A Ray for Public TV Funding : House panel, with backing of two GOP members, resists financial cutoff.

After months of maneuvering, the short-run fate of public broadcasting should be clearer Thursday. The House Appropriations Committee will vote then on funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the outlook for the agency is better than at any other time this year.

That is thanks to John Porter, an Illinois Republican, and Californian Frank Riggs, a Republican from Ukiah. In subcommittee action they bucked GOP threats to zero out the funding, joining with five Democrats. The panel approved $240 million for 1997-98, a modest cut in funding for the CPB, which provides 14% of support for public radio and television stations nationwide. We urge the full committee and the House to resist expected efforts to cut further.

The long-term outlook remains murky. Congress has demanded a plan to wean stations off federal milk as the economics and technology of broadcasting change. Nearly all involved now agree that this is essential. But public broadcasting officials are not united on how.

The CPB has proposed a complex plan to end federal support by the year 2000 by folding some stations, by confining grants to one station per market and through more “underwriting” by corporate sponsors, if not outright advertising. The Public Broadcasting Service, National Public Radio and other groups that receive CPB grants have offered a competing plan to create a self-sustaining tax-exempt trust fund like that of the American Red Cross.

This latter plan has little chance of success in Congress. It involves continuing transitional appropriations for several years, imposing certain taxes and transfer fees on commercial broadcasters and selling off unused public frequencies. In the current political climate, it will be dead on arrival in Congress, according to Rep. Jack Fields (R-Tex.), a powerful House committee chairman who is leading telecommunications reform.

Polls show that the public, including even many fiscal conservatives, strongly supports public broadcasting--explaining why some Republicans are not ready to dump it outright. It is now incumbent on public broadcasting officials to bury their differences and present a unified, feasible plan to Congress to preserve this important national asset.