What came before
Before 1967 American broadcasting was dominated by three commercial networks, with a smaller, scattered sector of educational stations. Many of these stations were run by universities, school systems or community groups, and their programs were often shared through a network called National Educational Television, which was supported heavily by the Ford Foundation. Congress had given some help to the sector in 1962, with a law that provided money for building educational television facilities. That law helped pay for transmitters and studios but not for programs or operations.
By the middle of the 1960s many supporters argued that this was inadequate. Educational television had a reputation for being worthy but dull, and it lacked a stable source of money. In 1965 the Carnegie Corporation set up a commission on educational television, chaired by James Killian, a former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The group included educators, business people and artists.
The Carnegie report
The commission released its report in January 1967, and it proposed a new approach. It argued for a system of what it called “public television”, intended to serve the whole community rather than only the classroom, with programs that would be drawn from many sources, including local ones. It recommended a federally chartered nonprofit corporation to channel funds to stations and producers and to protect them from political interference. It also suggested that the money should come through a dedicated source such as a tax on television sets, rather than annual appropriations, so as to reduce the leverage of Congress and the executive. This funding proposal was not adopted.
Lyndon Johnson, who had a personal interest in broadcasting and a record of backing education, endorsed the idea in a message to Congress in February 1967. It fit with the Great Society’s wider interest in improving schooling, culture and access to information.
The bill in Congress
Legislation moved through both houses in the course of the year. Key figures included Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington and Representative Harley Staggers of West Virginia, who chaired the relevant committees. Hearings considered questions that remain familiar: whether the government should be involved in programming, how to keep a federally funded system independent, and how to pay for it. The final bill included radio as well as television, which the Carnegie group had not initially emphasised. It also dropped the idea of a dedicated tax, and instead authorised funds through annual appropriations for a start-up period.
Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act on November 7, 1967. The law created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as a private, nonprofit body, governed by a board appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Its stated purposes included encouraging the growth of noncommercial broadcasting and the development of programs of high quality, along with objectivity and balance in controversial subjects. It was not itself to own stations or run a network.
From corporation to PBS and NPR
The Corporation did not produce shows or operate a national network. Instead, the next few years saw the building of institutions around it. The Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, was established in 1969 as a distribution body for stations, taking over a role that National Educational Television had played. National Public Radio was created in 1970. In the same period, children’s programs became the most visible products of the new system. Sesame Street first aired in November 1969, and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood reached a national audience through the educational network in the late 1960s. In 1969 Fred Rogers testified before a Senate subcommittee in support of funding, in a hearing that has often been described as persuasive.
Over time the public system developed a mixed funding base. Federal money continued to flow through the Corporation, but stations also relied on viewer and listener contributions, foundation and corporate grants, and local government and university support. How far the system should depend on any one source became a recurring argument.
Debates and consequences
The act’s passage reflected a belief, common among reformers of the time, that television could do more than entertain. It arrived as color television was spreading and as the networks themselves were facing disputes about content, such as the clashes that involved the Smothers Brothers and network censorship. At the same time, the law was built on a compromise. Supporters worried about political interference and underfunding. Critics worried that public money would be used for programs with a particular point of view or that the system would compete unfairly with commercial services.
Both worries have persisted. Public broadcasters have been criticised, at various times, from the left and from the right, and Congress has repeatedly debated the level of its appropriations. Still, the 1967 act is the point from which the American public media system developed. It is one of the lasting measures of the Great Society years, and the 1967 Congress passed it in the same session in which it was grappling with the war, the cities and the budget.