This Briefing page gives you access to pertinent stories from Current . Concerned that public TV and radio needs to invest in programming to survive growing channel competition, and that federal funding is not reliable, an influential minority of pubcasting execs continue to talk about seeking to drop or loosen laws that forbid them from carrying outright commercials. Public TV has boosted underwriting for national programs by consolidating sales in the PBS Sponsorship Group , operated by the network and four major producing stations to sell program underwriting. In public TV, however, some station leaders believe they could boost that income by carrying outright commercials.
Most managers appear to oppose commercials, however.
A manager from Massachusetts argues that selling air time would neither make sense nor make much money. Grossman proposed a new commercial network, parallel to PBS, that would provide top-flight cultural programming to public TV stations on Friday and Saturday nights. Grossman developed the proposal with Markle Foundation aid, and continued developing it in 1996-97, talking with potential investors. Grossman, who would maintain noncommercial support for the kinds of programming that can only be supported in that way, and other advocates for a mixed economy on public TV point to Britain's Channel Four, which manages to serve a legislated programming mission while receiving support from advertising . The British channel, however, was founded under the long influence of the BBC tradition and with a unique financial structure that initially isolated program decision-makers from direct financial incentive.