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Public broadcasting funding
<<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