Larry Pressler, Gingrich's Senate colleague, has announced a bill to sell the entire public broadcasting system over a three-year period. Since even now owning a commercial TV channel is like having a license to print money, there are plenty of prospective buyers. Rupert Murdoch needs stations to fill out his Fox Network. Jamie Kellner, the head of Warner Brothers, has announced that he wants to buy time on PBS stations to air his programs. Owning the stations outright would be much better.
Commercial stations pay absolutely nothing for their federally protected frequency assignments.
And Congress has decreed that corporate advertising on radio and TV is a fully deductible business expense, which means that every advertising dollar costs a company about 30 cents. Fortunately, the public senses public broadcasting's importance. There are ways to solve the funding crisis without adding to the federal deficit. But these strategies have very little hope of being realized, largely because the very media which could generate public support for them are almost totally controlled by commercial interests which will see to it that the public never receives this message. Reinhold Niebuhr told us that we must know what is going on before considering what we ought to do.