Public Television

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a spending package Thursday that included money for public broadcasting near current funding levels, the latest indication that public television and radio stations might be able to avoid drastic budget reductions next year. The bill would provide the system with a total of $511 million, which would fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, technology upgrades and children's programs.

Still procrastinating about the Y2K computer bug? Too tired from running your small business to give it much thought? Thanks to the Department of Commerce, you don't even have to get up from the couch to find out what to do. The agency, in conjunction with public television stations nationwide, has begun airing a documentary to educate small- and medium-sized business owners about the millennium computer glitch. But don't expect a sensationalized, end-is-near horror show.

Bill Moyers is planning to launch a weekly series on PBS about issues facing the United States during the 1992 election year. But despite his enthusiasm for this new venture, Moyers intends to shift his focus away from public television thereafter. "1992 will be my last full year in public broadcasting," he said in an interview. By the end of next year, Moyers said, he will have spent most of the production funds he raised since he returned to PBS from CBS in 1986.

As scientists at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory tracked Voyager 2 streaking toward Neptune, 2.8 billion miles from Earth, KCET was tracking the astronomers. The footage of this unprecedented achievement will become part of "The Astronomers," a six-part series to be broacast on PBS in early 1991. It is being funded with a $5.3-million grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation--the largest grant from a foundation to a single series in the history of public TV.

A think-tank report on the future of public television says the non-commercial network will be more important than ever in the coming 500-channel universe and calls for increased funding from the federal government and other sources.

A report contradicting conservative claims that public television has a liberal bias is being released today by the liberal media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). The study, paid for by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T.

Bolstered by new leadership and a new spirit of cooperation, leaders of the three groups that oversee public television agreed this week to work to reduce its bloated bureaucracy, but backed away from a controversial plan that would have eliminated more than a third of the nation's 350 non-commercial TV stations.

Barney and Big Bird have stayed out of the fray--and Newt Gingrich is nowhere to be seen--but debate over the future of German public television is no less emotional without them. Echoing conservatives in the United States, Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union is leading the charge to reform Germany's biggest and most costly public television network, ARD, and to reduce its funding.

In a decision that has triggered an outcry from media watchdog groups, federal regulators on Thursday voted to let public broadcasters earn money by selling ads and other services on their new digital television broadcasts. The 3-1 vote by the Federal Communications Commission paves the way for a dramatic expansion in commercialism at public TV stations, which Congress has ordered to convert to digital TV technology by May 2003.

It is that time of year again, when attacks on PBS remind those of us who labor in its besieged vineyards how much we must be prepared to defend our unique but vulnerable institution.