[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Page 21224]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                  COMMERCIALISM OF PUBLIC BROADCASTING

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I am a great fan of public broadcasting. I 
listen almost every day to public radio. I am tremendously impressed 
with programs such as ``Prairie Home Companion'' and all the news 
stories in the morning that are extremely in depth. With public 
television, we all recognize the contributions made by the series on 
the Civil War, which is a classic and will continue to be in American 
television. The ``MacNeil, Lehrer News Hour,'' which is now the 
``Lehrer News Hour,'' is the most in-depth news coverage that we have 
any place in America. There are many other programs on radio and on 
public television which I haven't mentioned that are quite good as 
well.
  I am struck by the amount of commercials I endure and we all have to 
endure when we listen to public radio and watch public television. In 
my estimation, it is out of hand. These commercials are technically 
called ``enhanced underwriting.'' You can call them whatever you want, 
but they are commercials.
  An article appeared a short time ago in the Washington Post entitled 
``Now a Word About Our Sponsor.'' Critics say public radio's on-air 
credits come too close to being commercials, and, as indicated in that 
article, they are absolutely right. People are getting more disturbed 
every day with commercialism of public broadcasting.
  I point this out because I am not the only one who has noticed the 
increasing sponsored announcements. According to this article, one 
survey shows a 700 percent increase in corporate funding over the past 
5 or 6 years. It is just not listeners who are noticing the change. If 
I were the owner of a private broadcasting station, I would be up in 
arms. And some private station owners are tremendously disturbed about 
the increasing commercialism of this so-called public broadcasting.
  Private stations aren't tax exempt like public broadcasting stations 
are. The private stations are now voicing their concerns about the 
existing uneven playing field. I don't want to sound as though I am 
beating up on public broadcasting because, as I have indicated in my 
opening statement, I really do like public broadcasting. I enjoy the 
programs on National Public Radio and public television. I believe 
public broadcasting should remain just that--public. That means we have 
to do a better job with public funding.
  We can trace very clearly what has happened to public broadcasting. 
Newt Gingrich, and others with whom he associated, came out with the 
bad idea that they wanted to eliminate public broadcasting. This group 
found that they could not do that. So, in effect, they cut back the 
funding and they are strangling public broadcasting to death.
  Mr. President, we need to do the necessary things to make public 
broadcasting more public in nature. I believe it is time for us to 
decide whether we want to have a public broadcasting system or whether 
we don't want to have one. Either we fund the Corporation for Public 
Broadcasting so they can exist, or we end it. I prefer the former. 
Therefore, when the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, 
and Education marks up its bill--and I am a member of that 
subcommittee--I plan to offer an amendment to increase the Corporation 
for Public Broadcasting appropriation to $475 million. This is $125 
million more than their request. However, I also plan to include report 
language that would encourage public radio and television to scale back 
their so-called enhanced underwriting practices and to become, once 
again, a public broadcasting system that is publicly funded.
  As long as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is leery of 
Congress cutting their funds or doing away with Federal funds 
altogether, they will begin to sound more and more like private 
broadcasting stations. The people who run those stations don't like it. 
You have people, as indicated in the Post article that I referred to 
earlier, who are continually talking about how difficult it is and how 
unfair it is. In this article, the author cites Bob Edwards from the 
NPR Morning Edition, which is a very fine program for news in the 
morning. He says:

       Underwriting has kept us alive, but there's also a 
     downside. It has cut into our air time. If you have to read a 
     30-second underwriting credit [a commercial], that's less 
     news you can do.

  So as I stated, we have to either make public broadcasting public or 
do away with it. If we continue the road we are going on, we are going 
to wind up having public broadcasting in name only, and it is going to 
be unfair that they are competing with the private stations, in which 
we have people who have invested a lot of money, trying to make money 
on an uneven playing field because of the protections public 
broadcasting have.

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