Made Possible by...: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States.

• Author: Solomon, Norman

Made Possible By...: The Death of Public Broadcasting the United States by James Ledbetter Verso. 280 pages. $25.00.

These days, it's hard to say the words "public broadcasting" with a straight face. Corporate logos and de facto commercials--steadily more blatant--symbolize what has become of dreams that the airwaves could serve the the public interest.

James Ledbetter's book chronicles how we got into this grim situation. While doing an autopsy on "the death of public broadcasting," he urges us to revive the corpse. "This volume is written with the belief that public broadcasting has provided many moments of unique brilliance, and in the hope--admittedly dim--that it will continue to do so," he writes.

Some dreams die hard.

The revival Ledbetter has in mind should not be confused with the resurrection now under way. "Republicans have virtually abandoned their attempts to end the federal financing of public radio and television or cut it back sharply," The New York Times reported a few weeks before the close of 1997. "In fact, after a public-relations and letter-writing campaign by the broadcasters, both houses of Congress have voted to increase the amount of federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to $300 million in the year 2000, an increase of $50 million over 1999."

Such resilience is a hollow victory for today's shell of public broadcasting. "PBS and NPR programming is moving further and further from the goals laid out by its founders," Ledbetter argues. And the book presents plenty of evidence to back up his claim that "public broadcasters have spent the last decade rushing as hard as they can to merge their services with those offered by commercial networks."

The Carnegie Commission launched public broadcasting in earnest with a high-profile 1967 report, "Public Television: A Program for Action." Scenarios were hopeful--even starry-eyed--when Carnegie's prestigious panel declared that public TV "should provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard."

Ledbetter illuminates how Washington politicians and "underwriting" corporations squeezed the life out of public broadcasting, which has become just another product of the political economy. Carnegie's blue-ribbon theoreticians could proclaim that, as Ledbetter puts it, "public broadcasting had to be insulated from commercial forces in order to achieve its ideals." But those forces have proven relentless: "While the visionaries behind public...