Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Trouble in Three Rivers City: WQED Debt Comes Due 2. Corporate Media's Threat to Democracy 3. The Broken Promise o f PBS 4. The Battle to Reform WQED 5. Old Wine in New Bottles: Reproducing the Station Culture 6. What Am I Bid? Stripping Assets at WQED 7. Round Two, the Battle over WQEX 8. The Killing of WQEX and the Final Showdown 9. Other Fronts: Putting the Public into Public TV 10. Public Broadcasting in the Public Interest: Toward a Democratic Alternative Appendix: Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting Notes References Acknowledgments Index

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An absorbing account of one of the most contentious battles for community media control ever waged in the U.S.

Reviews

"Jerry Starr's Air Wars is the Common Sense of the Information Age. With passion, intelligence, wit, and integrity, Starr tells us how the public broadcasting system has gone so wrong, and how we, as citizens, can organize to change it. Best of all, Starr talks of his own history, winning battles to preserve and extend genuine public television in Pittsburgh." --Robert W. McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy "A step-by-step, blow-by-blow account of how the public was robbed of its most precious, cultural resource, the public airways, and how citizen action can take it back." --George Gerbner, author of The Future of Media "Jerold M. Starr's Air Wars explains where public television went wrong and why we need noncommercial broadcasting today more than ever...By weaving that tale together with a critique of commercial television and a vision for a more democratic public broadcasting, he shows why television should continue to be of interest to scholars concerned with the health of our public life." --Lingua Franca "Air Wars documents how so many of the country's 'public' and 'noncommercial' stations have become almost indistinguishable from commercial ones, and how many boards of directors are a self-protecting elite against attempts to create a truly independent, well-funded noncommercial television system. He gives a formula for action for groups all over the country who are already in the trenches and need all the help they can get." --Ben H. Bagdikian, author of Media Monopoly "In this stirring book, Starr provides a rigorous analysis of the U.S. media and the decline of public television, as well as a step-by-step handbook for community activists who wish to reclaim local television and radio stations...Starr's work is not only a model of American idealism and community organizing, but an engrossing narrative as well." --Publishers Weekly

"Jerry Starr's Air Wars is the Common Sense of the Information Age. With passion, intelligence, wit, and integrity, Starr tells us how the public broadcasting system has gone so wrong, and how we, as citizens, can organize to change it. Best of all, Starr talks of his own history, winning battles to preserve and extend genuine public television in Pittsburgh." --Robert W. McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy "A step-by-step, blow-by-blow account of how the public was robbed of its most precious, cultural resource, the public airways, and how citizen action can take it back." --George Gerbner, author of The Future of Media "Jerold M. Starr's Air Wars explains where public television went wrong and why we need noncommercial broadcasting today more than ever...By weaving that tale together with a critique of commercial television and a vision for a more democratic public broadcasting, he shows why television should continue to be of interest to scholars concerned with the health of our public life." --Lingua Franca "Air Wars documents how so many of the country's 'public' and 'noncommercial' stations have become almost indistinguishable from commercial ones, and how many boards of directors are a self-protecting elite against attempts to create a truly independent, well-funded noncommercial television system. He gives a formula for action for groups all over the country who are already in the trenches and need all the help they can get." --Ben H. Bagdikian, author of Media Monopoly "In this stirring book, Starr provides a rigorous analysis of the U.S. media and the decline of public television, as well as a step-by-step handbook for community activists who wish to reclaim local television and radio stations...Starr's work is not only a model of American idealism and community organizing, but an engrossing narrative as well." --Publishers Weekly

At the time of its conception in the early 1950s, public television was designed to provide educational programming independent of government and commercial pressures. But cutbacks in federal funding, unwise and unnecessary reliance on corporate funding, pressure from conservative interest groups and censorious government actions have reduced many public television stations to a flickering vestige of their original promise. In this stirring book, Starr, an activist and award-winning sociologist, provides a rigorous analysis of the U.S. media and the decline of public television, as well as a step-by-step handbook for community activists who wish to reclaim local television and radio stations. Arguing that public television is needed more than ever in this era of corporate consolidation--when "[fewer] than 10 corporations control more than half of all communications enterprises: CDs, books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and motion pictures"--Starr recounts his own community's successful efforts to take back control of Pittsburgh's WQED, one of the first and most respected public television stations. With the drive and energy of "true life" Hollywood expos‚s like The Insider, Starr chillingly details how government officials have targeted public television (for example, President Nixon declared war on public TV after learning that a critic of his Vietnam policy was hosting a PBS show) and how the United States has consistently lost alternative and independent news sources over the past three decades. Unabashedly populist in tone and intent, Starr's work is not only a model of American idealism and community organizing, but an engrossing narrative as well. (June) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.