Corporation for Public Broadcasting

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is an American publicly funded non-profit corporation, created in 1967 to promote and help support public broadcasting. The corporation's mission is to ensure universal access to non-commercial, high-quality content and telecommunications services. It does so by distributing more than 70 percent of its funding to more than 1,400 locally owned public radio and television stations. History The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created on November 7, 1967, when U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The new organization initially collaborated with the National Educational Television network—which would be replaced by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Ward Chamberlin Jr. was the first operating officer. On March 27, 1968, it was registered as a nonprofit corporation in the District of Columbia. In 1969, the CPB talked to private groups to start PBS, an entity intended by the CPB to circumvent controversies engendered by certain NET public affairs programs that aired in the late 1960s and engendered opposition by politically conservative public figures, potentially threatening the medium's future viability. On February 26, 1970, the CPB formed National Public Radio (NPR), a network of public-radio stations that began operating the following year. Unlike PBS, NPR produces and distributes programming. On May 31, 2002, the CPB, through special appropriation funding, helped public television stations making the transition to digital broadcasting; this was complete by 2009. Funding of and by the corporation The CPB's annual budget is composed almost entirely of an annual appropriation from Congress plus interest on those funds. CPB has claimed that 95% of its appropriation goes directly to content development, community services, and other local station and system needs.