Why are commercial broadcasters in trouble

Louis, the public radio station has merged with a group of former print reporters who had started a nonprofit online news site. On a recent fall morning there was coverage of local transit-union negotiations, a public-school protest, and a story about whether the same state agency that regulates cattle should also look after the health of wild deer. In Denver, Rocky Mountain PBS, which collaborates with a local philanthropically funded investigative-journalism project, was covering the question of how to regulate marijuana sales, as well as the looming area shortage of volunteer firefighters.

Lawrence County; Oregon Public Broadcasting was continuing to follow the slow clean-up of the Hanford, Washington, nuclear-weapons facility; and Minnesota public radio has covered the efforts of the local Somali community to combat terrorist recruiters. Radio and related digital platforms are the most common though not exclusive vehicles for such local reporting, but the stories are often linked to online video, suggesting a future in which news dissemination is "platform agnostic.

Other public broadcasting licensees are establishing partnerships with non-profit journalism sites, such as that between Boston's WBUR and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting. What is notable about much of this new local journalism is its regularity.

Many of these stations have reporters with subject-area specialties what newspapers once called beats. Public hearings and press conferences that other news providers may ignore are now covered by public broadcasters. Occasional special programs are no substitute for regular local news coverage that allows citizens to follow the issues. This kind of engagement is the lifeblood of democracy. While several stations around the country have begun to invest in local news coverage, public broadcasting's movement toward local journalism is nevertheless a relatively new phenomenon, and it is a sharp departure from a time not long ago when local public radio often carried little else besides national programs and jazz or classical music.

The trend is by no means universal: The most robust public-media local news operations are still exceptions, radio does more than television, and some stations still do little but serve as signal carriers to deliver national programming. Programming frequently includes not just news reports but interview-based programs focused on local issues.

It is increasingly possible for viewers and listeners to get access to their favorite national programs directly through, for instance, their smartphones and program-specific applications.

As it becomes possible to access national programming without going through a local television or radio station, local broadcasters face pressure to develop their own original programming that is not available elsewhere.

Local journalism is an obvious option. Such an emphasis on local reporting stands to benefit the entire national system of public broadcasting. More local journalism should, over time, lead to more local producer-journalists whose work develops from knowledge of local issues or who apply a local lens to national issues.

Their work could be showcased through the major national series such as Frontline or PBS NewsHour , which have a financial incentive to seek out new work and to encourage it if they can acquire it without cost.

Greater emphasis on, and encouragement for, local journalism would also increase the likelihood that issues, perspectives, and sensibilities that might not be known to assignment desks in Washington will bubble up and gain visibility. Calvin Trillin's long-standing "U.

Journal" stories in the New Yorker , which spun great narratives of national importance from often obscure local events and issues, could be a model here. One can imagine, over time, production centers dispersed around the country like the 12 branches of the Federal Reserve System, whose research staffs often focus on issues of special regional interest but who bring their work to the attention of the system as a whole.

Simply put, more journalism born in more geographic areas could trigger renewed creativity in the public-media system broadly. While local journalism holds great promise in strengthening the public broadcasting network, it faces one large implementation challenge: cash flow. The vagaries of how public broadcasting is actually financed are the greatest barrier to thriving local journalism on public broadcasting.

As noted above, the Community Service Grant is meant "to be used to support the Grantee's capability to expand the quality and scope of its services to the community.

Despite this goal, in practice a significant portion of the grant is effectively returned to Washington in the form of member assessments dues, if you will and the purchase of the right to broadcast specific television and radio programs. These programs, as well as original programming not part of an established national prime-time series, rely on additional support from grants from private foundations and individual donors, along with other federal entities, such as the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities and the Department of Education.

These donations mean that, technically, the Community Service Grant that a television station receives is not itself the direct source of funds used for PBS-related costs. The Grant becomes part of the overall total of funds raised by a local station from all sources, including viewers or listeners and local philanthropies.

As a result of this byzantine financing structure, there are a number of claims on the federal funds disbursed as Community Service Grants to local stations, and, their name notwithstanding, they indirectly support national as well as local programming. Even if local licensees would prefer to reserve more of their funding for original local programming, local station managers have found it difficult to set money aside for that purpose.

Like the managers of commercial television local affiliates, local public broadcasting managers have historically felt pressure to feature national television and radio programming both because of audience expectations and as key engines of their own fundraising for costs not fully covered by federal funding.

Downton Abbey especially , Frontline , Nova , American Masters , and other familiar offerings attract the support from "viewers like you," which local licensees must have. Even this money often isn't sufficient, however; many stations also turn to so-called "pledge programming" not typically shown on public television in order to raise funds.

Shifts in content delivery will change this dynamic, but national programming remains a driver of fundraising. How then to finance local journalism, if it is to be an ongoing and central part of public broadcasting?

A few alternatives, stemming from the current funding arrangement, present themselves. One possibility is to dedicate more of the existing federal funding stream, especially the money not given to local stations, for this purpose. There are formal obstacles to such an approach, however. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting's charge is to direct funds not distributed through the Community Service Grants toward the support of national programming. It has, rather creatively, tried both to serve that goal and to encourage more local journalism through the advent of its support for Local Journalism Centers, regional consortia of stations that focus on key issues of both local and national interest.

For instance, one Local Journalism Center, including Colorado and Wyoming stations, focuses on energy issues. Another, a consortium including Cleveland and Chicago stations, focuses on the future of manufacturing. Yet another, based in the Southwest, focuses on immigration-related issues.

All of these issues are important to the country as a whole, even while they are more focused in certain regions. Its virtues notwithstanding, however, such an approach is not the same as the sort of regular, comprehensive news coverage that is essential to thriving local journalism. Another possibility comes from the opposite angle: Broadcasting stations could support local reporting by keeping more of their existing Community Service Grants from the CPB.

This approach might be viewed as heresy in the public-media universe, but the idea of shaking up existing arrangements should not be off the table. While technological innovation is challenging the current models for delivering content, other shifts in technology may actually provide, at least in some cases, a substantial new means of financial support for local program production. The FCC plans a two-stage auction in that could potentially mean significant payments to public-media license-holders for parts of the spectrum that have largely been sitting idle.

But such significant potential payments were not confined to major markets. In effect, public-media license-holders could find themselves with de facto endowments to help support the original programming they need to fulfill their mission of public service. Such an infusion of money could well enable more and better local journalism. And it's possible that Congressional appropriators might choose to cut back federal support because of the infusion of funds into the public broadcasting system, which would hurt smaller stations with smaller payouts from spectrum sales.

But the public-media financial landscape is facing a significant change that, if leveraged properly, could help kick-start and sustain local journalism across the country. One other, even more fundamental issue stands as a potential barrier to a focus on local journalism for public broadcasting. Public broadcasting receives public funds, which at least implies that the government has a measure of control over its activities. For journalism to be trustworthy, it must be independent from the powers that it so often holds accountable through its reporting.

Thus, even the appearance of dependence on the government can undermine the credibility of news organizations. It is true that local license-holders who receive government support for a portion of their expenses are not necessarily under direct government control.

Public television and radio licensees are typically independent non-profit organizations, whose executives answer to their own boards of directors. But there are important exceptions to this general rule of independent control. In some instances, local school districts, controlled by elected school boards, are the license-holders. There are also some state public-television networks, such as those in Alabama and Wisconsin, that receive state as well as federal funds and whose directors, in some cases, are appointed by governors.

This kind of state- and local-governmental control could easily chill robust local reporting on the very institutions that fund the journalists in the first place. It is important not to forget, however, that all local public-media licensees must answer primarily to their local communities, on whom they rely for the vast majority of their operating funds.

In fact, the Public Broadcasting Act did not include a BBC-style television excise tax on every household, which would have provided a far richer and guaranteed funding stream, even though the Carnegie Commission endorsed such a tax. The reality of local support does not completely mitigate the dangers posed by public funding, however. This conflict of interest should not be taken lightly, but one network provides a possible way to resolve the dilemma for stations with close ties to local authorities.

Many states and localities have faced budget crunches over the last few years, and spinning off the public broadcasting unit into an independent non-profit provides one way to both save the government money and give the broadcasting organizations greater independence.

The issue of control or influence by the federal government matters too, even if the dangers are less acute than those posed by local authorities' control. Local issues are often of no interest to the federal government, though they can matter a great deal to some federal officials perhaps especially those elected in the relevant locality.

In other words, the federal government should not be trusted never to interfere in local reporting. The structures that promote the independence of local public news coverage are no less valuable when applied to the federal government. If public broadcasting is to provide robust and credible local reporting, its integrity must be ensured through structures that maintain its independence.

Public broadcasting began as an effort to supply the country with the serious television and radio programming, both fiction and non-fiction, that many thought commercial stations would not produce.

From , public broadcasters will have a narrower remit. They will be required to make informative and educational programmes, and programmes about the arts and culture. Other programme-makers will also have direct access to the system, a right which was previously exclusively held by public broadcasting associations. Public broadcasters will have to make a clearer distinction between themselves and commercial broadcasters. Parliament still has to approve these plans.

Commercial broadcasters do not receive money from central government. So fewer rules apply to them. Yet the Media Act does set a number of requirements for commercial broadcasters and their programmes. For example, they are not allowed to broadcast commercials for longer than 12 minutes an hour. Sponsoring of news and current events programmes is prohibited. Commercial broadcasters also have to keep to the rules on the protection of children.

The Dutch Media Authority checks that commercial broadcasters obey these rules. Broadcasters — both public and commercial — are prohibited from broadcasting programmes that are harmful to young people under the age of