In 1994, Tucker Carlson was still a year away from his position at The Weekly Standard, where he first earned his conservative credentials,[1] and his father, Richard W. “Dick” Carlson, was on WNYC’s airwaves defending public broadcasting’s very existence. 

From 1992 to 1997 Richard Carlson was the President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB),[2] the congressionally created entity that, in part, allocates federal funds for public television and radio stations, including WNYC.[3] Carlson, a Republican with experience as a newspaper publisher, ambassador, and head of Voice of America,[4] was tasked with protecting CPB and congressional funding for public broadcasting from threats of being “zeroed out” by conservatives like Congressman Newt Gingrich, who believed public broadcasting outlets were biased against conservatives.[5] 

Joining Richard Carlson and host Alex S. Jones on a July 10, 1994 segment of On the Media were Hollywood Reporter Washington correspondent Brooks Boliek, National Public Radio Managing Editor John Dinges, and William Hoynes, author of Public Television for Sale: Media, the Market, and the Public Sphere. They spent the hour discussing controversies surrounding public broadcasting including the possible effects of corporate sponsorship on program content, the sale of licensed merchandise for shows like Sesame Street and Barney & Friends, and claims that some documentary series were biased against certain constituencies.

Although not mentioned during this segment, WNYC was going through its own trials. WNYC and its radio and television licenses were owned by the city and the Giuliani administration was discussing selling those licenses to close gaps in the city’s budget. The station’s trustees were trying to buy the licenses from the city before they were sold off by the highest bidder.[6]

Not long after this segment aired, Richard Carlson wrote to Mayor Giuliani opposing sale of any of the licenses and threatening to reclaim from the city prior grants from CPB to WNYC in the event of sale: “U.S. taxpayers, through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, have invested $19 million in the stations over the years and are, in the best sense, part owners of them…CPB will take every available legal step to ensure that the people of this country directly benefit from the sale of an asset they helped create.”[7]

A decade later Tucker Carlson would briefly call PBS home. Between his first foray into television at CNN and subsequent programs on MSNBC and FoxNews he hosted a 2004 PBS program, Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered, produced by WETA in Washington, D.C.[8] Even so, it may seem like weird history to many that during the height of the Gingrich Revolution CPB and WNYC were saved from possible extinction because his father stood as a firewall protecting public broadcasting from the axes of his fellow Republicans in Congress and City Hall.  

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[1] Lenz, Lyz. “The mystery of Tucker Carlson”, Columbia Journalism Review, 2018, September 5, cjr.org. Accessed March 1, 2020.

[2] Behrens, Steve and Karen Everhart. “Having ‘done the job,’ Carlson with depart CPB”, Current, 1997, February 3, current.org. Accessed March 1, 2020. 

[3] Corporation for Public Broadcasting. “About CPB”, cpb.org. Accessed March 1, 2020.

[4] C-SPAN. “Q&A with Richard Carlson,” 2006, April 24, c-span.org. Accessed March 1, 2020. 

[5] deWitt, Karen. “Gingrich Foresees a World Without Public Broadcasting”, The New York Times, 1994, December 17, 9.

[6] Darrow, Peter H. “Going Public: The Story of WNYC’s Journey to Independence”, wnyc.org, 2018, May 10. Accessed March 1, 2020. 

[7] Darrow, op. cit.

[8] PBS. “Tucker Carlson Public Affairs Program Green-Lighted for Development at PBS”, pbs.org, 2003, November 12. Accessed March 1, 2020.