TV & VIDEO - Aug. 21, 1987

A funny thing happened on the way to public television’s annual “beg-a-thon,” as political satirist Mark Russell calls it--the Corporation for Public Broadcasting displayed a never-before-revealed sense of humor. At a recent “chuck wagon dinner” in Washington to preview public television’s fall schedule, broadcasters found a tin cup next to each plate. “It wasn’t a real tin cup,” a CPB employee said later. “We couldn’t afford tin.”