Defining Public Television

Public TV stations want to get deeper into high-definition digital broadcasting and not be left behind by commercial stations. It is expensive to make the switch, what with costly new cameras, transmitting equipment and studio space.

Funding from Washington, listeners, corporate underwriters and foundations won’t be enough. So the Federal Communications Commission last week said public stations may go beyond current moneymaking, which includes “enhanced underwriting” messages, sales of merchandise such as Barney dolls and selling wireless data services. Now they may also sell advertising on “ancillary or supplementary services” that will be invented for the broader digital spectrum, though not on their traditional free broadcasting.

Critics say this will end badly, with an all-”Sesame Street” pay channel with ads too. Broadcasters say they’re not that stupid, and that their underwriting agreements on something like “Sesame Street” preclude it anyway.

Actually, the nut of the argument lies elsewhere. Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the nonprofit Media Access Project, a leading PBS critic, says financing digital conversion with commercial ventures is like “eating the seed corn.” It harms the essential public television mission because it uses up space on the limited broadcast bandwidth that could be providing services to people who are already underserved. “We need a place that is not driven by market forces,” he says.

That place is already gone. In part because of shrinking federal funding, public television has suffered creeping commercialization for years, and expanding its data services or offering pay-per-use educational services on the digital spectrum, with or without advertising, won’t change that. It isn’t a great idea to expand commercial uses of the public television spectrum. But the real issue is what public television should be, and who should pay for it. If the FCC ruling reinvigorates that debate, some good may well come of it.