Mom, Apple Pie and PBS

WHEN EXECUTIVES REPRESENTing 88 public-TV stations gathered in Washington last week to talk about the Republican-led campaign to end federal funding for the Public Broadcasting Service, they came not to praise high-toned PBS shows like Masterpiece Theatre and Live From Lincoln Center. Instead speaker after speaker trooped up to the microphone to tell stories of poor viewers in rural areas for whom PBS is a treasured companion; of fire fighters and police officers who take classes via local public-TV outlets; of children whose lives would be made joyless if such familiar PBS friends as Big Bird, Barney and Mister Rogers were taken away. Without federal funds, said Randall Feldman, president of WYES in New Orleans, his station would face cutbacks almost immediately. "Early-morning broadcasts of Barney and Lamb Chop's Play-Along would go away," he said. "It would be a huge step backward for America."

Never mind that some parents, given their attitude toward the big purple dinosaur, might actually call that a step forward. The race for the symbolic high ground has begun. Newt Gingrich has complained that public television is elitist and just a "sandbox for the rich," and that Joe Taxpayer should not have to pick up the tab anymore. Public-TV executives, who will argue their cause this Thursday at a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, have responded by casting themselves as champions of the common man -- and the common kid. Good grief, Newt Gingrich wants to do away with Big Bird!

There is posturing on both sides. Popular kids' shows like Sesame Street and Barney & Friends, for one thing, are well enough established to weather any federal funding cuts. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- the federal agency that Gingrich and his supporters want to "defund" -- supplies only about 14% of PBS's annual income, with the rest coming from corporations, member donations and other sources. If the $285.6 million the CPB is handing out this year were wiped out, public TV would still survive, though in a hobbled condition.

But some of the Republican arguments have been misleading as well. The charge of elitism, for example, is exaggerated. A 1994 Nielsen study revealed that 56.5% of PBS-viewing households have incomes below $40,000, not much less than the national average of 59.9%. "Elitism" is really a code word for a more virulent complaint made by conservative critics: that PBS programming has a liberal bias. It is bad enough, say right-wingers, that Bill Moyers and Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City have to be on television; but why do taxpayers have to support them?

PBS supporters insist that government funding remains as essential today as it ever has been to fulfill the mandate of public television: to provide a place where high-quality programming can flourish without the commercial pressures that dog the networks. Yet with both Democrats and Republicans looking desperately for places to cut government spending, public TV seems to many a frill that can be eliminated with relatively little pain. What's more, TV has changed markedly since the Public Broadcasting Service was created in 1969. Back then, PBS was the only alternative to the three commercial networks. Now the cable dial is filled with channels like Discovery, Arts & Entertainment and Nickelodeon, which offer similar programming.