When will Congress take the “public” out of the Public Broadcasting System?
A subsidiary of New York City’s PBS station, Channel 13, has agreed to pay back nearly $1 million after the US attorney filed a civil grant-fraud lawsuit.
Prosecutors charged that the Educational Broadcasting Corp., which produces programming for Channel 13, “made false or fraudulent claims” and “submitted false statements” regarding $1.2 million in federal grants between 2001 and 2008.
As a result, the suit alleged, EBC (which was not forced to admit wrongdoing) “received monies to which it is not entitled” — whatever that means.
And taxpayers won’t learn what it means — under terms of the settlement.
None of the publicly available documents spells out the nature of the fraud — and the US Attorney’s Office won’t explain why Channel 13 was spared the public embarrassment of detailing the fraud.
How ironic: It’s a public network, meant for and funded by the public, but it won’t make its documents public.
Which raises these questions: Why the hell is government still in the TV business, anyway? And on such a grand scale?
There are nine PBS stations within New York state, and another seven out of state that serve New York viewers.
And that doesn’t even count the numerous PBS stations available via cable TV.
Yes, the bulk of these stations’ income comes from “the support of viewers like you” — but not in the way of charitable contributions, as they like to imply, but from the federal budget.
Not to mention state and regional governments that fund local affiliates, here and in every other state. Even viewer pledges — which are tax-deductible — impose a cost on the public fisc.
But why is PBS even necessary?
Once upon a time, the network’s slogan was: “If PBS doesn’t do it, who will?”
These days, the answer’s obvious: CNN, Fox, A&E, Ovation, the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel, Nickelodeon, Disney, Animal Planet, TruTV, Spike, Lifetime, Oxygen, etc., etc.
Today’s communications universe numbers hundreds and hundreds of cable networks in every conceivable niche and genre. And the list grows daily.
As for PBS, its superstars — Clifford the Big Red Dog, Barney, Big Bird and Ken Burns, among others — have generated so much cash through merchandising that they could easily move elsewhere and still be seen by millions.
Public broadcasting is an anachronism.
It’s past time that government got out of the business.