Page 39 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

GARDNER
COWLES, JOHN AND
(MIKE), JR.
28
ernment agency. It is designed to develop public communications service for
the American people. About 600 public radio stations exist throughout the na-
tion. There are more than 350 public television stations. CPB is the largest
source for funding for public television and radio programming.
Public broadcasting began as an alternative to commercial broadcasting. In
1952 the Educational Radio and Television Center was developed in Chicago.
Because of the great growth in public television, the Carnegie Commission on
Educational Television called for a well-financed system to serve the needs of
the American public. Congress responded by passing the Public Broadcasting
Act of 1967, which created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Public
Broadcasting Service was initiated in the fall of 1970. It is a private, nonprofit
program company owned by America's public television stations. Through the
National Program Service, PBS funds the creation and acquisition of programs
for its member statons and distributes those programs. National Public Radio
began operation in May 1971. It is a private organization that produces and
distributes news and cultural programming for member stations throughout
America. Lawrence Grossman was named president of PBS in 1976, and he
brought popular programs to what had not been a very entertaining programming
organization.

SOURCES: Robert J. Blakely, The People's Instrument, 1971; Les Brown, "A Bigger
Picture for Public Television," New York Times, September 12, 1976, pp. 31-32; Donald
N. Wood, "The First Fifteen Years of the Fourth Network," Journal of Broadcasting,
Spring 1969.
Will Norton

COWLES, JOHN AND GARDNER (MIKE), JR., were leaders in a
twentieth-century era of newspaper journalism whose hallmarks included family-
owned newspapers that dominated regions of the nation, with their publishers
also active in national and international public affairs.
For the Cowles family and the two brothers, the flagship newspapers were
the Des Moines Register, owned by the Cowleses from 1903 until its sale to
Gannett in 1985, and the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, purchased in the mid-
19308 and remaining under Cowles ownership.
John (1898-1983) oversaw the family holdings in Minnesota and the upper
Midwest. Mike (1903-1985) had leadership of the Des Moines Register and the
Des Moines Tribune (1946-1982). The brothers also published a national mag-
azine, Look, from 1937 to 1971 and shared in a family enterprise that included
newspapers in Gainesville, Lakeland, Leesburg, and Palatka, Florida; Rapid
City, South Dakota; Great Falls, Montana; Waukesha, Wisconsin; Jackson, Ten-
nessee; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The family journalism formula, found in many of John's speeches and articles,
was to "give readers a superior product, deliver it better and promote it effec-
tively." The Des Moines Register, into the 1980s, was second only to the New