PBS President Resigns

September 10, 1999

PBS President Resigns

By LAWRIE MIFFLIN

pparently weary of the tugs of war inherent in his job, Ervin S. Duggan resigned yesterday as president of the Public Broadcasting Service, saying that after raising revenue and achieving other major goals he wanted to tackle new challenges.
PBS executives and board members said Mr. Duggan had not been pushed out, but some said the decision might have been mutual between him and the board, because of friction with major PBS stations that had made his tenure increasingly uncomfortable for him.
Some of this friction arose from Mr. Duggan's success at achieving one of his major goals: raising revenue as Federal financing decreased, and giving PBS a more secure financial footing. In his five and a half years as president, PBS's revenue grew 70 percent, to a projected $309 million for the fiscal year 2000, but some of that growth has come at the expense of larger stations.

For example, the money that a station like Thirteen/WNET in New York could raise by selling videos of its programs has been undercut by PBS's own sales.
Under Mr. Duggan, PBS has begun ambitious digital television initiatives, the PBS Online Web site, www.pbs.org, extensive services for teachers and parents, and unified corporate fund-raising efforts that now attract more than $100 million in underwriting annually and partnerships to raise additional revenue.
About 16 percent of PBS's revenue in 2000 will come from the Federal Government.
Mr. Duggan declined to answer questions about his resignation after issuing a statement, which said he would stay on until Oct. 31.
Colin G. Campbell, the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund who is chairman of PBS's board, said he and Mr. Duggan, whose salary is $151,800, had been discussing the move for months. Mr. Campbell said that John Swope, a board member and the former chairman of New Hampshire Public Television, would serve as interim chief executive.

All sides agreed that no role in the resignation had been played by the political furor this summer over news that some PBS stations had exchanged lists of potential donor with Democratic and Republican fund-raisers.
Coincidentally, the inspector general's office of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is responsible for relaying public money to public broadcasters, issued its report yesterday on the fund-raising lists. It found that 29 public radio and 24 public television stations had done so, about 9 percent of the total stations and almost twice an earlier estimate.
But the report concluded that the exchanges were done for financial purposes, not political.
PBS is perceived as a network, but is the national programming provider for the country's 349 PBS stations that own and operate it.
"Being president of PBS is like being president of a university," said Steven M. Bass, president of WDCN, the public-television station in Nashville. "You come in with a lot of power and momentum, and sooner or later the faculty Senate will start to drive you down."
Ken Burns, the documentarian whose films are synonymous with PBS, likened Mr. Duggan's job to a different sort of presidency. "Jefferson Davis," Mr. Burns said. "PBS is a confederacy, run from the bottom up. It's a thankless task to run it."

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