Origins

     When Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act into law on 7 November 1967, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created. This landmark legislation became Section 396 of the Communication Act of 1934. In his public remarks at the signing ceremony, President Johnson stated that the Corporation "will get part of its support from our Government. But it will be carefully guarded from Government or from party control. It will be free, and it will be independent­ and it will belong to all our people."

     Contained in the Corporation's charter is a Congressional declaration of policy that provides, in part, that it is in the public interest to encourage the growth and development of educational radio and television broadcasting; that freedom, imagination, and initiative at both the local and national levels are necessary for high-quality, diverse programming for public broadcasting; that federal support for public broadcasting is appropriate; and that a private corporation should facilitate system development and afford maximum protection from extraneous interference and control. The Corporation's board of directors consists of 15 members appointed by the U.S. President, with the advice and consent of the Senate. No more than eight members may be of the same political party, and all members must be United States citizens. Board members are appointed for a six-year term of office. All officers of the Corporation serve at the pleasure of the board of directors. Each year the CPB must submit an annual report to the President for transmission to Congress that contains a detailed statement regarding its operations, activities, accomplishments, and financial condition.

CPB and Public Radio

     The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was incorporated in 1968 and began the task of staff appointments in 1969. Although the Office of Radio Activities was organized in June 1969 with Albert Hulsen as its first director, the top priority for CPB was television and the formation of a TV interconnection system, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Hulsen, and his successor Thomas Warnock, used this early period to gather information about the performance of public radio in the United States and to begin planning for what would become radio's interconnection system, National Public Radio (NPR), launched in 1971.

     CPB and PBS began feuding soon after PBS was created. Lyndon Johnson had since left the White House and President Richard M. Nixon did not like much of what he saw on public television. The Nixon White House started applying pressure on CPB, and the board in turn started applying pressure on PBS. The resulting conflicts between CPB and PBS nearly destroyed the very public broadcasting system that the Corporation had been created to protect. Eventually a reorganization at PBS and a partnership agreement between CPB and PBS stabilized the system and left television much stronger than its radio counterpart. Public radio would need to engage in major reorganization itself if it hoped to get its share of the funding pie during joint negotiations between CPB, PBS, and NPR. That reorganization came as NPR merged with the Association of Public Radio Stations (APRS) to form a new NPR in May of 1977. This created a new political equation in public broadcasting. No longer could CPB and PBS make unilateral decisions about public broadcasting-whether funding allocations or system development-without considering public radio.

     The overall prominence of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that was witnessed during the first decade following the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act had clearly declined by the beginning of the 21st century. Revisions in Congressional appropriation procedures had substituted funding formulas for boardroom negotiations. Repeated calls for CPB to be a pass-through agent for the distribution of public monies rather than a policy-making organization for public broadcasting had stripped the Corporation of much of its public stature, and with its loss of image came a drain in talent. Partisan politics had inadvertently been built into the fabric of CPB regardless of the safeguards that had been written into the articles of incorporation. When the Republicans rule, the board is more likely to find liberal political bias in the system's public affairs programming. When the Democrats are in charge, the system's critics decry insufficient minority programming and barriers to access by independent producers.

     CPB was created to help put into practice the visions of public service broadcasting that existed only in the form of idealistic rhetoric. Congress was willing to craft lofty language that gave the Corporation its mandate, but lawmakers were never willing to grant the system the kind of fiscal independence that the original system framers envisioned for the fulfillment of the dream for an alternative system of public radio and television stations that were above partisan politics and commercial marketplace imperatives. Given the political, social, and economic environment in which CPB has been forced to function, it is not surprising that its performance record as a catalyst for the development and preservation of public broadcasting has been no more impressive. Indeed, when all of the political and economic handicaps placed on CPB are factored into the performance equation, one might wonder how the Corporation has been able to sustain the level of effectiveness that it has achieved. Whether the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will be able to fulfill its true potential as a positive agent on behalf of public radio and television in the 21 st century will largely depend on whether Congress will at long last create the insulated funding mechanism that was envisioned as vital to the Corporation's functioning some 35 years ago.