Congressional Panel Supports Cpb Funding

Public broadcasters were breathing easier over the weekend after the HouseSenate conference committee on the recision bill voted Friday to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting at $275 million for fiscal year 1996 and $260 million for fiscal year 1997.

Only six months ago, the Republican leadership was talking out loud about zeroing out federal funding for public TV and radio in a couple of years, and the House showed it meant to get to work on it by voting a 30 percent cut in the fiscal 1997 budget, a move that panicked the broadcasters.

An obviously relieved Richard W. Carlson, president and chief executive officer of CPB, called Friday’s vote “a fair compromise. It ensures that public broadcasting can still serve the American people while we find some common-sense ways to meet the challenges of the future. We appreciate the strong bipartisan support that made it possible.”

Carlson, a Voice of America chief and ambassador during the Bush administration, has worked quietly behind the scenes in recent months to blunt the anti-CPB forces in Congress while pushing long-range solutions to the public broadcasters’ problems. The next thing Congress must do is look at these long-range plans, including separate proposals by CPB and a coalition of groups representing public TV and radio stations to establish a trust fund to replace the federal subsidy.

“More and more, there’s a realization that billions and billions of dollars have been invested in these systems over the last 25 years and there’s something worth preserving there,” Carlson said.

CPB is operating on $286 million in fiscal ‘95.