Another editorial on federal funding of public broadcasting

[TheBigA]

The Big A: Please take a gander at my previous post again. You are likely missing something or pulled my quote accidently. My question has nothing to do with your answer or what I interpreted as a sarcastic remark.

Nothing sarcastic about it, and having read this new post, I think my answer remains that you can't generalize public radio. Some stations can exist without federal funding, but most cannot. The fact that listenership is increasing is good, but listenership isn't translating to increased membership or increase in donations. Commercial radio has been backing off from everything being done in public radio, not because of competition, but because the programming appeals to audiences that are too small or too old to sell to advertisers. That applies to various musical genres like classical, jazz, folk, and alternative. There's a difference between how advertisers choose to support programming vs. how corporate sponsors and members choose. We already see how the various cable channels that once did arts programming, like Bravo or A&E, and now backing off this kind of thing. Discovery and TLC are also getting more into reality TV rather than educational. So clearly there is a limited commercial interest in what public broadcasting does. But there's a membership interest, and it serves the needs of various government agencies to keep it going.

What part of that is unclear?

 

[TheBigA]

Let me add that just because something is "successful" doesn't mean it's meeting its expenses. Success isn't measured in dollars and cents. Success is in achieving its goals, and quite often, public station goals are not about finances, but artistic and creative results. To a non-profit, attracting or raising money is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

 

[bturner]

The Big A: No part of this last post is unclear. I didn't understand how this had anything to do with how government functions. Nor did it have anything to do with Lesko's book, as per my intention. To me it read about like saying the success of Jessica Simpson was somehow related to why man went to the moon. I didn't see any connection at all.

I've noticed the same thing. It seems formats skewing toward higher incomes are being dropped by commercial station clusters increasingly. I wonder if it is the advertising agency or the combo buys that have caused this. A sales rep pitching a small group of stations focused on the demos/lifestyle the agency wants has a better chance of making cost per thousand pricing work through manipulating individual station rates, thus, getting the bigger slice of the pie. The lone higher income station is difficult to include at a rate that makes sense, leaving the single station to be very targeted in their advertising prospects with little overlap between the mass appeal advertisers and higher income skewing formats. Thus, the time and expenditure to get each advertising dollar becomes higher with higher income skewing stations. The cost savings is created by flipping such a format to one that can be pitched with the others.

I agree that Public Radio is all across the board. It is hard, if not impossible to compare a motorcycle to an 18 wheeler. Public Radio stations are much like vehicles in respect to the previous statement.

I have unhappily noticed the same thing about networks like Discovery, etc. It see this as a rather sad reality. I guess that means I'm getting old as my Dad said much the same thing when I was younger.

It seems to me that Public Radio could use some fresh ideas and a bit more of the 'thinking outside the box'. We can say the formatics are working but a more solid financial footing would be nice.

There has to be something we can offer to help build a more financially sound Public Radio service without crossing any line with the IRS and FCC. There is something that will likely work and probably an idea that makes us say I should have thought of this. I think back to Ted Turner when he started CNN. Everybody thought he was crazy but in a few years he stole the #1 source of news from radio and took it to TV. Rush Limbaugh (love him or hate him) re-invented talk radio and took AM off of life support.

I've pondered the idea of, well, lottery, for pledges. For example, an assembly of prizes is gathered and awarded by random drawing of those who mailed in their pledge. FCC Rules or IRS Non-Profit rules might make this difficult. I admit I don't know all that fine print.

Looking at Christian Ministries, I've always been amazed at the select few who so mildly ask for funding and seem to do exceptionally well. One station announces (only a few times a day) their need for the month and how much has come in, followed by the amount still needed by a certain date. They do not other fundraising. It seems the Christian radio concept has created the illusion of creating a product listeners do not want to do without. But Christian Radio does not have to point this out. How does Public Radio apply this? What is that 'magic' that makes people feel the need to get off their duffs and take an active role?

I really wonder if making the listener feel like they are a part of a group of like-minded people is the way to go. When a new pledge comes in, you'd say 'welcome to the family'. The idea of you being accepted as part of a group is what I'm shooting for and that the group is not so huge that you are lost in the shuffle. Has anyone seen this used? Does it work?

Sure, successful is not always monetarily driven but as much as we want to move away from the evil of money, we are forced to function in a monetary system...as slaves to it. We must not leave money out of the picture. We have to meet our expenses. The art is in trying to exceed the value in quality programming versus the value of the monetary return while still working within our financial means. I thought a former boss summed it up really well. He described it as the chicken and the egg. Success and money can be either the chicken or the egg, but we need both. He said money was the gasoline that fueled the car. No matter how wonderful (successful) the car was, without the gas (money) to go in the engine, the car was never going to run. He made a great point. The airwaves is our stage. Only through a great presentation can we fill the seats in the auditorium but we somehow have to fill enough seats to pay for the cost of the presentation.

 

[Talk_Dude]

So, without politics, without talking government functions, without sarcasm, let's talk radio and find the truth and facts. Is Public Radio successful overall? Can Public Radio survive without government funds (some say it is tiny; others speak of doom & gloom if govenment dollars go away)? How can we help Public Radio become more successful or financially stable? Let's look for answers. Let's be the ones that think outside the box and bring new ideas forward that help. I feel we need to start at the truth and with the facts to begin. From what I've read here, there are some great brains at work. I'm always up for expanding my knowledge and being encouraged to expand my thought process.

All of that is irrelevant. It is fundamentally wrong for the Federal government to fund public radio. It is unconstitutional. Whether it is good or bad, needed or unneeded are irrelevant questions. The Federal Government does not have the authority to fund Public Radio. Period. That's not to say that the Federal Government cannot or does not routinely do things that it has not authority to do. Funding public radio is only one thing out of many that are blatantly and fundamentally illegal and unconstitutional. However, of all the things the government does that it has no business doing, funding Public Radio is the only one appropriate to discuss on Radio-Info.com.

 

[TheBigA]

All of that is irrelevant. It is fundamentally wrong for the Federal government to fund public radio. It is unconstitutional.

And yet in 43 years, no one has challenged its constitutionality. No one. How is that possible? No one has taken anyone to court. It hasn't been brought to the attention of the Supreme Court, who decides these things. No circuit courts or courts of appeals. Am I right? So based on 43 years of precedent, there is no reason for anyone to say it's "wrong." This is simply a personal opinion that is being expressed by a small minority of people who apparently just woke up last year and decided everything this country has been doing for the last 100 years is wrong. So based on that, the opinion of a radical fringe is irrelevant. The fact and the inconvenient truth is that unless a judge says something is unconstitutional, then it's not unconstitutional.

 

[Talk_Dude]

All of that is irrelevant. It is fundamentally wrong for the Federal government to fund public radio. It is unconstitutional.

And yet in 43 years, no one has challenged its constitutionality. No one. How is that possible? No one has taken anyone to court. It hasn't been brought to the attention of the Supreme Court, who decides these things. No circuit courts or courts of appeals. Am I right? So based on 43 years of precedent, there is no reason for anyone to say it's "wrong." This is simply a personal opinion that is being expressed by a small minority of people who apparently just woke up last year and decided everything this country has been doing for the last 100 years is wrong. So based on that, the opinion of a radical fringe is irrelevant. The fact and the inconvenient truth is that unless a judge says something is unconstitutional, then it's not unconstitutional.

No one with "standing" has a conviction based on the practice that could be addressed on constitutional grounds. As long as there is no sort of test case that the Supreme Court is willing to hear, there will be no ruling.

As for a "personal opinion" on what the Constitution says, read it. Specifically, go to Article 1, Section 8, and show me where it says that the Congress can pass a law to give money to some people to run local radio stations?

The fact and the inconvenient truth is that something that doesn't conform to the Constitution is unconstitutional. In the absence of a Court ruling on an unconstitutional action, unconstitutional laws are no different from unsolved crimes where no suspect is caught or charged. The fact that there is no conviction for the person who committed a crime doesn't mean that a crime wasn't committed. It just means that the criminal got away with it.

 

[MattParker]

Here's how it breaks down...

Public radio establishment position: We want the money.

People who don't like public radio position: I don't want my tax dollars going for something I don't like.

People who like public radio but question government involvement in it position: They don't need the money and government money comes with strings attached (actual and implied).

 

[Talk_Dude]

Here's how it breaks down...

Public radio establishment position: We want the money.

People who don't like public radio position: I don't want my tax dollars going for something I don't like.

People who like public radio but question government involvement in it position: They don't need the money and government money comes with strings attached (actual and implied).

You left one out. People who want the government to do what the government is supposed to do, and to not do what the government is not supposed to do.

The fact of the matter is that I do like public radio. I now listen to public radio more than I listen to commercial radio, though I didn't when I was younger. I listened to WDUQ much more than I listen to WABE, but I still listen to WABE more than any other station in town. But the fact that I like public radio doesn't change the fact that the Federal Government has no business paying for it. It's fundamentally wrong.

 

[TheBigA]

No one with "standing" has a conviction based on the practice that could be addressed on constitutional grounds. As long as there is no sort of test case that the Supreme Court is willing to hear, there will be no ruling.

Then the bottom line is it's not unconstitutional. The Constitution is clear about who has the power to make that judgement.

During the Vietnam war, people felt it was fundamentally wrong for their tax money to be spent on an undeclared war. So they withheld the amount that was intended for war support. They were convicted on charges of tax evasion, regardless of the fact that it was not a declared war, so therefore Congress had no right to fund it or tax citizens to pay for it. Of course years later, people in the government found ways to fund undeclared wars without using taxpayer money. That didn't make what they did legal either.

If a law is passed, and it does something the goes beyond the scope of the Constitution, it is still law until it's challenged on that basis. And Congress is obliged to follow that law, as are taxpayers.

 

[listener-in]

All of that is irrelevant. It is fundamentally wrong for the Federal government to fund public radio. It is unconstitutional. Whether it is good or bad, needed or unneeded are irrelevant questions. The Federal Government does not have the authority to fund Public Radio. Period.

The fact and the inconvenient truth is that something that doesn't conform to the Constitution is unconstitutional. In the absence of a Court ruling on an unconstitutional action, unconstitutional laws are no different from unsolved crimes where no suspect is caught or charged. The fact that there is no conviction for the person who committed a crime doesn't mean that a crime wasn't committed. It just means that the criminal got away with it.

Just because you say so doesn’t make it so. It’s somehow fitting that you should refer to the Constitution on the very day that the newly elected House of Representatives made a disrespectful farce of reading it in Congress, skipping over bits they found embarrassing, and not even aware that they had skipped over other parts because some pages were stuck together. But I digress.

Obviously, many aspects of modern life including radio did not exist when the Constitution was written and ratified However, not only does the Constitution, not - either expressly or implicitly - restrain in principle the idea of Federal funding for communications; it actually advances it.

Under Powers of Congress (article 1, section 8 ) one of the items is “To establish Post Offices and Post Roads”. Postal service was the mass communication of the time, and provides an exact parallel to the mass communications of today.

The government established a policy of universal service and broadly universal postage rates for first class mail, which meant that transcontinental delivery was (and still is) heavily subsidized by local service. Even more relevant was the heavy subsidy for printed matter such as newspapers, magazines and books. That again was deliberate government policy since it encouraged the formation of a literate, educated and informed populace. This policy was not specifically provided for in the Constitution but neither was it either expressly or implicitly prohibited. Once the Post Office had become integrated into the fabric of this nation there was never any argument made against such subsidies and, if there had been, it would have been greeted with contempt by the generations of (especially rural) Americans whose lives were enriched immeasurably beyond what they could have been without the Post Office.

And then there's the bit in the Preamble about promoting the general Welfare, a phrase that's repeated in Article 1, section 8, as follows: “The Congress shall have the Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. . .”

Whichever arguments against federal funding of public broadcasting may have any validity, the Constitutional argument is not one of them. To deny that is to deny a national heritage.

Before superficially citing the Constitution, it would be a good idea to put some effort into understanding it and also understanding some American history.

 

[TheBigA]

Interesting that in the bill introduced this week to defund NPR, there is no mention of federal funding as unconstitutional.

You can read Rep. Dan Lamborn's opinion at his website:

http://lamborn.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=131&parentid=21&sectiontree=21,131&itemid=652

He simply calls it an expensive luxury. He's entitled to his opinion. But this demonstrates that calling the funding "unconstitutional" is an extreme point of view.

 

[listener-in]

Interesting that in the bill introduced this week to defund NPR, there is no mention of federal funding as unconstitutional.

You can read Rep. Dan Lamborn's opinion at his website:

http://lamborn.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=131&parentid=21&sectiontree=21,131&itemid=652

He simply calls it an expensive luxury. He's entitled to his opinion. But this demonstrates that calling the funding "unconstitutional" is an extreme point of view.

Not only extreme but totally inaccurate, which is probably why he doesn't try to go there. I think that before too long the Representatives who claim to be so gung-ho about the Constitution will conveniently shed their enthusiasm as they discover they can't use it to prop up their arguments.

 

[TheBigA]

I've noticed the same thing. It seems formats skewing toward higher incomes are being dropped by commercial station clusters increasingly. I wonder if it is the advertising agency or the combo buys that have caused this.

Of course it’s agencies that are causing this. Stations will take money from anyone.

It seems to me that Public Radio could use some fresh ideas and a bit more of the 'thinking outside the box'. We can say the formatics are working but a more solid financial footing would be nice.

With anything built around membership, when you try something “outside the box,” it has the chance of offending the existing members. Ask the Sirius XM subscribers how they feel about changes being made to their stations. There is a wide range of opinion on funding options within the system. Lots of high-powered consultants who can guide stations through the minefields of grant applications and begathon techniques. But then you have very specific laws that deal with how stations can raise money. So there’s only so far one can go without breaking a law or FCC rule.

Looking at Christian Ministries, I've always been amazed at the select few who so mildly ask for funding and seem to do exceptionally well.

They’re selling salvation. It’s easier to sell salvation than education. In my experience, there are only two easy sells: sex and salvation. Everything else is work.

 

[Talk_Dude]

Just because you say so doesn’t make it so.

It is not so because I say it. I say it because it is so.

Interesting that in the bill introduced this week to defund NPR, there is no mention of federal funding as unconstitutional.

There is no need to use a perfectly valid reason for passing a law as part of the actual law itself. Besides, just because I recognize that removing all government funding from public radio is simply the right thing to do, there are others who want to remove funding at this time for reasons of their own. Just because some politicians want to do what's right because it is expedient doesn't change the fact that they are doing what's right. It just means that they're doing the right things for the wrong reasons.

 

[TheBigA]

There is no need to use a perfectly valid reason for passing a law as part of the actual law itself.

Except that it's not a valid reason. If it was, someone...ANYONE...would have used it at some point within the last 43 years.

As I said, it's an extreme position that has very few supporters. And by my count none of them are in Congress, which is all that matters.

If he wants to cut an expensive luxury, he can start with the subsidized cafeteria at the Capitol.

 

[bturner]

The Big A - You make an excellent point but having worked at a station selling time to ministries years ago, I was amazed how well financed a few were. I got to know these guys pretty well, I suppose because they were not those that tend to give religion a bad name. In other words they weren't the type giving the impression they were the only ones that were right and it was okay to disagree with them. The strange thing was they weren't especially organized and seemed to sort of shrug off the cash flow aspect. For example, one guy used to say "Please offer some support to this station if you can. This station makes it affordable for us to have a daily program on this station." They always offered one of the few products they had (a couple of books) and they'd say "Just get us your address and we will mail you a copy. There is no cost." These guys always did well financially. It was almost as if by not asking for money or a suggested a donation, people couldn't mail them a check fast enough. One thing I will say is these guys were sincere and didn't seem to take lots of those donations for a lavish lifestyle. Maybe that got across but I don't know. I was always baffled by their success with seemingly never directly asking for cash. I even had a book mailed to a friend to see if he'd get hounded and he never got a letter asking for a donation.

Other ministries spent half their time talking about their expenses and making outlandish claims or at least implying such. They did very well. I think guilt or fear was the motivation. I called these sales ministries because the emphasis was on tugging at emotions and draining wallets in a very clever pattern (things like changing breathing patterns to get the engrossed listener to try to mimic the breathing pattern , followed by 'can you feel the spirit', etc., followed by a heart wrenching plea). I saw right through that game.

I know they are selling salvation, but there has to be a basic human emotion touched to get the cash and I'd love to know more about how that is tapped so it might be used outside the ministries. I'm not talking dog and pony show but the right of ownership feeling, I suppose, that makes the listener want to volunteer to give a few dollars to that particular program. It is enough to bring them to action with never really being asked to do so.

 

[listener-in]

It is not so because I say it. I say it because it is so.

I see - it is so, period. You'll have to do better than that. In case you didn't bother reading beyond my first sentence, I made my case by quoting relevant parts of the Constitution and explaining how they apply to federal funding for public radio. It's up to you to do the same - if you can. Otherwise, you should drop that particular argument, as it doesn't help your credibility.

 

[Talk_Dude]

It is not so because I say it. I say it because it is so.

I see - it is so, period. You'll have to do better than that. In case you didn't bother reading beyond my first sentence, I made my case by quoting relevant parts of the Constitution and explaining how they apply to federal funding for public radio. It's up to you to do the same - if you can. Otherwise, you should drop that particular argument, as it doesn't help your credibility.

I read your subsequent comments. They are the same typical specious arguments that revisionists have used for years to justify ignoring the Constitution under the principle that it's a "living document" that can be twisted any way you want it to be twisted. Here in Radio-Info.com, I do not intend to go into details about the subtleties of politics. If you want to get that deep into constitutional law, there are other forums where you don't get a two week time-out for talking politics instead of radio.

In here, the depth of my comments will remain the same as the depth of detail presented on a typical top-of-the-hour radio newscast.

 

[TheBigA]

The point is that the argument itself (both sides of it) is moot, in that federal funding is the law of the land, and the government operates under that law. That's why no one is even mentioning it on Capitol Hill.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

In here, the depth of my comments will remain the same as the depth of detail presented on a typical top-of-the-hour radio newscast.

I would look for a different image, a different parable. Today most of us look upon the typical top-of-the-hour newscast as a waste of energy, the delivery of too little too late.

I don't think that is the image you want to give to your view on this subject.