New 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.

In the paper, we outline the history of public media, but more importantly, we introduce a path to finally putting public media on a solid and sustainable financial footing that will deliver the vibrant and hard-hitting journalism we need. It’s called a trust fund, baby. But before I get into the juicy details, let me remind you why we need to take such bold new action.

Newspapers are vanishing; local broadcasters can barely seem to find the resources to do anything but sports and weather. It’s a sorry state of affairs at a critical moment when we need quality journalism more than ever. At a policy summit in Washington this week, Free Press President and CEO Josh Silver reminded the hundreds gathered at the Newseum:

We cannot wait until things reach disastrous proportions to realize that they are wrong. We must look at the facts and ourselves and summon the courage to advance the policies that will make our communications system, our economy, our information society and our democracy work for everyone, not just the largest firms. This is not about the interests of the left or the interests of the right. This is about the public interest.

Of course, a trust fund proposal raises the important question: Where will the money come from? The paper lays out several options that deserve consideration by policymakers and the public alike. Over the next few weeks, we will be breaking out those various options here – beginning today with an exploration of a model based on commercial broadcasters’ use of the public airwaves and the return that “we the people” are getting on that investment.

New Report, New Proposals

If we are to rely on our public media system to deliver essential news, information and programming to our communities, we’ve got to make some major changes, starting how the system is funded.

Here’s how our public media system works now: Every year, public broadcasters make a pilgrimage to Capitol Hill to beg their representatives not to cut their funding. Frantic cries come from both sides of the aisle about cutting off Big Bird. Under this scarcity model, our public media are stuck in a rut. While some programs are great, -- challenging the status quo and expanding our horizons -- others stick to the safest options and rebroadcast Lawrence Welk specials in an effort to curry favor with lawmakers.

New Public Media: A Plan for Action lays out a different idea. What if, instead of begging for scraps each year, we created a trust fund for public media so that funding was secure, sustainable and shielded from the whims of politicians. As Free Press Managing Director Craig Aaron recently testified before the FCC, “If done right, a trust would not only supplement budgets in the near term, but eventually enable the public media system to become nearly or completely self-sufficient.”

Perhaps one way to accomplish this, as our paper suggests, is to charge a usage fee to commercial broadcasters for their free use of the public airwaves.

Spectrum Use Fees

While complaints about “subsidizing public media” are often heard, it’s important to remember that commercial broadcasting is among our most heavily subsidized industries. Broadcasters’ most important resource — the airwaves used to transmit their signals — is provided by the government at no cost. This spectrum by itself has a potential value of hundreds of billions of dollars, but instead of charging broadcasters for their spectrum use, our government has imposed a “social contract”: In exchange for the exclusive right to the public airwaves, broadcasters have to fulfill certain public interest obligations.

These obligations have taken various forms over the years – from a strict license renewal application that required broadcasters to prove their public service to the community, to required hours per week of children’s programming. But with the license renewal process now reduced to a rubber-stamped postcard application and no adequate reporting mechanisms or consequences for failing to fulfill these public interest obligations, the entire system is out of order.

The report suggests a new contract, in the form of a modest fee to be paid by commercial broadcasters in exchange for their exclusive rights to use the public airwaves. In 2007, local broadcast station revenues totaled $36 billion. A 5 percent fee would generate $1.8 billion for a public media trust. If this proposal were slowly to be phased in over a 20-year period, this would transition public media from its $400 million in funding per year to a self-sustaining $2.5 billion after 20 years.

Off the Dole

Under this proposal, public media would essentially be “off the dole” by 2030. Imagine what we could do with that kind of money. We could transform from a public broadcasting system that re-airs Antiques Roadshow (wonderful as it is) on all four of its digital channels to something much greater. With that kind of money invested in local reporting, investigative journalism projects and media access centers, America would have a world-class public media system that truly informs and engages the public.

In our next post, we’ll explore a related concept that has gotten a great deal of attention from the public media community – thanks to a mention in the FCC’s recently released National Broadband Plan. (That’s your teaser.) Tune in next week and tell us what you think of this “new social contract” below.