On Monday, February 6th, 2012, at 11:50:27h -0500, Arny Krueger wrote:

Maybe you might want check out the meaning of the word consortium.

Yeah I was just plain wrong to say it was not a consortium --
I should have checked the "finer" details first.

In the case of PBS (television):

1) it is collectively owned by the affiliate stations

2) it produces no programs of its own, but these are supplied by
major stations (eg WETA, WGBH, WNET, KQED) for network viewing by
affliates who have paid the appropriate fee for the program

In the case of NPR (radio):

1) it is a corporation in its own right but stations pay to join as affiliates,
and each member station receives one vote at the annual NPR board meetings

2) NPR produces network programming to which individual stations
can subscribe