THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 23, 1996 TAG: 9610230003
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: GLENN ALLEN SCOTT
LENGTH: 96 lines
Happy birthday, WHRO!
At age 35, WHRO is stronger and more popular than ever. Established by the Norfolk and Hampton public schools as an experiment in instructional television, the Hampton Roads Education Telecommunications Association Inc., trading as WHRO, has grown into a major public telecommunications enterprise at the heart of the 28th-largest U.S. metropolitan region - population 1.5 million-plus.
Nielsen, the TV-audience-measuring outfit - counts a half-million WHRO viewers each month.
Arbitron, the Nielsen equivalent in radio land, reports 145,000 listeners to WHRO-FM/89.5 and WHRV-FM/90.3 each week.
WHRO is a learning resource for 19 school divisions embracing 250,000 students and 17,000 teachers.
Years ago, WHRO earned its status as an institution that enriches life in Hampton Roads and Northeastern North Carolina. More than 20,000 households respond to WHRO's pleas for financial contributions (some of which are being made as we speak). WHRO's hope is that the total will soon rise to 25,000. So thoroughly is WHRO woven into the cultural fabric of the region that it looks to be as enduring a fixture as the College of William and Mary.
Before WHRO, viewers could choose only from commercial-television offerings, which Newton Minow of the Federal Communications Commission memorably characterized as a ``vast wasteland.''
Yes, there were oases in the wasteland. But even today, when satellite dishes pluck countless channels from the skies, public television and public radio are very nearly the only refuges from incessant huckstering and the only mass-communications media with the vision, the desire and the courage to present the likes of Ken Burns' enthralling ``Civil War,'' or historian David McCullough's dazzling ``American Experience'' series, William F. Buckley Jr.'s stimulating ``Firing Line'' debates and Bill Moyers' current 10-part exploration of the Book of Genesis.
Unfortunately, public broadcasting is not as free of sales pitches as it long was.
Public television and public radio have always had to devote a portion of air time to drumming up grass-roots donations. But cultural conservatives' fierce campaign against federal appropriations for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting led to funding cuts that transformed public-television and public-radio acknowledgments of corporate underwriting of programs into ``enhanced announcements'' that resemble mini-commercials.
Allowing corporations to call attention to their products or services (in a dignified manner, of course) enhances underwriting's appeal. But the risk is that public broadcasting's deepening dependence upon corporate America's largess could eventually render public-broadcasting station breaks indistinguishable from the advertising-crammed intermissions of for-profit television and radio. Whatever advertisers might gain from such a development, the loss to viewers would be substantial - especially if public television and public radio shaped programming to please narrow commercial interests.
Cultural conservatives rightly lament the violence and prurience (though not the mindlessness and meretriciousness) of commercial television (especially) and commercial radio, atrocities which they attribute to ``elites'' - presumably, writers, producers, directors - indifferent or hostile to wholesome values.
The cultural conservatives' targets should be the Fortune 500 corporations that write the checks without which the TV programming and popular music deemed offensive to decent folk would not be aired.
But multinational corporations are impervious to moralizing rant. So what did the cultural conservatives do? They channeled the anger that they had whipped up over the allegedly corrupting ``elites'' toward public broadcasting, which happens to be the principal provider of quality children's, performing-arts, science-and-technology, news, public-affairs, informational/educational and intellectually provocative programming. Doing in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was supposed to rid America of at least some evil influences. Strange.
Happy to report, public broadcasting is tougher and smarter than its mortal enemies figured it to be. Yes, federal funding for CPB was chopped from $275 million last year (or a little over $1 per American) to $250 million (98 cents per American) this year, but the appropriation will hold steady at $250 million through at least next year.
Meanwhile, Congress is scrambling to find money for a Public Broadcasting Trust Fund that will be a dependable permanent source of CPB revenue. The now-muted Republican revolutionaries of the 104th Congress were stunned to learn from furious constituents that the voters had not sent them to Capitol Hill to deep-six CPB.
Of WHRO's $6.7 million 1997 budget, CPB is supplying $800,000. Virginia's government is kicking in $1.3 million. Businesses, foundations and individuals are bestowing more than $3 million. Nearly $1 million is coming from income earned by WHRO from video conferencing, leasing tower space and production facilities and program royalties.
A few weeks ago, WHRO-TV and commercial WVEC-TV Channel 13, with assistance from The Virginian-Pilot, teamed to produce a weekly series examining public issues of importance to Hampton Roads. Bell Atlantic Video Services is underwriting the programs.
At age 35, WHRO is more energetic and more innovative than ever. All the better for us. MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The
Virginian-Pilot. by CNB