Profit Management (Principles and Stakeholders/Major

¶ … profit management (Principles and Stakeholders/Major Directives)

Principles and Stakeholders

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is guided by the principles of vision, mission, purposes, and values. The mission of its television programming arm, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), is to inspire, inform, and educate. The PBS Foundation frames its mission in the language of "philanthropy," "continued excellence," "special initiatives" that enable "collaborative" and "cooperative" work with member stations, in order to "maintain and enhance its commitment to serving the American public (Public Broadcasting Service).

The values of PBS are in governmental, corporate, and public spheres. For the fourteen years before the 1967 congressional act to create the CPB, the Ford Foundation had already invested about $100 million to "educational television" (Gibson, 1977, p.118). Once Congress approved the Public Broadcasting Act, it also created the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to administer member television stations. The CPB's board members are presientially appointed, "making them responsive and vulnerable to the dictates of the administration in office" (Paletz, 1998, p. 28). Marilyn Lashley (1992, cited by Paletz) documents how four presidential administrations have transformed the policy directives of the CPB over the decades. About 14% of the CPB's funding comes from the federal government; 30% from local and state governments and state colleges and universities. According to PBS.org, the largest source of funding comes from "viewers like you," or individual donors, but Paletz claimed in 1997 that the largest comes from corporate underwriters. The figure of 30% is given by each source. (Paletz, 1998, p. 28-30). These values represent far less commercial vision, and serve a more democratic purpose than other TV networks.