Washington -- WILL THE REPUBLICAN majority in the next Congress pull the plug on public radio and television?
Could be. They sure talk that way.
"With 72 [cable] channels out there, I can't see any need for continued federal funding of public broadcasting," Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Tex., said over a chicken lunch the other day.
Georgia's Newt Gingrich, the next House speaker, agrees. Asked on ABC's "This Week With David Brinkley" about prospects for the arts and humanities endowments and for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Newt Gingrich said: "I personally would privatize all of them."
"Everything ought to be on the table," echoes Newt Gingrich's Senate counterpart, Bob Dole of Kansas.
In this cold climate, no Washington hotshot can keep the juice flowing. It will be up to the people who run the local stations to save the system -- if it is to be saved at all.
The pitch for sending public TV stations and National Public Radio down the tubes is that (a) we don't need them, and (b) we can't afford them. But the hidden agenda is that they remain playthings of the liberal elite, who use them to air values that drive ordinary folks up the wall.
"That perception is there," admits Richard Carlson, who has chaired the Corporation Public Broadcasting since the Democrats' 1992 electoral victory ended his tenure as head of the Voice of America.
"But," Mr. Carlson adds, "the reality is quite different. They think the only people who watch us drive Saabs and drink Chablis. Actually, our viewers and listeners cut across class, race and" and political lines.
Mr. Carlson notes that Bob Dole loves his local PBS station back in Kansas. But Mr. Carlson has a huge selling job ahead of him if he is to persuade Dole & Co. that the true soul of public broadcasting consists of many such stations spanning the nation.
The truth is murkier. Besides the taxpayers, public broadcasting gets its funds from rich foundations, from big corporations seeking a tonier image, and, as they say between begging marathons, "from viewers and listeners like you."
Not even Mr. Carlson can keep track of this web, which also takes in free-lance producers, side marketing deals and foreign syndications. What Mr. Carlson can do is go to the White House and ask the Democrats there for more money.
That he has done. First time out, Mr. Carlson said, the budget types cut him back to $293 million for the new fiscal year. Since then, they agreed to $315 million. That's the key seed money needed to raise the rest, about $1 billion.
None of this is apt to cut much ice with the GOP heavies on Capitol Hill. They need a simple way to send the voters a message that things have changed up there. Axing the subsidy to public broadcasting offers a tempting target.
Conservative think tanks, say: If you really believe in free-market competition for the media, you've got to treat broadcasting as a private affair.
Chairman Carlson will tell the lawmakers how the system he runs aids the deaf (all shows are captioned) and the poor, many of whom lack access to cable. But short of turning the stations over to Mr. Gingrich's own video agenda, which Mr. Carlson won't do, next year that may not be enough.
Andrew J. Glass is chief of the Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau.