Senate Approves $1.1 Billion for Public Broadcasting

In a ringing endorsement of the nation’s 25-year-old public broadcasting system, the Senate on Wednesday approved a three-year, $1.1-billion authorization for public television and radio.

The legislation, bottled up for months while critics attempted to reshape the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, was passed, 84 to 11, without major change and sent to a Senate-House conference committee to reconcile differences with a bill approved by the House last November.

Earlier, the Senate crushed an attempt to freeze CPB financing and reduce the authorization total by $300 million on a 75-22 vote.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), a leading advocate of cutbacks in CPB funding, retreated from his plan to eliminate the Independent Television and Video Service, a CPB subsidiary that provides grants for diversified programming.

Dole had complained that the service gave 15 of its first 25 grants to film producers in Los Angeles and five others to firms in New York City. He modified his amendment to instruct the service to seek the “widest possible geographic distribution” for its grants.

The Senate also approved an amendment, 93 to 3, that would allow so-called “indecent programming” to be shown only after midnight on most commercial and public television stations. Stations that sign off at midnight would be permitted to show these programs only after 10 p.m.

The amendment, authored by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.), was accepted as part of a compromise to get the legislation through relatively unchanged from the House version of the legislation.

Wednesday’s funding showdown came as Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), backed by the Bush Administration, proposed a freeze in spending authority for the embattled CPB at the current level of $825 million. He said that a 50% increase in authorized outlays for fiscal years 1994-96 was excessive in view of the soaring federal deficit.

But Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), floor manager of the bill, argued that an increase in funding levels was needed to pay for expanding public broadcasting to smaller communities and for more educational programming.

He said that 29 million students in 70,000 schools are served by public television instructional programs.