PROPRIETY OF NBC PAC ‘INQUIRY’ QUESTIONED

NEW YORK — According to the Federal Election Commission, there were 4,092 political-action committees--known as PACs--supporting federal candidates as of last July. Four months later, NBC’s new boss proposed that NBC form one, too.

Robert C. Wright’s suggestion stirred up both controversy and headlines, and now “may be on the back burner a long time,” one executive says.

There were questions of the proposal’s propriety, particularly within NBC News, even though the division’s president, Larry Grossman, said that Wright readily agreed that news staffers should be excluded from any PAC effort.

The proposal, which NBC insists is only “an inquiry,” was made in an internal memo that sought comment from several senior officers on the prospect and problems of forming a PAC. The memo raised some eyebrows by asserting that NBC employees who chose not to contribute to such a committee “should question their own dedication to the company and their expectations.”

This passage only referred to senior employees, Wright later insisted in a Washington Post interview. But by then, a bit of sardonic poetry authored by an anonymous employee already had made the rounds at various NBC offices.

Sung to the tune of a familiar childrens’ song, it went:

Where, oh where has my paycheck gone? Where, oh where can it be? Bob Wright took a bite for United Way . . . and wants more for political sway.

The aim of Wright’s proposal--defended by the head of NBC’s affiliates board but questioned by a former NBC board chairman--was to urge employees to financially help NBC get a better shake from the nation’s lawmakers.

The motion-picture and cable TV industries, and segments of the broadcasting industry, already have done what he suggested--formed PACs to support campaigns of candidates sympathetic to their causes. Direct corporate contributions are illegal.

In recent years, all three networks have said they’ve been hard put to overcome lobbying efforts of Hollywood producers in the battle over restrictions on network ownership and syndication of television programs.

But no network has yet formed a PAC to aid its cause. ABC says it is considering doing so, while CBS says it never has and never will form a PAC. Such a committee, a CBS spokesman says, would “be fundamentally at odds with the fact we run a major news organization. . . . We just feel it is inappropriate.”

Wright had three years of experience in cable TV as president of Cox Cable Communications, but no network time until Sept. 1, when he succeeded board chairman Grant Tinker as head of NBC.

The new NBC boss, who has expressed disappointment that his PAC memo was leaked to the press earlier this month, formerly was a senior executive of NBC’s new owner, General Electric Co.

Since 1975, GE has had a political-action committee to which employees can make voluntary contributions. According to Federal Election Commission figures for a two-year period ending Nov. 24, GE’s committee contributed a total of $283,1000 to House and Senate candidates, $193,930 for Democrats and the balance for Republicans.

(Under federal law, the maximum that a person can contribute to a PAC is $5,000 per calendar year. The most that a PAC can give to a candidate is $5,000 per election--or a total of $10,000 if the candidate campaigns in primary and general election races.)

Wright declined to be interviewed about his PAC proposal, which, a spokesman said, “to this point only is a memo. . . . No decision has been made on whether we’re going to move ahead (with a PAC) or not.”

But NBC’s chief has gotten strong support--with a major qualification--from James Lynagh, president of the NBC affiliates board and president of Multimedia Broadcasting in Cincinnati, Ohio.

“I do not criticize Bob Wright for that (proposing a PAC),” Lynagh says, emphasizing that he is speaking only for himself and not for NBC’s affiliates or his own company.

“I would criticize him if there were any implication that people in (NBC’s) journalism section” also should participate in a PAC, he added. “Clearly, they should not. He should be sensitive to that. . . .”

But with that understood, Lynagh says, he supports Wright’s proposal because “clearly the Motion Picture Assn. of America has out-lobbied the devil out of the network (in Washington). . . .

“And whether we like it or not, in today’s world, that (PAC) support for political candidates has an impact.”

Former board chairman Tinker declines to comment on Wright’s proposal, saying he made a personal rule not to discuss his successor’s actions for a period of time.

But another former NBC board chairman, Julian Goodman, opposes the idea of a PAC for his old company. Had Wright asked his opinion, he says, “I would have told him not to do it.”

Goodman, a former news executive who headed NBC until late 1979, says no thought ever was given to forming a PAC while he was at the company because “I think the obvious conflict with (NBC News’ coverage) arises there.

“Also, there is the fact we have licenses. A television network, as much as anything else, has ownership of stations”--NBC owns six, including KNBC-TV Channel 4 in Los Angeles--”and we have to do everything we can to protect those licenses by making sure that every propriety is observed.”

Although he opposes PACs for networks, Goodman says, “the basic objective that NBC is looking for in this is one that I don’t quarrel with--in the sense that networks don’t get representation in Washington that is the equal of that of the movie industry.

“That’s what he (Wright) was trying to look at. But the way he went about it would make a bull in a china shop look like a ballet dancer.

“I can sympathize with his objectives. But I disagree with his methods.”