Dimensions: 5.5'' x 8.5'' 190 pages AEI Press  (Washington) Publication Date: January 1968 Hardcover ISBN: Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 68-23223

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The Public Broadcasting Act sailed through the Congress late in 1967 without difficulty. Only one senator voted against it; in the House, approval was by a vote of 265 to 91. Nine million dollars' expenditure was authorized in the policy legislation to "get the show on the road," as Senator Pastore put it, but no money was actually appropriated. The Act established a Public Broadcasting Corporation, which would be governed by a high-level citizens' committee appointed by the President. Major funding was expected after the new public board took over.

Hearings in the House and Senate were friendly to the idea of increasing government support of educational television. The federal share envisioned was approximately $200 million a year after the corporation got up steam. From a reading of the hearings, one could easily conclude that financing was a matter of "how," not "if." In this American Enterprise Institute Rational Debate, Professor Ronald Coase of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business provided the "if."

In fact, he objected tartly to any federal financing at all. In most public discussion, educational TV enjoys a prestigious position when compared to its commercial TV cousin. Professor Coase, however, did not see much difference between educational and commercial output. He disagreed emphatically with the notion that educational television, even with large public subsidies, would turn out good programs.

Long a student of broadcasting in both England and the United States, the Chicago professor turned many a caustic phrase. At the outset, for example, he labeled federal subsidy of educational TV a "wholly objectionable poverty program for the well-to-do." Dr. Coase is not a neophyte to critical analysis of the electronic media. While living in his native England, he wrote a series of articles and several books on British broadcasting. After the second World War, he studied broadcasting in the United States under a Ford Foundation grant.

His opponent in the debate, Dean Edward W. Barrett of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is not a newcomer to the subject, either. The Columbia School of Journalism is one of the most respected in the nation, and Dr. Barrett is among the most highly regarded deans. He has had a distinguished career in journalism, and at one time was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. More to the point of the debate, perhaps, Dean Barrett at the time was Chairman of the Editorial Policy Board of the Public Broadcasting Laboratory, which is presenting a series of experimental programs for educational television under a Ford Foundation grant.

Dean Barrett was more interested in the "how" of financing, an attitude strongly supported by the seminar participants representing educational broadcasting, both radio and television, and by representatives of educational groups who see a great future for noncommercial radio and TV. This book indicates that these participants, and to a certain extent Dean Barrett, saw little purpose in talking about the desirability of public financing for educational TV, since Congress already had approved its desirability by passing the Public Broadcasting Act. They wanted to stick with the "how."

Dr. Coase, who also is editor of the Journal of Law and Economics published at Chicago, would not be deterred. He argued that those who want the culture and educational programs proposed for educational TV should pay for them, mainly through subscription television. Viewers of noncommercial TV, Dr. Coase argued, will tend to be richly endowed in mind and money, and obviously a minority. The bulk of the tax money, then, would come from "those who are worse off in all ways." Professor Coase was hard on those who lobbied for passage of the Public Broadcasting Act:

That the cultured and the informed seem to be just as unscrupulous as anyone else in furthering their own interests is what makes me pessimistic about the value of that culture and information in improving public policy.

He also criticized commercial broadcasters who, he said, supported the Act because it would reduce the pressure for pay-TV, take off the market prospective channels that might be used for competitive commercial stations, and decrease the demand from the intellectual community for (unprofitable) public service programs.

Dean Barrett, however, was not optimistic that commercial or subscription TV would ever bring to the public the mind-stretching programs of which educational TV is capable.

"In brief," he said, "it is sheer folly to think that either commercial television or subscription television will ever, on any sustained basis, provide citizens the option of quality programs of limited appeal."

The Columbia dean objected vigorously to Dr. Coase's argument that subsidy favored only the well-to-do. He deplored the "curious snobbery that seems to equate affluence with taste, with intellectual curiosity and with intelligence--and that seems to indicate that all of the less well-to-do are interested only in the lowest common denominator entertainment and froth." He was also emphatic on the need for diverse public financial support. "I cannot emphasize too strongly, however, the need to have the purse strings not controlled exclusively by the federal government-or by any other unit. Support by state, local, and federal governments, by foundations, by corporate and individual donors is needed to assure reasonable independence."

Dean Barrett said he favored financing of the Public Broadcasting Corporation through a franchise tax on commercial broadcasters. Commercial stations would pay the equivalent of one week's advertising revenue each year to support educational television. One of the participants, Theodore McDowell of the Washington Evening Star Broadcasting Company, took a dim view of this proposal. Recognizing the political acumen of the commercial broadcasters, Dean Barrett said he also would accept an excise tax on all TV sets sold. This suggestion brought a demurrer from another seminar participant, George Dube of the Electronics Industries Association, whose members manufacture TV sets.

R. H. Coase served as professor of economics at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business and the Law School since 1964. He was also editor of the Journal of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago. From 1958 to 1964 Professor Coase was at the University of Virginia. The preceding seven years he taught at the University of Buffalo. During a 1935 to 1951 stint as lecturer at the London School of Economics he produced the book British Broadcasting: A Study in Monopoly. An earlier work was The Iron and Steel Industry, 1926–35; An Investigation Based on the Accounts of Public Companies (London: Cambridge Economic Service, 1939).

Edward W. Barrett was dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York. He was also chairman of the Editorial Policy Board of the Public Broadcasting Laboratory. After serving as editorial director at Newsweek magazine from 1946 to 1950, he moved to the State Department to become assistant secretary for public affairs, a post he held from 1950 to 1952. He then became executive vice president for the Hill & Knowlton, Inc., public relations firm, and later established his own company, serving as president of Edward W. Barrett  & Associates. He is the author of Truth is Our Weapon (Funk and Wagnalls, 1953).