Opinion ID: 186205
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Structure of AFA, NPR, and PBS

Text: National Public Radio (‘‘NPR’’) is a nonprofit corporation that produces and distributes news to member radio stations. It also licenses news to nonmember stations, many of which are state colleges and universities. Many NPR member stations also are funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a federally created corporation. The public fisc, however, is not their only source of money. They also receive 7 individual membership dues and federal and local grants. The Public Broadcasting Service (‘‘PBS’’) functions similarly. It distributes programming to member stations from individual stations that produce the programming (rather than centrally producing the programming itself). Many public NCE stations are affiliated with NPR and PBS and derive much of their programming from NPR, PBS, and other national sources. For example, the vast majority of public radio stations’ weekly news broadcasts, at least as of a few years ago, came from national sources, like NPR, and Public Radio International. NPR-affiliated radio stations broadcast local programming as well. Music programs comprise most of that local content. As for public television, PBS centrally distributes most prime-time public programming, but public television stations also broadcast local programs. Despite their influence over public television and radio, PBS and NPR themselves hold no broadcast licenses. Licenses are held instead by the individual affiliates. However, the affiliates do exercise some degree of control over NPR’s and PBS’s operations. NPR and PBS members, for example, elect managers of affiliated stations to serve on NPR’s and PBS’s board of directors. Other national networks, like the one run by AFA, are more centralized than PBS and NPR. AFA is a national media network that produces and distributes news from a Christian perspective. Unlike public broadcasting affiliates, AFA and other large national chains own the stations to which they distribute news. AFA also holds the licenses that authorize its stations to broadcast NCE programming. Eight of the largest such centralized national chains, like AFA, are devoted primarily to religious programming. AFA’s centralized structure comparatively disadvantages it under the point system as against NPR’s and PBS’s decentralized structures. NPR and PBS have no ownership, equity, or lending interests in individual NCE public licensees. They therefore have no ‘‘attributable’’ interest in those stations under the FCC’s attribution rules. Religious networks, including AFA, that own their member stations and centrally hold the licenses have attributable ownership interests in the 8 stations they own and in the licenses they hold. For example, if two NPR affiliates that regularly broadcast national NPR programming applied for licenses with overlapping signals, each individual station still would potentially be eligible for the diversity credit for each license. The same would not be true of two overlapping AFA affiliates: AFA’s ownership interest in each would be attributed to each affiliate, making the applicants nondiverse and disqualifying them from diversity credit. Similarly, because AFA centrally owns and controls its members, AFA affiliates will not likely qualify for the ‘‘established local entities’’ credit. NPR and PBS affiliates, in contrast, are mostly locally controlled, and are thus more likely to receive points for being established local entities. Even some public affiliates who are nondiverse will qualify for two additional points under the state-wide educational network credit. Because of their size and educational focuses, the most likely candidates for this credit are state public schools and universities. These institutions already hold many overlapping NCE licenses. Yet institutions that qualify for this credit may receive two additional points even for licenses within their current broadcast reach. Private educational organizations, in contrast, are not as large, and so will not get the credit without dramatically expanding, and only if they do so in one state.