The report of President Obama’s deficit-reduction commission recommends diverse measures to put Washington’s fiscal house in order, including a $100 billion reduction in defense spending, a substantial increase in the federal excise tax on gasoline, ending of the tax deductibility of home mortgage interest payments, and eliminating all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Federal funding of public radio and television seems to be comparatively small potatoes in the larger budget picture. This year, for example, congressional appropriations for CPB, the primary channel through which tax dollars are funneled to PBS television and NPR, amounted to $422 million.
At a time when economic stimulus programs, financed primarily by borrowing and the Federal Reserve’s recently announced second round of “quantitative easing,” total in the trillions, who could object to spending a mere few hundred million dollars to support the production and distribution of public programming?
I do. The best estimates suggest that, historically, about 15 percent to 20 percent of public broadcasting’s operating expenses are financed by federal taxpayers. Over the last four years, private donations, both in cash and in kind, accounted for about 33 to 39 percent of the public media’s annual revenue. State and local governments, foundations, colleges and universities, both public and private, contributed another 29 percent of the total.
It may have once been true that a publicly financed source of “quality programming” and diverse opinion was necessary to ensure access to highbrow entertainment, and news and opinions not available elsewhere.
Nowadays, however, the History and Discovery channels, Public Radio International, American Public Media, and SIRIUS satellite radio, among others, compete effectively with NPR and PBS — and millions of Americans willingly pay for commercially distributed content.
If NPR and public television cannot survive in such an environment without taxpayer subsidies, they should be allowed to go the way of the dodo bird.
William F. Shughart II is a senior fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.
