FEAR AND POLITICS AT THE CPB

For the second day in a row, shock waves rippled through the public broadcasting community Friday as news spread that Edward J. Pfister had resigned as president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Pfister, 51, who has been in the job since September, 1981, tendered his resignation Thursday, to be effective Dec. 31. The corporation’s board, however, has asked him to leave June 15.

Speaking Friday on National Public Radio, Pfister said he had decided to resign because there was a “fundamental difference” between him and six members of the 10-member board. Five of those six were appointed by President Reagan.

Meanwhile, the board of the corporation, the nonprofit agency that distributes federal funds to the nation’s public radio and TV stations, has asked David O. Ives, vice chairman of public TV station WGBH in Boston, to fill Pfister’s position temporarily.

Ives, who also serves as chairman of the National Assn. of Public Television Stations, said Friday that he would inform the board of his decision this weekend.

More than Pfister’s pending departure, it was fear of politicization on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board, which has been led for the last nine months by Reagan-appointee Sonia Landau, that had station managers concerned Friday as the Public Broadcasting Service concluded its annual two-day membership meeting here.

“I think everyone fears the CPB may be politicized,” said Bruce Christensen, president of PBS, the noncommercial TV network.

Pfister’s resignation followed by one day a vote by the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to withdraw financial support for a planned trade mission by public TV representatives to the Soviet Union. Pfister had publicly opposed the board’s action.

PBS station managers expressed shock that the corporation board opposed the chance to meet with Eastern European TV producers and discuss the possibilities of buying and selling programs. Remarks made at the board meeting Wednesday indicated that the conservative members, who constitute a majority, voted to withdrew support for the trip largely on political grounds, in keeping with the Reagan Administration’s hard-line Soviet policies.

Fear that political considerations were entering into programming matters was what had PBS station managers--who run their network independently but are funded in large part through CPB--whispering in the hallways and looking over their shoulders Friday as they clustered in groups of twos and threes.

Gerard L. Appy, executive director of Oregon Public Broadcasting and a member of the PBS board of directors, said that the events of the last two days “translate into an uncertainty as to how the chairman (Landau) is going to lead the board in programming, and (in) the whole approach. Programming is the most precious thing we have.”

Referring to Landau’s remark that it was for the U.S. State Department, not PBS, to deal with government-controlled Soviet TV, Appy said, “I don’t think that it’s helped her credibility with public broadcasters.”

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting charter established the organization as an independent body that would shelter PBS and public radio from political pressures. It is supposed to be a “heat shield” between public broadcasters and the political arena--”not a conduit,” Christensen said.

The related concern among public broadcasters is that Landau, who headed an organization called Women for Reagan/Bush during the 1984 presidential campaign, has been actively accumulating control over the agency since her election as board chairman last September. Pfister reportedly had been stripped of much of his power in the intervening months and many public broadcasters saw his departure as inevitable.

Otto Schlaak, station manager at WMVS-TV in Milwaukee and a member of the PBS board, said, “I think that Ed has been in something of an untenable situation with the new chairperson.”

In essence, the corporation board has always been somewhat politicized, since its members are appointed by the White House, but the division between the corporation and PBS historically has been accentuated during a conservative administration.

“This is a fraternity that thrives on conspiracy,” one long-time observer remarked Friday.

Pfister’s appointment in 1981 had been widely viewed as a cementing measure between the two organizations. He was the first corporation president to have come from the public broadcasting ranks, having previously served as president of KERA-TV and KERA-FM in Dallas.

Christensen called Pfister “an able professional” and credited him with putting together the funding consortiums behind the public TV series “Frontline,” “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” and “Wonderworks.”

Pfister also was credited with encouraging PBS to be self sufficient and helped the noncommercial stations obtain funds to buy their own satellite transponders.