Published: March 1, 1995

Are Bert And Ernie Earning Their Keep?

Cable-television subscribers in Waco would still be able to receive the PBS affiliate from Dallas, which is carried on the local cable system, "but only 60 percent of viewers here have cable,'' White points out.

As Congress debates whether to end or reduce the CPB federal appropriation--$285 million this year--the public-broadcasting community has gone into crisis mode. Some PBS stations have run messages across viewers' screens warning that the future of the show being aired is threatened and encouraging them to call or write Congress. And more than ever before, public broadcasters are playing up the importance of their educational shows and school partnerships.

Public broadcasting "is devoted to education in both the very strict and conventional sense and the broad sense,'' Richard Carlson, president of the CPB, said at a recent U.S. House of Representatives' hearing on the funding issue. Education projects "would be the first to disappear,'' he said, if the CPB lost its federal support. Virtually all of the corporation's budget...