Public Failing Public TV

PUBLIC FAILING PUBLIC TV
[SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, AUTHOR: Mark Roth]
One in every 10 people who watch Pittsburgh's WQED is a contributing member. If 2 in 10 contributed, the station's financial woes would disappear. But that's unlikely to happen. The number of public TV subscribers in America has fallen from 7.2 million in 2000 to 6.5 million in 2004, the most recent statistics available, according to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. With all the pressures facing stations, it's easy to understand why public broadcasting advocates have hoped for years that Congress would set up a trust fund to provide them with secure, stable funding that would be immune from political pressures and ideological debates. But Dennis Haarsager, general manager of the public TV stations owned by Washington State University, said he's not sure many members of Congress support the trust fund idea. "In general," he said drily, "legislators like to have control over the money they appropriate." Under the annual appropriations process, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting now provides about $266 million, or only about 13 percent of public TV's total budget. "I think people sometimes think that once they sign their tax returns, we're taken care of," said Deborah Acklin, WQED Multimedia's general manager. "But we don't get most of our money from the government."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06079/673306.stm

See also --
* NPR is Commercial Radio
http://www.audioactivism.org/2006/03/20/npr-is-commercial-radio/