David Thiel is the Program Director at WILL-TV, a Public Broadcasting System station in Urbana, IL. He writes the following in reponse to my comments the other day…
Just read this morning's political rant. There's some truth in what you write, and I'm sure that most of us in the public broadcasting system would prefer not to have our funding subject to the whims of politicians. However, simply declaring that we should be freed from the government doesn't address the central problem, which is a chronically underfunded U.S. public broadcasting system.
While the money provided by the federal government through CPB is not the majority source of our funding — in truth, individual viewer/listeners contributions far exceed tax dollars — it is a relatively stable source which the system leverages to attract money from states, universities, foundations and businesses. A loss of federal funding would be devastating, particularly to smaller, rural stations. Furthermore, due to difficulties in attracting national corporate underwriting — including a soft advertising market and corporate America's newfound reluctance to support public institutions — several signature PBS series are in danger of coming to an end. CPB money — funnelled through local stations' dues to PBS–is helping to keep them on life support.
My own station is in a mid-size market, but we are facing a number of financial pressures, including a sluggish state economy and a budget-busting, federally-mandated transition to digital broadcasting. We've made a number of cuts in response, but we're getting to the point where we may not be able to absorb a loss such as you propose without making large-scale reductions in the services we provide to our local communities.
While I'm sure that you are sincere in your reasoning for doing away with federal funding for public broadcasting, most of those declaring that government has no business funding the arts aren't doing so on philosophical grounds. They simply want us to no longer exist, and defunding CPB is a good place to start.
Saying that we should do without federal funding isn't enough. There needs to be broad, public support for an alternative source of income. One of the ideas being mooted is a trust fund, but even that would require a great deal of start-up money. In the long run, that might be the best answer. In the short run, it's vital to ensure that CPB continues to exist. Those who agree should contact their members of Congress immediately, as the full House will be voting on this matter very soon.
As I hope I made clear, I'd like PBS to exist. I'd also like to see the government spend more money on education, medical care for the disadvantaged and a few dozen other things that I think are more important than Reading Rainbow and more legitimate applications of tax dolllars. I'm not wishing for the demise of Sesame Street. The happy ending to this for me would be that enough private individuals and public corporations would support the institution that it never had to ask Congress for another dime.
Having said that, I guess I should confess that I stopped subscribing to our local PBS outlet, KCET, a number of years ago. I paid my dues for a decade or two but the sheer quantity of mail asking me to renew early or up my donation had become truly staggering and annoying. I don't mind junk mail in and of itself, since it takes a whopping ten seconds to toss it in the wastebasket. But I was genuinely starting to feel like every time I sent KCET fifty dollars, they spent sixty trying to get more out of me. I kinda wanted my money to go for programming, not badgering me.
I finally wrote to whoever signed one of the many pleas and said, "Hey, I'll make a deal with you. I'll support KCET indefinitely at the $100 level if you'll never again send me any solicitations apart from my annual renewal notice." I got back a letter that said, in effect, "We can't do that. We've found this approach to be very effective." Well, it wasn't with me. For a time, I was also getting phone calls from them, and I have a policy not to buy anything from any salesman who calls me like that.
Obviously, I know little about what it takes to amass the funds necessary to keep PBS up and operating. Back in the days before HBO and Showtime, I believe that some people had trouble with the whole concept of paying for television programming. I wonder, now that so much of America does pay for premium channels or cable or pay-per-view, if it's easier or harder to get them to consider sending money to a TV channel. I also wonder if anyone has done a feasibility study on making PBS into at least a partial "pay" system like HBO, perhaps with the kids' programs available to all. I actually think I'd have a lot less problem supporting Public Broadcasting if that just meant another monthly fee like I pay for The Sundance Channel and Cinemax. I'd sure pay to get rid of Pledge Breaks and direct-mail solicitations. I'm not sure I want to pay to have them send me near-daily renewal notices…or, worse, to put Tucker Carlson on the air.
Anyway, David, thank you for the message. I believe in what you do, even if I'd like to see some different ways found to pay for it.