MISSIONS
When Money Talks, Should Public Radio Listen?

BY JUDITH HEPBURN BLANK

Christopher Lydon, the popular host of the National Public Radio program The Connection, lost his job this March in a public and acrimonious stand-off with WBUR, the Boston station that produces the show, over his demand for a very big piece of The Connection's pie. The dispute has raised anew the thorny questions about who owns public radio, how it should be funded, and what, ultimately, its mission is -- or ought to be.

Describing themselves as "venture broadcasters," Lydon and his senior producer, Mary McGrath, demanded half of all future revenues generated by The Connection, including money anticipated from underwriting fees and Internet syndication. WBUR's station manager, Jane Christo, refused to make the deal, pointing out that the program was created by and is owned by WBUR, which had hired Lydon. But most important, Christo said, she couldn't reconcile Lydon's and McGrath's demands with public radio's mission. At one point, during the months of negotiations that ultimately failed, she offered them hefty salary increases and bonuses: Lydon was to go from $175,000 to $330,000 and McGrath was to jump from $100,000 to $215,000, over the next few years.

In public radio those figures are astronomical, several days' worth of on-air fundraising marathons at some larger stations. The whole affair is another sign of a new entrepreneurial spirit that seems antithetical to public radio's original purposes -- to serve a variety of communities and provide alternatives to market-driven commercial broadcasting. How did this change come about?

Since 1994, when Newt Gingrich launched the Republican assault on public broadcasting, hoping to do away with it entirely, the amount of government funding has decreased significantly. Forced (like public television) to find other sources of revenue, NPR, Public Radio International (PRI), and member stations have turned increasingly to corporate underwriters. Under looser regulations, these corporate sponsors no longer pay for just an on-air mention, but buy "enhanced underwriting credits," which plug a company, or a hospital, or even a veterinary clinic, with everything except a "call to action" that would explicitly tell listeners to go out and make a purchase. Enhanced underwriting is bringing in cash. Lots of it.

At WBUR, a huge chunk of revenue now comes from underwriting, some $7 million a year, or 46 percent of the station's budget. Another 45 percent still comes directly from listeners. The remaining funding comes from foundations and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity set up by The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 to act as a conduit to provide government money to public television and radio -- and to keep it free of market pressures.

But market pressures seem to be at work. At New York's WNYC, where the head of underwriting calls the listeners the "Tiffany audience," the rates the station charges for commercial spots -- I mean, enhanced underwriting credits -- were raised nine times in less than three years. Well, public radio needs money, so what's the problem? Says Larry Josephson, president of the Radio Foundation and an independent producer: "This is an eruption of whether we're a business to reel in numbers and money or whether we're a cause."

In this new, money-driven public radio culture, local stations want the prestige and the revenues that producing a nationally syndicated program brings. The trend is to play it safe and to provide certain ratings-builders based on demographics, focus groups, and attempts at cloning successful programs. The producer of one nationally distributed program was told that in order to increase the number of stations carrying it, the program would have to change its format, and some of its content, because the program was "foreground" listening. Apparently, "background listening" is less risky.

Certainly excellent programs endure throughout public radio. And new programs continue to come along that are wonderful. But as more and more programs are interrupted with breaks for funding and underwriting credits, the "underwriting anxiety" that research has identified can lead listeners to stop pledging money to their stations. Worse, the reliance on numbers can change the very nature of public radio. It raises the specter that programmers will not take risks in developing or broadcasting anything that is not assured of a large number of listeners. It inhibits creativity.

Public radio should be supported by listeners, by some foundation money, and by a tax on commercial licenses. And revenues from corporate underwriting or sales of program-related items, like cassettes and books, should be plowed back into programming to ensure the high standards and variety of programs that the audience craves. Public radio should remain public.

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