Public Broadcasting's Uncertain Future

Report Outline
Challenges and Uncertainties
Changes Proposed by Reagan
Future of National Public Radio
Special Focus

Challenges and Uncertainties

Problems Facing Public Broadcasting Today

Public Broadcasting, financially troubled since its infancy, today is facing a mid-life crisis. Both the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) — the nation's non-commercial, non-profit television and radio systems — could lose 25 percent of their federal funds if Congress approves President Reagan's proposed budget for fiscal year 1982. This threat comes at a time when the chronically underfunded public broadcasting systems are struggling with serious financial troubles stemming from inflation. NPR President Frank Mankiewicz predicts that if the administration's proposed cuts go through as they now stand, all NPR programs will go off the air on Oct. 1, the start of the 1982 fiscal year. PBS President Lawrence K. Grossman has a similar, if less dire, prediction about what the proposed cuts would mean for public television. “With the cost of programming increasing at a fierce rate due to inflation,” he said in a recent interview, “major cuts are going to have to come in our programming….”

The unsettled funding question is only one of public television's problems. The ramifications of the technological innovations that have come to television broadcasting in recent years also threaten public TV. The rapid growth of cable television, which now reaches 23 percent of the nation's homes, means more selection for viewers. Instead of receiving a handful of local stations, cable viewers can pick up as many as 36 stations. These include all local channels, broadcasts from other cities via satellite, all-sports channels, an all-news channel, a network featuring children's programming and a number of pay services that show uncut, commercial-free films and other special presentations.

This switch from broadcasting to “narrowcasting” aimed at narrow sections of the viewing public affects public television in two ways. First, there is more competition. In many markets today PBS stations are no longer the only non-commercial alternatives to network-dominated television. Second, the three major commercial networks have set up divisions to explore cable programming. ABC and CBS will soon inaugurate their own pay-cable channels specializing in cultural programming; these operations will compete directly with PBS.