Information About Public Television (1)

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Ratings and revenues are also important to public (educational, nonprofit) television, which is heavily dependent for support on the same U.S. corporations that advertise on commercial television. The funding Tag Heuer Replica for public television comes from three sources: government appropriations, contributions from viewers, and corporate sponsorship of programming.

Corporations often transform sponsorship of public television programming into image ads with the goal of demonstrating that the corporation is a good citizen. Such promotion not only ensures that large audiences in the commercial media are aware of corporate good deeds; it also increases the size of the upscale audience reached by the program itself.

Reaching this upscale audience is a second reason for corporate largess. One of public television's main selling points is the quality of its audience. The director of development at KCET-TV describes the audience to prospective corporate clients as being "made up largely of well-educated, affluent adults who are often ...
... in a position to influence your business." Thus, although the cost per thousand viewers is very high, supporting public television is a good investment, as illustrated, for example, by Mobil Oil Company's continued underwriting of the Public Broadcasting Service's Masterpiece Theater, now renamed ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theater.

When advertising agencies and corporations argued successfully that corporate funding could be maintained or increased only if the FCC were persuaded to change its rule prohibiting institutional advertising and corporate logos on public television, new regulations were adopted permitting the use of corporate logos and the identification of the products that underwriters produce.54 In other words, public television has become much more commercial. Some limitations exist because two-thirds of all public television stations are licensed to educational institutions prohibited from running advertisements, but some stations currently sell advertising in their program guides— an action that has aroused controversy.

Despite the important role of corporate underwriting, the need for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) programming to appear untainted by commercial control was evident in the controversy surrounding the firing of This Old House host Bob Vila in 1981. Commercial suppliers of the materials used in rebuilding houses had become so prominent that one might have mistaken the PBS program for an extended advertisement. The conflict that led to Vila's ouster occurred when the underwriter of seven-teen local stations' broadcast of the show complained that Vila was a paid promoter of a home supply chain that competed head to head with the underwriter. When the underwriter pulled its $750,000 funding from the program, WGBH, the producing station in Boston, fired Vila.56 Within months, Vila reappeared in ads for Sears.

As noted in Chapter 1, competition Breitling Replica Watches from cable, among other factors, caused a de-cline in viewership of public television in the last half of the 1980s; member donations leveled off simultaneously. Since 1984, viewing of public television in cable households has declined, particularly in homes that subscribe to pay television, according to the Public Broadcasting Service.

Ratings and revenues are also important to public (educational, nonprofit) television, which is heavily dependent for support on the same U.S. corporations that advertise on commercial television. The funding Tag Heuer Replica for public television comes from three sources: government appropriations, contributions from viewers, and corporate sponsorship of programming.

Corporations often transform sponsorship of public television programming into image ads with the goal of demonstrating that the corporation is a good citizen. Such promotion not only ensures that large audiences in the commercial media are aware of corporate good deeds; it also increases the size of the upscale audience reached by the program itself.

Reaching this upscale audience is a second reason for corporate largess. One of public television's main selling points is the quality of its audience. The director of development at KCET-TV describes the audience to prospective corporate clients as being "made up largely of well-educated, affluent adults who are often in a position to influence your business." Thus, although the cost per thousand viewers is very high, supporting public television is a good investment, as illustrated, for example, by Mobil Oil Company's continued underwriting of the Public Broadcasting Service's Masterpiece Theater, now renamed ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theater.

When advertising agencies and corporations argued successfully that corporate funding could be maintained or increased only if the FCC were persuaded to change its rule prohibiting institutional advertising and corporate logos on public television, new regulations were adopted permitting the use of corporate logos and the identification of the products that underwriters produce.54 In other words, public television has become much more commercial. Some limitations exist because two-thirds of all public television stations are licensed to educational institutions prohibited from running advertisements, but some stations currently sell advertising in their program guides— an action that has aroused controversy.

Despite the important role of corporate underwriting, the need for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) programming to appear untainted by commercial control was evident in the controversy surrounding the firing of This Old House host Bob Vila in 1981. Commercial suppliers of the materials used in rebuilding houses had become so prominent that one might have mistaken the PBS program for an extended advertisement. The conflict that led to Vila's ouster occurred when the underwriter of seven-teen local stations' broadcast of the show complained that Vila was a paid promoter of a home supply chain that competed head to head with the underwriter. When the underwriter pulled its $750,000 funding from the program, WGBH, the producing station in Boston, fired Vila.56 Within months, Vila reappeared in ads for Sears.

As noted in Chapter 1, competition Breitling Replica Watches from cable, among other factors, caused a de-cline in viewership of public television in the last half of the 1980s; member donations leveled off simultaneously. Since 1984, viewing of public television in cable households has declined, particularly in homes that subscribe to pay television, according to the Public Broadcasting Service.