Las Vegas Sun, March 17, 2008

Federal funding for public television and radio would be cut in half in 2009 and 2010 under a budget proposal President Bush issued last month.

The sweeping cuts would slash $200 million from the $400 million Congress has allocated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2009 and cut $220 million from the $420 million Congress planned to allocate in 2010.

In addition, Bush has proposed eliminating any extra funding in 2009 to help public television pay for converting to digital transmission, a conversion that is federally mandated for all TV broadcasting stations.

Officials from the Office of Management and Budget told The New York Times that Bush’s proposed cuts are “consistent with the evolving role of public broadcasting in a market that has benefited from tremendous growth and diversity of programming.”

Granted, cable TV and satellite radio offer a wide variety of educational, cultural and other types of programming that previously were available only on public broadcasting channels. The advent of cable TV has helped to make the quality of programming much better than it used to be.

Nevertheless, commercial TV is driven by advertising and ratings, and stations are beholden to shareholders and the bottom line. As a result, quality programming is not necessarily their top priority.

As a publicly funded entity, public television has more freedom to focus on content and program quality. So public television and radio still offer programs not found anywhere else, such as “Sesame Street” for children, the news analysis of “Frontline” and the superb documentaries by Ken Burns.

Even if most Americans have access to cable television, many still do not. For them, public stations offer the only alternatives.

But the larger issue, beyond viewing choice, is that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s airwaves are owned by the public. As such, they should be supported with public funding.

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