Public broadcasting funding

[Garrett Wollman <wollman>]

<<On Sat, 8 Jan 2000 18:21:39 EST, Dib9@aol.com said:

> If the governments providing most of the money to pay the bills, by
> definition its government broadcasting.

So, since the government *isn't* providing most of the money, by
definition PBS and NPR *aren't* ``government broadcasting''.

I'm afraid I'll have to bother you with some facts.

Just to pick a random example, which happened to be convenient to
hand....  According to the FY 1999 NHPTV annual report to members,
statement of income:

Source			$ Amount	%tot
----------------------	---------	-----
Membership		2,409,557	32.5%
Major Gifts		  205,405	 2.8%
Auctions		  577,582	 7.8%
Corporations,		  863,650	11.6%
  Foundations and
  Grants
Bulletin advertising	   72,236	 1.0%
Endowment income	   38,823	 0.5%
Facilities rental	  464,253	 6.3%
Miscellaneous		  186,024	 2.4%
State of N.H.		1,839,000	24.8%
Federal Support		  760,313	10.3%
======================	=========	=====
Total			7,416,843	100 %

``Federal Support'', although not broken down further, presumably
includes both CPB funding -- which is doled out to stations on the
basis of market size and revene -- and program-support funding coming
from NEA, NEH, NIH, and NSF (if any).  In FY 1999, CPB received a
total of $250,000,000 in direct appropriations from Congress.  Of
this, $128 million is granted directly to public TV stations according
to a statutory formula; $47 million is used to fund program production
by independent producers.

All told, government support of this particular broadcaster amounts to
35.1%.  Even if we assumed NHPTV broadcast all CPB-funded productions,
its share (relative to the entire United States population) would
amount to an additional 2.4%.  Hardly ``government broadcasting''.

(We should also note that NHPTV receives money from the State of New
Hampshire principally in order to support its state-wide educational
and broadcasting services.  They would have no reason to operate
stations in Keene and Littleton were it not for this requirement.
According to the station's published history: ``[I]n 1965, the New
Hampshire Legislature matched federal grants to fund construction of
four new transmitters that would reach 98 percent of the New Hampshire
population.'')

For stations in more affluent, densely-populated areas, the fraction
of government funding is even less.

-GAWollman