Corporation For Public Broadcasting

Award-winning broadcaster and longtime Orange County resident Frank Cruz on Tuesday was elected chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that is a major source of funding for public radio and television stations and programming. The election of Cruz reflects the organization's emphasis on diversity, one of the CPB's top three budget and policy priorities in the coming year.

* Award-winning broadcaster Frank Cruz on Tuesday was elected chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Washington-based nonprofit group that funds the programming and operations of public radio and television stations nationwide. The election of Cruz reflects the organization's emphasis on diversity, one of the CPB's top three budget and policy priorities in the coming year. The CPB has appropriated $7 million of its $300-million budget toward diversity programming.

Competing groups led by actors Edward James Olmos and Jimmy Smits are among five organizations still in the running for a three-year grant from the Corp. for Public Broadcasting to develop and fund Latino programming for public television. The CPB is expected to award the grant Aug. 31 with the hope of having the winning group in place by Oct. 1, the start of the federal fiscal year. However, one source said a decision may already have been made. A CPB panel met Aug.

The group charged with distributing more than $200 million in federal funds to public broadcasting stations said Friday that it will grant money only to stations that ban trading names of their contributors with political organizations.

Nearly a year after the Corp. for Public Broadcasting cut off $1 million in funding to the main developer of Latino-oriented programming for public television, a contentious debate has erupted over the future of such projects. The rancor has managed to unite at least two competing groups of producers against the tax-funded CPB, the nation's largest single source of support for content development and production on public television.

The Corp. for Public Broadcasting announced Tuesday that a new transition organization led by actor-director Edward James Olmos will soon begin developing Latino-oriented programming for public television, replacing the financially troubled National Latino Communications Center, which was shut down earlier this year. CPB President Robert T. Coonrod said the new group, the Latino Public Broadcasting Project, would solicit proposals and distribute grants to producers over the next year.

The National Latino Communications Center, a nonprofit developer of Latino-oriented programming for public television, has shut down--at least temporarily--because its funds are being withheld by the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, which is investigating financial discrepancies in the organization. The 23-year-old center closed its doors Thursday, said Jay Rodriguez, chairman of the board for the Los Angeles-based group.

Public television and radio, only recently under withering attack from conservative budget-cutters in Congress, have emerged virtually intact from a process that had seemed ready to put Big Bird and Barney out of their tax-supported jobs. The House Appropriations Committee has approved legislation to trim the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's annual budget by only 8%.

The Corp. for Public Broadcasting, under orders by Congress to come up with a plan to become independent of federal funding for public TV and radio, submitted its report for cost savings and alternative revenue options on Tuesday but flatly concluded that these "could not compensate for a complete loss of the federal appropriation." "Continued public support is essential," said the corporation's 12-page report, titled "Common Sense for the Future."