satellite ``distance learning'' courses, and of college-level telecourses. Our on-line computer service, PBS ONLINE, helps teachers use PBS programs as imaginative teaching tools.
As we continue to expand our educational services, new initiatives include ``PTV, The Ready to Learn Service on PBS,'' which combines our children's programs, special educational messages and outreach to parents, teachers and care-givers to help them make television an effective learning tool; ``Going the Distance,'' which will make it possible to complete a two-year junior college degree at a local college entirely through telecourses; and PBS Mathline, a groundbreaking video and on-line service to help train math teachers in the new Goals 2000 math standards.
In short, PBS and public-television stations nationwide have already created an ``information superhighway'' - one dedicated not to commercial aims, but to the public good. It builds on public television's history of technological pioneering - such as the first closed-captioning for the deaf and the first descriptive video service for the blind. Best of all, it reaches every American home and campus.
And what's more, each year public television does all of its work on an annual budget that is less than Fox television paid to acquire NFL football alone!
PBS stands alone in its commitment to improve education, to disseminate the best of history and culture, and to promote citizenship through an informed society. Millions of Americans who have shared public television's benefits, in homes and classrooms and workplaces in every community in the nation, understand well that this mission is as important - no, even more important - than it was when PBS was founded 25 years ago. MEMO: Mr. Duggan is president and chief executive officer of the Public
Broadcasting Service.
KEYWORDS: PUBLIC TELEVISION BUDGET CUTS PROPOSED by CNB