corporation and on public broadcasting. That legislation has broadened our mission in developing telecommunications technologies. It directs the corporation to assert leadership in program policy and planning. It enlarges public participation, access and openness responsibilities. It calls for open board meetings, financial management and accountability, volunteer services, community advisory bodies, equal employment opportunity and satellite access.

It contains provisions designed to make public broadcasting more responsible for public funds and more responsive to the local communities it serves. The new law makes important changes in the structure of Federal support.

It increases funds for domestic program production. It helps to extend public broadcasting to millions of Americans not now served and it underscores the insulation of program content from political control.

The Carnegie Commission on the Future of Public Broadcasting has released its report, "A Public Trust." As you know, that report suggests a number of new approaches to financing public broadcasting and proposals for its structural reorganization. It contains recommendations covering public broadcasting's mission, its relationship to new technologies, public accountability, corporate underwriting, audience measurement, and minority involvement.

In March of this year the CPB board approved in principle a proposal for restructuring the corporation. As you know, Mr. Chairman, that restructuring would result in the creation of two separate units within the corporation-one dealing with management services including business, planning, and research, and the like, the other solely with programing. This restructuring, we believe, will encourage the production of high quality programs and increase the amount of money the corporation allocates to support those programs.

At the same time, it will protect program funding decisions with additional insulation. Those are the same laudable goals you and the members of this subcommittee are seeking to achieve through this new Communications Act. We have held extensive discussions with station managers and others in the public broadcasting community since March.

We have listened to their comments and incorporated many of their suggestions in a modified restructuring plan that our board today has adopted. This will require a great deal of work the next several months. This plan will become effective January 1980.

We are convinced that this two part structure, will improve the program funding procedure by creating a responsive, timely, and accessible mechanism for program support. By approving the proposal to restructure the corporation, the board of the corporation has underscored its commitment to increased and higher quality program services for all our citizens.

We believe that dividing CPB into two parts, one for management services and one for programing, is desirable and that by doing so we will be acting responsively to the wishes of the Congress and the needs of the American people.

All of us share the common goals that lie at the heart of the legislation we are addressing here today. Namely, the goal of improved and increased program support and the equally important

goal of improving methods of insulating public telecommunications from undue political and other outside influence.

President Fleming will deliver the balance of the corporation's testimony and will cover some of our specific concerns with title VI and the policy aspects that have significant implications for CPB. Before he does, however, I would like to focus on an area of special concern that is not addressed by H.R. 3333. That is the area of training.

Over the years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has contributed substantially to strengthening the local stations through promotion and research, by helping to fund programs and by assisting in a training program for station personnel.

Under the provisions of H.R. 3333, the endowment for program development would have no role in the training and professional development of public telecommunications personnel.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has increased its support for training grants dramatically over the past 3 years. CPB funding levels have increased from slightly more than one-half million dollars in 1977 to almost $11⁄2 million in 1979.

This has resulted in a nearly 50-percent increase in the number of minority and women training grant recipients. And, if we include the number of short-term, inservice training grants awarded by CPB, the number of public broadcasting professionals who have received support has nearly tripled in 3 years.

A number of grants have been made to staff members in State departments of education for inservice training in the important areas of instructional television utilization and the management of ITV department resources.

Short-term training has included such things as the Harvard University advanced management course, internships, exchange programs, and other opportunities for professional staff training and development. The corporation has also assisted in financing seminars, conferences, and workshops for training in special areas and disciplines.

These training grants are, of course, based on a 50-50 match between CPB and the station. This acts to insure that the station's investment in personnel development is equal to that of CPB's, a commitment of both dollars and to the value of increased professionalism.

Even with this requirement that stations match CPB money for training grants, CPB receives proposals from more qualified applicants in each grant round than there are grants to give out.

I believe that the development, training, and upgrading of public broadcasting's human resources is as important as improving and expanding its technical and program resources and that there is a special need to assist women and minorities.

I hope you and members of this subcommittee share that view and that whatever legislation finally emerges, the responsibility for support of training will be restored.

Thank you.

Mr. VAN DEERLIN. Thank you, Mrs. Herndon. I note from your statement that the board this morning went beyond its original

action in endorsing the principle and it endorsed the specifics, which was the board action this morning.

Mrs. HERNDON. Yes, that is correct. Shortly before we came over here, we endorsed the plan. And it is the plan that we had shared with you.

Mr. VAN DEERLIN. All right, thank you.

Mr. Fleming.

STATEMENT OF ROBBEN W. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Chairman and Mr. Collins, members of the staff, it is always a pleasure to come before you because somehow in the midst of these onerous hearings you always seem to manage to preserve a great equanimity and good humor throughout, so it is a pleasure to come down and talk with you on these occasions. Mr. VAN DEERLIN. You provide a relief from some of the wit

nesses.

Mr. FLEMING. I have been following your fans in the newspapers and I gather you have had some interesting conversations.

I am going to talk from, rather than read, my statement to you. [See p. 103.] The first two pages, in substance, tell you the contents of the act, with which you are familiar, more familiar than I, and I think I need not refresh your memory as to what is in there. So, let me talk a little about our thoughts on some of the major features of H.R. 3333.

We have submitted a section-by-section analysis, which I take will be a part of the record. [See p. 116.]

So, let me proceed immediately to the comments.

Starting, of course, with the provision in the bill which abolishes the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and replaces it with an endowment for program development, as we discussed. If we have some reluctance in commenting on this it is because what may be perceived as an obvious self-interest. But nevertheless as we thought about it, this is a board which has itself had a good deal of experience with the problems.

And it, therefore, seemed unwise, though it might be perceived as self-interest, not to at least try to convey to you what the board members think about that particular aspect of the bill.

It would appear from reading the language that by creating the endowment you are trying to accomplish two things: one is to make clear that the major purpose of the organization is to provide money for programing, as against other things, and, second, that what you are trying to do is better protect the members of that board from the outside influences which have always been a problem in this particular area.

If those are indeed the principal objectives which you are trying to achieve, then we would respectfully suggest that both of those objectives can really be achieved by some voluntary actions taken by the board itself within its present authority.

Now, there are changes that it cannot make, too. But as the chairman has already said, in its action this morning the board moved, (A) toward emphasizing programing and, (B) toward providing more insulation for that programing from any undue influences outside of the program unit itself.

A copy of that plan has been widely discussed, as you know, with stations all over the country and there were many criticisms, some of which we then tried to meet in the changes which we effectuated in our plan.

Then there are, Mr. Chairman, apart from the substitution of the endowment for the CPB, some major differences in the way that the individuals are to be appointed to the proposed board of directors for the endowment. Also the endowment would only have 9 members, as against 15 on the present board.

We recognize, as I think everyone does, that there are some deficiencies in the way in which members are named to the board at this point. Presidents of both major political parties have been very slow in nominating successors. And it is only that provision in the act which permits retiring members to continue to serve that gives us almost a quorum at times because, as you know from the nominations now before the Senate, there are seven members whose terms have expired presently serving on the board.

So, we think that your provision, which would change that interminable service, might have beneficial effects in causing the nomination and approval of the new nominees as against the present procedure which simply causes expired members to continue to serve until their successors are named. We applaud the effort in that direction on your part.

The board feels that reduction from 15 to 9 members is not a particularly significant improvement. A 15-man board is not an unwieldy board, as the size of boards go. And as one who has had occasion to deal with a good many boards knows from some experiences, 15 is not an unwieldy number.

We have a very diverse country. We have very great regional differences. Within a board the size of 15, you can accommodate a great many of those differences. So we have some doubts that the smaller number would accommodate as well as the present number of 15. And we think the benefits that may accrue from 9 as against 15 are not significant.

Mr. VAN DEERLIN. Do you have any division of responsibilities in subject matter within the present board?

Mr. FLEMING. A year ago the board had a series of committees: programing, finance, and so forth. At the time I came on, I proposed to them that we act as a committee of the whole on all questions rather than having committees. In the nature of the board's work, some committees are inherently more important than others. I take it that is true probably in any organizational setting.

For instance, the program committee and the finance committee will tend to be more important in the scale of committees. If you have committees of the board itself, while you get the advantage of specialization in those areas, you lose some of the advantages of having all the board members informed on the entire spectrum of the operation.

And if you take into consideration that though there are 15 members, because these are all busy people, you may at any given meeting, have 12, which has been our experience as a fairly common number in this past year. Then that is not an unwieldy board to act as a committee of the whole.

So, we suggest to you that we have doubts about the advantages of cutting back from 15 to 9.

The question of how best to nominate those members has been one that has been widely debated. And as you know, the Carnegie Commission proposed one scheme and you have proposed another in your bill. And I know from our conversations with you that you have invited us, if we thought we had a better idea, to tell you how we think it might be done better.

No scheme as far as I can see has been proposed that has yet pleased everybody. We propose a somewhat different one here, though not really a new one, because it has been proposed before. We have said that, first of all, with respect to your particular provision, we have some fears that it would create two classes of membership: one class in which the President nominates them and the other in which the appointees nominate the remainder.

There would be, we believe, sensitivity on the members of the board as to which class they fell in at that point. And there would be some disposition to feel there was a kind of first-class citizenship and second-class citizenship on the board if you did it that way. For that reason we are very dubious whether that is a good way to do it. The alternative which we have offered is to say why not allow the board itself, with some restrictions as to how they did it, to produce a list of, let us say, five members for every vacancy. You could require that the list include women and minorities, that it include people from various parts of the country. You could have that list submitted to the President with a recommendation that he draw his appointments from that list with the same understanding that you have in your plan that the President, of course, is not bound by that but one would hope that he might follow the recommendation from that list.

You could design the procedures so that the process would not be closed, we think, either in appearance or practice. You could limit the board members to one term so they would have no stake in perpetuating their own service on the board. They do know the requirements of the position, having served; they do get to know people in public broadcasting around the country quite well; they know citizens who are interested in various parts of the country. The current membership of the board, and I think any foreseeable membership, has on it women, minorities, people from different parts of the country. So, in a very real sense you have a spread of the interests which seem to be desirable in nominating some candidates.

And if they simply gave the President a list of five for every vacancy, that would still allow very considerable flexibility on the part of the President; it would produce names from all over the country with a great diversity, with some advanced knowledge of the interests of those people and their motivation for interest in public broadcasting.

So, we suggest that to you as a possible alternative to the way in which you have proposed to do it. And we do so really in response to your invitation that if we did not like the way you proposed it, was there a way we liked somewhat better? We think maybe that is a somewhat better one.