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I beg to differ. I refer you to The Nixon Administration Public Broadcasting Papers, 1969-1974 [FOIA] reproduced at http://www.current.org/pbpb/nixon/ from which I quote Clay Whitehead (1971): "No matter how firm our control of CPB management, public television at the national level will always attract liberal and far-left producers, writers, and commentators. We cannot get the Congress to eliminate CPB, to reduce funds for public television, or to exclude CPB from public affairs programming. But we can reform the structure of public broadcasting to eliminate its worst features. There is, and has always been, a deep division within public broadcasting over the extent of national control versus local station control . . . We stand to gain substantially from an increase in the relative power of the local stations. They are generally less liberal, and more concerned with education than with controversial national affairs. Further, a decentralized system would have far less influence and be far less attractive to social activists. Therefore, we should immediately seek legislation to: (a) remove CPB from the business of networking; (b) make a drastic cut in CPB's budget; and (c) initiate direct Federal operating support for local stations on a matching basis."

Memoranda to this effect continued until 1974, just before Nixon resigned. Whitehead wrote President Nixon on April 2: "The object was to gain support for a restructuring of public broadcasting to decentralize funding and programming decisions by emphasizing the role of local stations. We have achieved such a consensus and have a bill awaiting OMB clearance, which provides for: [excerpts]

1. long-range funding over a five-year period without annual appropriations but with oversight;

3. a mandatory pass-through to the local stations of a substantial portion of the Federal match (at least 50 percent by FY 80), to decentralize program control and minimize the network character of the system

This reauthorization bill included not just the decentralization requirement but also something the industry had longed for: Multi-year funding. On July 16, the legislation was submitted to Congress.

The Administration's objective was not to spur "strong, imaginative and innovative PBS stations." That was a smoke screen. It was to stifle the "liberal evils" of national production.

by John Fuller on Jun 19, 2012 10:02 pm • link • report