[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 39 (Thursday, March 2, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E497-E498]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


            KCPT PRESIDENT SPEAKS OUT ON PUBLIC BROADCASTING

                                 ______


                          HON. KAREN McCARTHY

                              of missouri

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 2, 1995
  Ms. McCARTHY. Mr. Speaker, with the House of Representatives on the 
verge of considering rescissions legislation that would cut Federal 
funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by 15 percent in 
1996 and 30 percent in 1997, I commend to my colleagues a statement 
recently prepared by William R. Reed, the president of KCPT--channel 
19, which is Kansas City's public television station.
  Bill's statement, which is a response to common reasons given for the 
elimination of Federal funding for public broadcasting, follows:
    Reasons Given for the Elimination of Federal Funding for Public 
                              Broadcasting

                             (By Bill Reed)

       1. Public broadcasting funds liberal and controversial 
     programs with federal dollars. Taxpayers' money should not be 
     used for these purposes.
       While KCPT does not receive large numbers of complaints 
     about our political coverage, those received come equally 
     from both left and right. For example, KCPT received many 
     calls from liberals who were upset that McNeil/Lehrer devoted 
     a large amount of time interviewing Senator Dole and 
     Congressman Gingrich. And on the other side, we hear 
     complaints about Bill Moyers' alleged liberal bias. But on 
     balance, I believe KCPT is perceived by most viewers to be 
     apolitical or non-political, as we should be. I think that 
     McNeil/Lehrer is the most balanced program covering political 
     issues on television anywhere.
       PBS is aware of this criticism, and I have heard that staff 
     are taking steps to ensure more internal balance in 
     individual programs, rather than relying on balance over a 
     series of programs. PBS President Ervin Duggan's proposed 
     Democracy Project, which is coverage of the 1996 national 
     elections, will have an emphasis on fairness and balance.
       The statement that public television occasionally airs 
     controversial programming is true, and the program of 
     controversy last year was Armistead Maupin's Tales of the 
     City, a six-hour series about San Francisco in the mid 1970s.
       Before KCPT aired Tales, Dave Welsh, Vice President for 
     Broadcasting, Katherine Soden, Director of Programming, and I 
     viewed the series at least twice. The decision to air the 
     series was not an easy one because we knew that it would be 
     controversial--it contained strong language, drug use, 
     homosexual relationship and some brief nudity (and no sex or 
     violence). But it was also brilliant television with a 
     legitimate look at a specific time and place in our history. 
     The series was a moral tale with the central character, Mary 
     Ann, a young women from the Midwest who did not give in to 
     the lifestyles of that time--the drug use and the 
     promiscuity--because of her values. Tales of the City was 
     more a story about the emptiness of lives lived without 
     commitment, without a moral core, than anything else.
       KCPT received about 200 telephone calls and letters about 
     the series--about 100 for and 100 against. Congress, however, 
     reportedly received over 100,000 postcards as a result of a 
     national campaign by the American Family Association and its 
     president, the Reverend Donald E. Wildmon, against the 
     series.
       Even if one did not like the series, should funding be 
     eliminated because of six hours of programming? What about 
     the other 5,994 hours KCPT airs each year? Obviously, Tales 
     and other potentially controversial programs raise some 
     profound questions. Should KCPT censor programs if we think 
     they might be controversial, even if they are good television 
     dealing with legitimate issues? What about individual choice? 
     And what about the ``off'' button? But these questions, as 
     they relate to this series, anyway, may be moot. PBS has 
     decided not to fund a sequel to Tales of the City.
       2. We should privatize public television.
       One of public television's strengths is that it serves many 
     specialized audiences: Sewing programs, the old Lawrence Welk 
     shows, cooking programs, GED programming, gardening programs, 
     carpentry programs, how-to-fix-up-your-house programs, and 
     painting programs. All these target audience programs would 
     disappear because there simply are not large enough audiences 
     to support them with commercial advertising.
       Programming currently airing on Discovery, Arts and 
     Entertainment and Nickelodeon cable channels attract smaller 
     audiences than on public television, but they continue to 
     exist financially because those channels are owned by large 
     corporations with a financial interest in the success of 
     cable television as a larger business. For example, 
     Nickelodeon is owned by Viacom, Inc., which also owns the MTV 
     and VH-1 cable channels. While there are commercials on those 
     channels, they are also supported by the cable companies' 
     carriage fees and their owners' subsidies. None of those 
     three cable channels is making a profit--they are loss 
     leaders for the cable companies. But, to the public and to 
     members of Congress, the impression is that those channels 
     are making it in the marketplace because they see commercials 
     on them, and everyone knows that commercial television is a 
     successful business. That is not true for all cable channels, 
     but that news is seldom reported because the cable channels 
     not making profits continue to operate.
       To privatize public television means that we would have to 
     at least break even to continue to exist, which would be 
     impossible if we continue to broadcast the special audience 
     programs that we are currently carrying. Privatization would 
     mean, as we know, common-denominator programming to serve 
     large enough audiences to attract enough commercials to bring 
     in the
      revenues to break even or to make a profit. Privatization 
     would be the end of what we call public television today. 
     And, privatization would mean another commercial 
     television station (and probably another commercial radio 
     station) in Kansas City. Do we need another one? Would it 
     even be financially feasible?
       [[Page E498]] Finally, the original FCC intent in reserving 
     television channels was to create educational television 
     services across the country that would be delivered by 
     television stations that did not have to make a profit to 
     exist. Privatizing public television would take away from the 
     public the one television channel that has been established 
     to provide programming and services that otherwise would not 
     be available on commercial television.
       3. Federal funding for public broadcasting is an 
     involuntary tax.
       Since we do not vote directly on what programs and projects 
     are funded with tax money, it follows that all federal 
     programs are funded with involuntary tax funds.
       The federal government, through the Federal Communications 
     Commission (FCC), licenses commercial television and radio 
     stations, allowing them to use the public airways to 
     distribute programs, to sell advertising to pay for those 
     programs and to return dividends to the owners of those 
     stations. Each of us pays for the advertising costs on 
     commercial radio and television every time we buy one of the 
     products advertised--and we pay far more than the one dollar 
     per year per citizen (the amount paid each year in tax 
     support of public broadcasting) in increased costs for those 
     products. How about that involuntary tax?
       4. When there were only three commercial television 
     networks, there were reasons to provide support for an 
     alternate public television service, but cable television has 
     eliminated that need with services such as the Discovery 
     Channel and Arts and Entertainment available for adults and 
     Nickelodeon for children.
       Nationally, over 36 percent of all television households do 
     not subscribe to cable television because either they cannot 
     afford to or they have chosen not to (cable television is 
     available to over 95 percent of all television households). 
     Public television, of course, is free to anyone with a 
     television set, while cable users pay a monthly fee.
       While Discovery and Arts and Entertainment are excellent 
     cable networks, they do not provide the breadth of service 
     that viewers receive from KCPT--public affairs programs, 
     children's fare or educational services, all part of KCPT's 
     daily schedule of services.
       Discovery, Arts and Entertainment and Nickelodeon provide 
     no local programs or services. Compare these services to 
     KCPT's City Watch; Marquee, Viva, Kansas City!; Kansas City 
     Week in Review; specials such as our coverage of the Mid-West 
     Health Summit; Women's Health issues; political coverage and 
     debates; A great Current Running, a 90-minute documentary on 
     Charles Gusewelle's epic trip down the Lena River in Siberia; 
     KC Crossroads, a 60-minute pilot now being considered for 
     funding by CPB as a national series featuring jazz and blues 
     from the Kansas City area; and Ain't Seen Nothin' Like It 
     Since, a 90-minute documentary on the world champion Kansas 
     City Monarchs of the former Negro Baseball League; and our 
     outreach efforts such as Sesame Street Pre-School Education 
     Project (PEP); GED on TV; The Ready to Learn Project; 
     Outstanding Community Kids; Break the Mold Teacher Awards; 
     and Act Against Violence, an anti-violence outreach project 
     now in the planning stages.
       In a speech last March, Nickelodeon's president, Geraldine 
     Laybourne, announced a $30 million three-year initiative, 
     demonstrating, according to her, the breadth of Nick's 
     commitment to children's programming. The fact is that public 
     television invests over $16 million each year on children's 
     programming, or an average of $48 million over three years 
     (not including local expenditures on children's programming). 
     She went on to say that Nickelodeon could concentrate on 
     creating entertaining children's programming, while PBS had 
     to incorporate education into its children's shows--thereby 
     making them dull programs. Preschoolers are drawn to PBS 
     programs far more than commercial children's shows precisely 
     because they so effectively combine fun with learning. Our 
     mission is not to offer fun for fun's sake--cable and 
     broadcast commercial television offer that--but fun programs 
     that also help children love to learn. Experts agree on the 
     importance of developing basic learning skills at an early 
     age, the skills that ultimately enable children to succeed in 
     school and interact socially.
       Discovery, Arts and Entertainment and Nickelodeon have no 
     responsibilities to the local communities receiving their 
     programming nor is any revenue generated for their services 
     returned to those communities. KCPT $5.3 million budget is 
     spent primarily in the greater Kansas City area. KCPT pays 
     local companies for janitorial services, electricity, 
     maintenance and other services. KCPT employs 65 people who 
     receive $2 million in salaries. In fact, KCPT is the only 
     locally owned telecommunications organization serving the 
     greater Kansas City area. KCPT's Board of Directors come from 
     the communities served by the station and are responsible to 
     those local communities for KCPT's operations.
       5. Public television's educational services are no longer 
     needed because cable and satellites are available to deliver 
     those services.
       Once again localism and commercial-free programming are 
     keys in addressing this statement KCPT serves 350,000 K-12 
     students in Kansas and Missouri each year. The instructional 
     television programs for that service are selected by the 
     teachers who will use them. KCPT also
      has a staff of resource specialists for hands-on training 
     for the teachers, and more than 300 hours of training each 
     year is provided by these staff.
       In designing our on-line computer support system for our 
     teachers and students, Link 19, local components of the 
     service were created in response to the needs of the schools 
     in the area KCPT serves.
       KCPT is now constructing an electronic training facility 
     that will enable us to help teachers master the use of 
     telecommunications in the classroom and improve the quality 
     of education in our community.
       KCPT initiates numerous local outreach activities including 
     Sesame Street PEP; GED on TV; Outstanding Community Kids; 
     Breaking the Mold awards for outstanding teachers; women's 
     health-care outreach programming; and reducing violence in 
     our youth campaign.
       Local components of the Ready to Learn project, to begin 
     January 16, 1995, are being developed with the advice of over 
     twenty community organizations that are part of KCPT's Ready 
     to Learn Advisory Council.
       The National Teacher Training Institute provides a two-day 
     training workshop with college credit for in-service 
     development for more than 100 K-12 faculty on an annual basis 
     in math and science education.


                                summary

       Federal funds for KCPT are matched by nine community 
     dollars for every one federal dollar--a good return on 
     investment by any measurement. All federal support for public 
     broadcasting amounts to about one dollar per year per person. 
     Are there any other federal programs you know about that 
     return on that small investment all that public broadcasting 
     does? Support for public broadcasting is an example of a 
     federal program that works, a private/public partnership that 
     returns quality national and local educational and 
     informational programs and services not available anywhere 
     else.
     

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