Philanthropist Joan Kroc Leaves NPR $200 Million Gift / Cut the federal Subsidy now ?

[MORTARDUDE]

Ray Kroc's dead wife ( I bet hot dogs turn up at MackeyD's soon !! ) just willed NPR ( National Public Radio) $ 200,000,000 ( $ 200 million ) dollars US. Everyone admits NPR tilts left-ward and has for 40+ years, or however long it has existed. That is OK by me, as I listen to them some since there are no commercials, car, truck, and cell phone ads, screaming disk jockeys, AM right-wing-talk-radio-babble, and repetitive-acid-rock-elevator music...They are very consistent. I like that. Anyhoo......Ain't it about time to cut the Federal subsidy for them and let them sink-or-swim on their own ?? I have noticed the local NPR and PBS TV stations have pledge drives now every 2 or 3 months ....It used to be once a year. Gripes, the VA is tanking.....the Reserves and National Guard are broken, all our good jobs are going overseas, we are being flooded with illegal aliens, the Federal Budget Deficit just set an all-time-record... What say you ?

Larry

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http://discover.npr.org/features/fea...l?wfId=1494600


Nov. 6, 2003 -- NPR will benefit from a bequest of more than $200 million from the estate of philanthropist Joan B. Kroc, NPR President Kevin Klose announced Thursday.

"Joan Kroc believed deeply in the power of public radio to serve the communities of America," Klose said. "She made this extraordinary gift from her steadfast conviction that NPR and our member stations provide a vital connection to millions of listeners."


>>>>>


Most of the money -- described by NPR as "the largest monetary gift ever received by an American cultural institution" -- will go toward the NPR Endowment Fund for Excellence, created in 1993 to provide support for NPR activities >>> independent of other revenue sources. <<<<

The precise amount of the gift will depend on the final value of the Kroc estate. John A. Herrmann Jr., chairman of the NPR foundation, said the gift will increase the size of the endowment fund beyond $225 million. <<<<<<

Joan Kroc, widow of McDonald's Corp. founder Ray A. Kroc, died Oct. 12 of cancer. She was 75. In recent years she had made substantial gifts to organizations promoting world peace.

Member station KPBS in San Diego -- near the Kroc family home in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. -- will receive a $5 million contribution from the Kroc estate.

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.morehead-st.edu/focus/focus02/wmky.html

CPB grant helps WMKY deliver programming variety

WMKY Radio relies heavily on grant funding and public sponsorship for programming content. A Radio Community Service Grant of about $120,000 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) enables the station to pay for a variety of radio shows presented as a service to its broadcast region.

"The grant goes almost all for programming. National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Radio International (PRI) programs take most of the grant funds. It's nice to get $120,000, but it comes in one hand and goes out the other," said Dan Conti, general manager of WMKY.

Conti pointed to the expense of two NPR programs, in particular, which take a large portion of WMKY's approximate $550,000 yearly budget. All Things Considered and Morning Edition cost $50,000 plus. Fiscal Year 2001 NPR fees are $76,000, and $22,000 goes to PRI.

Debra Cline, broadcast operations specialist, said WMKY has seen someincrease in the CPB grant because of changes in guidelines for granting to stations with rural service regions and also because of recent successes in fund-raising at the station. "We have to generate non-federal funding. We are probably getting more money in our grant because Dan has generated more underwriting than we have ever had," she said.

There is also a list of other guidelines the CPB looks at in considering grants to stations, including local programming. "I am really proud of the local newscasts which are more than you can get from any other station in our area. We do the Health Matters show on Wednesday nights that involves the local hospital and AHEC (Area Health Education Centers). We have The Front Page, the half-hour talk show; we have Mountain Edition. Those are all services for the community that are hard to find anywhere else on the dial," Conti said.

While the grant is very important for operating capital at WMKY, both Cline and Conti are quick to share the credit with many others in getting the CPB grant. While Cline credits Conti with improving program sponsorship, he credits her in dealing with the massive amounts of paperwork involved in the application. Cline, in turn, credits personnel in the Office of Accounting & Budgetary Control, who must actually do filing of the annual financial statement. "They put together an unbelievable amount of paperwork in about four weeks," Cline said. The bottom line, though, is "there is an awful lot we could not do without the grant," Conti said.

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.urbanlegends.com/ulz/pbs.html

Synopsis An email petition claims that Congress is about to cut funding to public media outlets PBS and NPR and that circulating the petition will help save them.

See the petition here.

Is it true? No, not anymore.
Why? Set the Way-Back machine for 1995: the Republicans had just won a majority in the House of Representatives to go with their majority in the Senate and political utopia beckoned to them.

Words like 'revolution' were bandied about and no political sacred cow seemed safe.

The Republican majority was particularly eager to reduce the size and influence of government. A time honored tactic of politicians is to offer up a 'trial balloon,' make a policy proposal in the press to gauge public reaction. If the reaction is not positive, the politician can back away from the proposal without investing too much political capital it.

Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich floated a trial balloon to cut off federal funding of PBS and NPR in January, 1995 saying, "I personally would privatize all of them" on ABC's 'This Week.' At stake was PBS's $200 million federal subsidy.

As a political gambit, it was a failure. Public reaction was quick and overwhelmingly negative. It also motivated two college freshmen at the University of Northern Colorado to send out an email petition to gather 'signatures' in protest.

After a few weeks of bluster Gingrich and the House Republicans quietly dropped their plans to cut off public broadcasting and moved on to other political matters.

But the email petition did not stop. It circulated in 1996. And 1997. And 1998, 1999 and 2000. It's still circulating now in 2001 even though no political threat to PBS and NPR has been mounted since 1995. But many of the variants of the 'Save PBS/NPR' email petition still bear the email address of the University of Northern Colorado students.

When? 1995
Comments Are email petitions ever an effective tool of political protest? The Urban Legend Zeitgeist would have to say, no, by themself they are a waste of perfectly good electrons.

How does a politician judge communication from constituents? Here's what one politician, Senator Dick Durbin (Democrat, Illinois), says:

"The most powerful form of communication from constituents is the face-to-face comment. "Then it's a personal letter or phone call. After that is a huge dropoff to preprinted postcards, and well below that is the paper petition."

As you can see, email petitions don't figure in Durbin's list.

Durbin's scale of political importance of communication is graduated by the effort put into communication. The more effort a constituent puts into communication, the more importance a politician attaches to it. Forwarding an email petition rates well below paper petitions on the effort scale.

There is another political axiom in play here: all politics is local. Why should a politician care about a petition, email or paper, that is signed by a people that don't vote in his or her district?

See also PBS Should Spend Money on Privatization, Says Gingrich from The Tech.
When you get an e-mail petition, think delete from the Chicago Tribune
Do e-mail petitions work? from Salon.com
The Case of the Pointless Petition from About.com

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http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/letters_...405750,00.html

Knoxville

Comments spur questions about funding public radio

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting federal subsidy for 2004 will be $380 million, $390 million for 2005. On Oct. 10, Regina Dean, WUOT FM, said, "NPR (National Public Radio) receives no direct federal funding." This must depend on what the meaning of "direct" is.

On Oct. 11, a letter writer says, "Subsidy of NPR and the arts in general is a place to support unpopular ideas and unheard voices, not to prop up programs without merit." If she's right, seems that the government should be subsidizing, say, Rush Limbaugh. His show's listenership, supporting unpopular ideas, is greater than that of all the 750 NPR member stations combined for all programming combined.

Another letter writer says taxpayers should subsidize NPR because its programs interest "those who don't want to hear nonsensical talk shows and country, pop and rap music." I'm sorry, but why should I pay for what you want to listen to? You won't pay for what I listen to.

Finally, a letter writer wraps up with a wry question regarding David Moon. "Did the on-off knob not work in Moon's sister's car?" For those of us who do turn off the radio, there remains that sucking sound of our money being confiscated against our will to pay for your listening enjoyment.

One writer ended her letter with, "If the government wants to uphold the right to free speech, supporting it financially is a step in the right direction."

If it were free, it wouldn't require confiscation of $390 million annually from taxpayers like me to broadcast it.

We don't have a guarantee to free speech, just freedom of speech. We are not constitutionally guaranteed either that people will listen to our speech or that they will pay for it.

PETE STEVENS

Louisville, Tenn.

Here are some changes public radio should make

I'm taking time out from solving the federal budget deficit to help local public radio. Until Oct. 29, its fund drive did not meet its goal. A late $5,000 saved it, I understand.

I offer this to help:

* Don't program heavy classical music from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. daily. Offer variety - something for everybody. Mix Wagner and Victor Herbert.

* Offer a symphony followed by an operetta. Go from Beethoven to Romberg.

* Continue "Fresh Air," "All Things Considered," and "Lake Woebegone."

I guarantee success on the next fund drive. Now I can go back to solving the federal deficit, and we can all live happily ever after.

MARY FITZSIMMONS

Crossville, Tenn.

[BLUEHAWK]

Larry - thanks for this good complete post on the topic...

I guess I don't begrudge NPR its $200,000,000 gift, kinda like 'em for reasons identical with yours... but the post brings up, again, a lot of resistance I have against non-profit agencies receiving tax write-offs while claiming they make "no profit" (e.g. many museums run retail bookstores, Sierra Club has a lucrative mail-order catalogue business, most non-profits pay zero State Sales Taxes etc.). I see their abuse of the tax-exemption as being virtually identical with off-shore corporate and private financial dealings... all of which activity enormously INCREASES the tax burden for average Joe and Joline...

Also, nobody should think (if they do) that all NPR stations are alike, because they are definitely not. The difference between what Tulsa NPR is able to broadcast and what Joplin can come up with on NPR is like night and day. Tulsa has almost whole days of nothing but political/cultural news and info... Joplin gets a couple of hours in the morning, and then a whole day of usually fairly bizarre "Classical" music other than noon and dinner time news.

So, that $200 million is gonna go primarily to the national office of NPR, it is unlikely to accomplish much of anything in regional terms. I would be extremely surprised if NPR did anything noticeable at all as a result of the gift.
What is most likely is for them to deposit the gift and use the interest as an endowment for the national office (to be spent on advertising, more fund-raising and maybe some office furniture or "better" technology). Reducing the tariff for (and thus making more affordable) major news/dialogue programs paid by small local stations is what they SHOULD do, but I seriously doubt that will happen to any degree noticeable.

Apart from how NPR tends to think institutionally PC, they DO often carry interviews with conservatives (such as William Kristol and many many others) on important issues. O'Reilly's battle with them was not surprising, he has made himself a huge target of invective by sometimes being so good and generous with it himself... the man is genetically combative. NPR also performs the extremely important role of giving the "Left" a place to discuss their sexual preferences and income redistribution schemes anytime they please... better that than to have them sitting down arm-in-arm blocking traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge again! The network often has scientific programs that simply cannot be found in ANY other electronic public media outside of the Web.

So, this is a small part of "what" I think on the topic... nice post Larry.