Have a great idea for better media? We want to hear it.
Free Press is excited to announce the call for suggestions for the 2011 National Conference for Media Reform. It's your chance to submit your ideas for sessions, presenters or topics for next year's big event.
Go here to submit a suggested session, speaker or topic.
My career in radio broadcasting, though relatively short, has deep roots. I grew up in a family which almost exclusively listened to public radio, valued varied tastes in music, and encouraged artistic, musical, social and political exploration. I spent hours listening to the radio, taking in every bit of world news I could and wondering how radio broadcasting worked. I dreamed someday to be at the controls of a big mixing board, twisting knobs and talking into a microphone for the whole world to hear.
Last week, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO.) introduced a bill to cut all government support for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, which funds public media like NPR and PBS. Lamborn called the CBP “low hanging fruit,” saying, “We have to make hard choices if we’re going to get our deficit under control… [or] we’re going to go the way of Greece.”
Hundreds of community radio broadcasters gathered at the National Federation of Community Broadcasters’ annual conference in St. Paul, Minn., last week to exchange ideas and answer some tough questions about the future of radio.
Advertising is everywhere. It’s on billboards, inside those bins at airport security, even embedded in the script of network television shows. Products are “friending” you on Facebook. Commercial television ad lengths just keep increasing. In this week’s installation of our ongoing exploration into funding public media, we examine the idea of both direct and indirect advertising taxes to seed a public media trust fund.
We have been talking a lot lately about public media’s golden ticket: a trust fund. Our proposal for this stable funding source, which would be seeded with revenue not obtained from the annual political battles known as congressional appropriations, is a way to secure a better future for public media. Our last post examined one idea for building such a fund, the spectrum use fee, which would require commercial broadcasters to pay directly into a trust for public media. This week we look at spectrum auctions, an idea that’s gotten some attention thanks to its inclusion in the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan.
The public broadcasting community converges in Austin this week for PBS’ annual meeting to talk a little shop, see sneak peeks of the newest programming and well…face a bit of the inevitable discussion: What is the future of public media?
Public media seem to be everyone’s answer to our nation’s journalism troubles. But can public media really step in where commercial media have failed when they’re so woefully underfunded?
Frankly, no. We’re then faced with a choice between scuttling our plans to fix the journalism crisis and advocating for systemic changes that will increase public media’s capacity to take on the task. We prefer the latter option, which is why we wrote this paper: New Public Media: A Plan for Action.
Friday marked the public’s last chance to file comments with the Federal Communications Commission’s Future of Media initiative, and people didn’t hold back from telling the agency they want a better media system.
On Friday night, the great Bill Moyers signed off for the last time on his weekly PBS series. His departure was no surprise, but the broadcasting legend's absence marks a turning point for public broadcasting and quality journalism in America.