Public TV and Radio to Receive Big Grants

[Gloria]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/10/arts/television/10publ.html?

Public TV and Radio to Receive Big Grants


By LORNE MANLY and ELIZABETH JENSEN
Published: May 10, 2005

The Ford Foundation, the main financial backer of public broadcasting in its formative days, is undertaking its largest initiative to support nonprofit media in more than 25 years, officials said yesterday.

The initiative will funnel $50 million over five years to a baker's dozen of public television, radio and other media organizations. A major focus of the effort will be to spur the creation and distribution of public affairs programming, particularly programs dealing with international affairs.

The Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio will receive the largest grants, $10 million and $7.5 million respectively. But less well-known entities will also share in the wealth, including Link TV, a television network devoted to explaining the rest of the world to the United States; the Sundance Documentary Fund, which supports documentaries about human rights issues; and New California Media, a consortium of more than 600 print, television, radio and Internet outlets devoted to ethnic news.

The official announcement of the initiative, which is expected today, comes as public broadcasting is being whipsawed by a leveling off of corporate underwriting, a decline in state government support and growing political pressure to correct what many conservatives view as a liberal bias. While Ford Foundation officials say those developments are not the impetus for their initiative, they say it arrives at a critical time.

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[brainshrub]

1. Their is nothing "public" about public radio anymore.

How many people here live in a market where public radio covers the local public? In NC the vast bulk of programming is piped in from other parts of the country, and unless you hold a viewpoint that's the same as the corporate media, they won't let you anywhere near the microphone.

[Tux]

3. Local NPR

Has a station in town and interviews physicians for the healthcare problems KY has.

[cprise]

4. It doesn't break any important news

Its ANTI-news!

They delight in "sharin the pain" with us cogniscenti 10 months after the fact in Frontline broadcasts.

[cprise]

2. Do you want to see what real public broadcasting is like?

One that isn't based on charity?

Watch this interview of Tony Blair:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/newsnight_election_2005/4421655.stm