Public Broadcasters Ask for Help from Economic-Stimulus Package

Public broadcasters have asked President-elect Obama to spend $550-million on several communications-infrastructure projects—and a cash infusion to help stations weather the recession—as part of the economic-stimulus package that he is preparing.

“We are already working in many areas related to the well-being of our communities—economic, educational, and civic,” says a letter signed by the heads of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio, and the Public Broadcasting System. “With further investment, we can expand these efforts to generate additional jobs and create economic stimulus.”

Public television and radio stations could lose $300-million in revenue this year, according to preliminary estimates, the letter says. It asks for a one-time allocation of money to help them cope and protect as many as 1,000 jobs that are at risk.

It says the stimulus money could also be used to:

• Expand super-high-speed connections among public media organizations, public schools, universities, government agencies, and other groups, a proposed effort it dubs National Public Lightpath. It says that would help strengthen civic life.
• Create an American Archive of broadcast material of historical interest that is now “languishing” at public television and radio stations and in danger of disintegrating. The project would digitize and catalogue the material and build data bases and a retrieval system so people could gain access to the material.
• Train 15,000 teachers and child-care workers to use new-media educational tools with young children in neighborhoods with a lot of poor people.
• Help families in 75 metropolitan areas save their homes from foreclosure. Public broadcasters would work with community organizations to educate people about their options on the air and on the Web.
• Train thousands of people to produce multimedia materials as a way to bring new voices to public media; and expand content aimed at African American, Latino, and native American audiences.

See The Chronicle‘s article about other organizations that are suggesting ways the economic-stimulus package could help nonprofit groups.