A new IPR working paper by Craig LaMay (IPR-Medill) and Burton Weisbrod (IPR-Economics), "The Funding Perils of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting," examines the many ways that U.S. public broadcasting has sought to increase revenues over the years, particularly as tax-based funding has declined. Federal funding to public broadcasting, for example, peaked at 27% of revenues in 1980, and now accounts for about 14% of CPB's $1.8 billion annual revenue. Private sources of funding--viewers, corporations, and foundations--now account for more than 50% of public broadcasting revenues. Of particular interest to LaMay and Weisbrod is what this change means for public broadcasting's mission and its future.
Unlike most of the world's public broadcasters, which operate under much more detailed public-service requirements, the CPB has no clear mission. It was introduced as an antidote to a private, commercial broadcasting system that was giving short shrift to cultural, arts, and public affairs programming. A PBS executive, for example, once described public television as "English people talking and animals mating, and occasionally visa versa." In a multichannel environment, Englishmen and animals are now available elsewhere, and the competition for all forms of programming drives up costs, thus making public broadcasting's financial weakness very nearly debilitating.
The predictable result is that public broadcasters have turned much more aggressively to new, private revenue opportunities. In Chicago, for example, WTTW-Channel 11 partners in several retail "Stores of Knowledge," operates a commercial radio station (WFMT), a classical radio network, and leases its studio space for television production. These activities are not in themselves undesirable,
LaMay and Weisbrod say, but they do raise questions about the purposes--and the public--that public broadcasting is supposed to serve. LaMay and Weisbrod's working paper will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming book on commercialism and the nonprofit sector, edited by Weisbrod and published by Cambridge University Press.