![]() Last week the Gates Foundation announced a $1.5 million grant, not to PBS or NPR, but to ABC News, joining the growing list of nonprofits that are supporting commercial broadcasters and newspapers. broadcast, movie and music industries.Īnd that may mark the end of business as usual at the network: PBS already faces new competition for revenue from its traditional underwriters. PBS is afraid if they lower KCET’s dues, other stations will also want their payments reduced.īut if KCET does complete its divorce from PBS and become an independent public TV station, PBS will lose one of its largest stations, serving eleven million television viewers – viewers that not so incidentally include the leadership of the U.S. KCET maintains it cannot afford to pay that much for programs from PBS or from anyone else. PBS has frozen KCET’s annual dues at $6.8 million, based on the peak for fundraising in Los Angeles several years ago, and the network has refused to reduce the fee to reflect lower revenue at KCET and most other stations, according to Jim Rainey of the Los Angeles Times. Of course it may all be a multi-million-dollar game of chicken, over – surprise – money. KCET is gambling that, without hefty payments to PBS and substituting a new lineup of independent and international programs for the PBS network feed, it will be a smaller but sustainable public service broadcaster.įor its part, PBS is gambling that KCET cannot possibly go through with its plan and will have no alternative but to pay the substantial dues required to keep PBS programs on the station. Los Angeles station KCET’s announcement on Friday that it is canceling all PBS programs is a dramatic, all-stakes-on-the-table gamble.
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