The Last Page
Mort, Jo-Ann
Aquiet revolution took hold in New York City during the humid summer months. WNYC FM and AM, the public radio stations owned by the city since 1922, were put on the selling block by a Republican...
...Just don't make us pay for your habits...
...Government funding of radio news and quality programming is a good thing...
...Rush Limbaugh, they remind us, is a real man who doesn't need federal funding—he can earn his way on the open market...
...We don't care what you liberals listen to, say the new batch of Republicans in charge of divvying up the federal revenues...
...Simultaneously, we have to respond to the marathon requests proffered by public radio personalities for listener contributions, even though our enthusiastic response strengthens the hand of those same Republicans who want to cut loose public radio...
...The BBC license fee, payable on every television in the country, is even increased periodically for inflation...
...I, for one, willingly gave the requested $25 pledge to the station's "independence" campaign...
...WNYC 's loyal listeners—there are seven hundred thousand of them according to the radio station's numbers—value WNYC's intelligent talk shows on the AM outlet, the National Public Radio news shows and a host of cranky, informed classical radio announcers who still maintain their sixties edge while playing some of the most sophisticated classical music selections in the nation on the FM band...
...Yet how else, in this present climate, will we save treasured institutions like WNYC...
...But what a dilemma...
...Although the Tories complain about Labor bias in the BBC, they haven't halted the tax collection, nor has the public rebelled against the tax...
...The attack nationally on public radio is an attack on governmental funding of the airwaves...
...But that argument is difficult to make to Republicans who no longer allow for the most minimal telecommunications regulation...
...democratic socialists should support it just as we support public financing of schools and transportation...
...WNYC FM and AM, the public radio stations owned by the city since 1922, were put on the selling block by a Republican mayor set on privatizing city assets...
...This orphaning of public radio is another example of a frontier Republicanism that outdoes most other conservative movements...
...Now, losing all its city financing, it becomes the model child of the nineties, left to fend for itself...
...The Tories instigated all sorts of union problems, but that's another story...
...Jo-ANN MORT q 560 • DISSENT...
...Perhaps, finally, progressives had a victory—we didn't lose the FM frequency to a heavy metal station with three-minute news cycles or the AM to another kind of talk radio...
...At first glance, it looked as if the mayor bucked the sentiment of the Republicans in Congress who seek to destroy public radio when he "saved" WNYC by selling it to the not-for-profit WNYC Foundation...
...Yet, look again...
...It should be apparent that there's a need for a nationwide radio network in the United States...
...In Canada, too, the CBC outlasted the federal Tories...
...Rudy Giuliani, who is governing by slashing city services—yet still dares to fancy himself a "liberal"— capitulated to radio listeners in Manhattan's elite neighborhoods by agreeing to sell the radio stations at a bargain basement price of $20 million, a below-market value...
...It is likely that the dumping of WNYC onto the shoulders of its listeners was met with applause by committees in Congress who are currently figuring out ways to unload the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio...
...After all, WNYC, with its mix of listener donations, corporate gifts, and minimal government support, is the perfect American hybrid...
...We must lobby to save public radio from the congressional cuts...
...For example, the Republicans' Tory cousins in England— even after decades of rule—still support the BBC through targeted tax revenues...
Vol. 42 • September 1995 • No. 4
