|
Join PBMA PBMA Homepage Employment Listings Contact Us
|
PBMA's History: Beginning to 1982 |
|
The need for an organization like PBMA became clear as soon as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting initiated Community Service Grants to public television and radio licensees. Before CSGs, the accounting practices of individual public broadcasting licensees rarely interacted. Stations were isolated islands in the nationwide archipelago of public broadcasting. Interaction would have been difficult, in any case. Public broadcasting grew in America by evolving four distinct types of organizations to hold noncommercial educational broadcast licenses, and operate public radio and TV stations. Business practices among those license holder categories - community, university, state, and local authority - have always varied dramatically. But administration of the Community Service Grant program required at least some commonality of accounting methods. Soon after stations began to receive Community Service Grants (mid-1970s), CPB auditors started to recognize some grant recipients’ business practices as the most effective. CPB staff often directed other recipients to those stations for advice. |
|
|
A group of finance professionals from those often-called licensees began meeting regularly with CPB staff to ensure the continued quality of their own practices and to make sure the advice they gave to others was correct. The group organized itself into the Public Telecommunications Financial Management Association (PTFMA), and Boris Frank of WHA/Madison, Wisconsin, emerged as the group’s convener, newsletter editor, and advocate. By April of 1980, the group had drafted bylaws and elected its first board of directors, including representatives from the national organizations (CPB, NPR, PBS). Then, as now, the most important products of the association were person-to-person networking, training delivered via conferences and workshops, and interactive connection of members to the national organizations. |
|
|
Next » |
|
|
|