Pat Butler on Public TV's Prospects

Now deep in his fifth year as president of the Association of Public Television Stations, Patrick Butler is feeling good about the state of public TV these days. The Republican Congress is funding stations at a healthy level and more and more states are contributing significantly, even ones headed by conservative governors that previously had been hostile to public TV. That Butler has been build able to build a rapport with the Republicans holding the purse strings may have something to do with his own political credentials. He was an aide to Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-TN) and a speechwriter for President Ford. President Reagan appointed him to serve on the National Council on the Humanities. During his long and varied Washington-centric career, he also applied his political prowess on behalf of the two commercial media powers-that-were -- Times Mirror, when it owned the Los Angeles Times and a string of TV stations, and The Washington Post Co.

In this interview with TVNewsCheck Editor Harry A. Jessell, Butler talks about the current goodwill toward public television among funders, his problems with the FCC incentive auction and subsequent repacking of the TV band and why free, universal broadcasting -- in the highest possible picture quality -- must remain a cornerstone of public media.