of the republican study group and congressman tim wahlberg, we're hoping somehow we'll be able to get a game of words with friends going with tim. i'd like to try to pitch that. we're going to find some beachhead there with him and try to get him over on our side. on the senate side, we have senator tom udahl from new mexico who is good with us on this issue. he's a first-term senator, but he has been spearheading efforts to support funding increases for the nea. and tom harkin. who was chairman of the help committee on health education, labor, and pensions has been placing a spotlight on the decline in arts education programs in grades k-12. the republicans we have that are our heroes and our friends are

tom cochran, the republican from mississippi. i met with him last year. he's been great for us on the arts, and susan collins from maine, long-time moderate republican and supporter of public funding for the arts. and tom coburn is the one we were going to mention today as being not as wonderful as we would like him to be on the issue of the arts. and i wanted to mention that we have a couple -- is this the one? we have a list. all oklahoma, yeah. in the state of oklahoma, we've got -- in march of 2001, the oklahoma visual arts coalition received a grant of $15,000. in march -- that was in march of 2001. in may of 2001, the theater of oklahoma in oklahoma city, all five of these are in oklahoma city by the way received -- i'm sorry, 2011 rather. oklahoma visual arts coalition

was march of 2011 in may of 2011 was lyric theater of oklahoma, they got $45,000. the oklahoma council of the arts which is more of an umbrella organization of that community in june of 2011 got $773,000 from the national endowment of the arts in oklahoma. in july of 2011, the oklahoma visual arts, again, got $25,000. and then the oklahoma historical society in july got $20,000. so i just want to mention that we -- we always find it -- not enjoyable, but ultimately necessary to point out to some of these folks that there are constituents of theirs in their own congressional districts or statewide in the senate who the nea is bringing some wonderful, wonderful arts-related programming and events, shows, what have you. and educational opportunities for young people there under the umbrella of the national

endowment for the arts. i want to finish by saying that i -- in my own life, my path with art -- i mean sometimes people think when you do what i do for a living, you were kind of living the art lounge. you're in the art tent. and, you know, you're behind the velvet rope with the art people. and that's not necessarily true. i work in a business where the longer i'm in the business, the purely artistic aspects of my business intrigue me much more than the glitz and the glamour and what is often the purview of the stars and actors. design, directing, cinemamatography. everything that comes into play in great film making are far more interesting to me now and draw my attention now than they do.

but the artistic -- the artistic experience in my life comes to me the same way it comes to you. i go out my door and i try to identify some experience artistically that is attractive to me. then i've got to go get a ticket for it and i've got to buy a ticket for it. and i can afford to buy a ticket for it. i can go see whatever i want whenever i want. i've been very blessed that way. but a lot of people can't. and i've been working my foundation that i set up a few years ago to funnel, you know, some tributaries of my own income to the arts. and funding. right now i made this agreement with capital one bank. i had this relationship with capital one bank. becoming a spokesperson for a bank at the time of the banking collapse. and at the -- at the genesis moment of the occupy wall street movement was not a goal of mine in my career. i want to assure you of that.

however, capital one came to me along with a couple of other bankers and were talking about on camera promotional opportunities, which i decided to avail myself of for two reasons. one, i was on a television show every week, so i thought now is the time. you know, when i'm off tv, i'm going to be off tv for a while. but when i'm on tv every week and we went into syndication, it became clearer that audiences are probably plenty sick of me now so they can't get any sicker of me. maybe i'm wrong about that, by the way. they can't get any sicker of me than they are now. so i thought, well, i'll do this campaign for them and i funneled all the proceeds toward arts funding. my foundation, we earned a specific amount of money from a two-tier contract with them last year for 18 months and gave all that money to arts-related organizations and i'm doing another round with them now. no -- no -- i only -- i only mention that because it might not have been the smartest move

in my life to go do a commercial for a bank. they've been great partners. they've helped shape the commercials and they've been wonderful, wonderful partners for me and helped to publicize and promote the fact we're giving the money to arts-related organizations and i say this because what i've discovered is i've gotten older. because i am older now. i just turned 54. and as i've gotten older, there's a thing i did that satisfied me and there's a thing i did with my life and what's coming more into focus are not a lot of them, but the three or four other things i did that i could have been very happy doing that i'm not at all doing now. i got a great opportunity to be the on-air announcer for the new york philharmonic in new york and i've been doing that for the last three seasons with them. and my relationship with them has led me to this place of when you're with them, you are in the art lounge. you know, when you're hanging out with these people who are like alan gilbert, and a bunch of people -- a bunch of people who have maestro there from the

philadelphia symphony and they're calling him charlie. you're in with a pretty heady crowd. and when i'm around these people in the art world and the performing art world, the classically trained music group of opera and so forth, it's been so thrilling for me. i mean, you just don't know how amazing it is to me. and this is the thing i'll close with. what it's also opened a vista for me is an arts administration. meta who is retiring now, he and his wife karma have become dear friends of mine and 12 years after running the new york philharmonic. he came up from australia, lovely guy. and i've been with mata, and i've realized that to raise the money for the philharmonic, when

that group of men and women perform that music and that building lifts off the ground for that hour and a half, that two hours, you feel like you just -- life is really worth living with those people are playing this beautiful music. and the tens and thousands, hundreds of thousands of hours those people put into mastering those instruments and studying the classical repertoire and they give you this beautiful, beautiful art form. well, there's a lot of people in the other part of that building that have got to make that happen. to raise that money, promote that, sell those tickets and coordinate these schedules. arts administration or something, i'd like to see more programs in arts administration that are funded by the federal government. because not everybody -- what is it? like, you know, 1% of everybody that picks up a violin gets a seat on a really, really esteemed orchestra. the other 90% teach or play something that is not, you know, for the boston or the cleveland or the big five if you will or for the san francisco, or for --

and utah, or dallas, well these are the great symphonies they don't get there. so for many people just as i have realized that there are ancillary jobs, there are other parts of my own field that i might have worked in and just as happy. i see that now at my age. i realize that's true in the classical musical world, as well. there are other things i could have done. i mean -- there's times i sit there at the philharmonic and think, i'd trade places with meda for a day any day. to be able to exist the way he exists with these great, great artists, it's really thrilling. i think that pretty much encapsulates what my mission today is. is my mission is to try to remind people that art is -- is many, many things. we all have our own opinions of what art is and what we define as art, but the one thing i hope

we can all agree on or maybe one day i can convince us all to agree on is that art is essential. art is essential for us to be -- to continue to be a great country. we have to make art essential in our own lives and the lives of our children. thank you. is there one area of the arts most threatened by lack of funding? >> well, i'd like to say half hour comedy on nbc on thursday night is the answer to that question. that's that very threatened -- so they tell me. i would say that -- i -- it's --

that's a tough question for me to answer because i've never done or even read about a survey of what the x-ray of the art world is and what the c.a.t. scans will tell us right now. but i do know that i think they're all suffering equally. i've got friends of mine who, you know, monica who works with my company. people who work with me in my life, what i do all say the same thing. whenever they leave this job and i do this exit interview. i say what was the job like for you? and they say working for you is more like working for a congressman than it is an actor. there's so little glamour and film festivals and openings. it's more like raising money for people. the quest for me to raise money for people and the arts and their organizations is equal across the board. if it's not jacque in the national dance institute, it's this museum, this gallery, this poetry reading. it's across the board. and i think that of all of them

and the theater of the not for profit theater, the public or round about or mtc in new york. all of these great institutions are struggling very hard to beef up. when times are strong, what do they want to do? what does an organization, great arts institution want to do when everything starts to get on the uptick? they want the money for their reserve. pump up that reserve, get into the 50 million in that reserve because they're going to dip into that reserve on a rainy day. and i guess the people in my life -- i will cross a line here to include literature in terms of art. my friends who i think are complaining the loudest who seem the most despondent, the most genuinely despondent are people in the world of publishing. because books are just all going online and books are going to -- the whole book world seems to be kind of melting down. >> do you think that lawmakers would be more generous in funding the arts if money was designated for education and not arts projects or organizations?

>> i don't know. i think that, you know, they got rid of the individual grants, and i think that was a mistake. to me, that spoke to freedom of expression. as i said before, they wanted people. they set up a mechanism for a while, if you were given a grant and it was proven to be obscene, if you were taken to court in your local jurisdicti obscenity laws were violated, you had to pay the grant money back. and i thought that struck me as odd. because i don't want -- i don't want the government to fund obscene art. but number one, the number of things that were proven to be obscene that were funded by the nea, i can't think of any. there were zero proven in court that a judge ruled they had broken an obscenity law. and where that was implied, it was a minuscule amount. i thought this idea that the government wants to fund certain aspects of the government want to fund a type of work but

preemptively hamstring that in some way where they want to say to the artist, we're going to give you some money to do a project. and make sure when you do this project now you've given us a general idea what it is. if it's obscene now, if you do anything obscene, you're going to have to give us the money back, you have to pay us back the money. and i thought, well, are we going to do that in all aspects of the government? are opponents going to go to the justice department? you're going to do this prosecution, and if you don't get a conviction, you're going to give us your salaries back. for those hours -- we can get insane here with this whole kind of preemptive safeguarding they want to do. these are freedom of expression issues. and what's happened and i don't like this word culture war because it's a hot-button word. but in these last many years what we've done is we've allowed people to really, really cave on the issue of freedom of expression in the arts. we've really allowed people to get so intimidated about freedom of expression and what it means and what it can lead to that

we've -- that a lot of people have backed off in defending that concept. >> how do you defend the need for funding the arts alongside the need for funding jobs and education as well as local aid? >> well, teresa, i'm so glad you brought that up. because as most people who are advocates of this know and have known for many, many years that arts spending is a stimulus for the economic development. whether you're in a place that's as well healed as manhattan, you've got that lot of corporations and rich people giving millions upon millions of dollars to the lincoln centers of the world and the metropolitan museums of art and moma and so forth and all kinds of arts, performing arts and visual arts institutions. that private giving is enormous. that private giving is incalculable. but they get federal money, as well. they qualify for federal money. because tourists are coming to those cities and spending a lot

of money on parking and restaurants and hotels. art spending stimulates economic activity. i went down as a -- at the request of the at&t performing arts center in dallas. the dallas performing arts center. they asked me to come down there. and do one of these conversations with programs. i went down there about a month or two ago. and i was down there and they were telling me how if i understood the woman correctly, some board member backstage. she said to me they had feared -- i don't mean to be cute about this. but american airlines. they're headquartered in chicago. in chicago and the people in dallas believed that one of the reasons they lost out in the conversation of having a major corporate hub like that come to dallas even though they have plenty of other ones down there was because they didn't have a concentrated art center. a distinctive monolithic art center like you have in like new york's lincoln center. and they're doing something about that now.

they showed me these plans right in that corridor where the wind spear is and the opera house and the performing arts school, the edie brikel graduated from. they told me they were going to close down some enormous section of some eight-lane freeway they have and rip it up. and build a garden and unify this structure into their own lincoln center. billions of dollars they intend to spend over the next couple of decades. and certainly they have the money there i would imagine. and the arts is business. the arts is business. we're federal funding for the arts goes, it is a proven, incontrovertible trigger for a lot of economic activity in the area.

i had an interview with -- what was the woman's name? do we know? is she here today? there was a woman i did an interview with. here today from newsweek. there she is. what is your name again? sandra. i think i was a little rough with sandra today. she was asking me the same question about twitter. and i said, sandra, the great thing about twitter, it enables me to bypass people like you. what could be better than that? i mean i can speak to my fans directly and instantaneously, granted it's in 140 characters, the primary issue is i'm not a good writer, actually, but twitter is -- twitter for me is a work in progress. but i do like it enables you to communicate on a limited number of fields with your fans. you use twitter for promotion, use twitter to hug your colleagues and fellows in a

certain area. you use twitter to kick and elbow your opponents politically or what have you. it's pretty childish sometimes. i'm guilty of that too. but it's something that i'm evolving. but i do enjoy it because you get to speak to people directly and bypass all of you in this room. >> well, since i have you for a few more minutes, you said if every entertainment show went off the air tomorrow, what difference would it make? media in the u.s. is dull. what would you like to see on tv? >> well, i think that we're -- i think it's less about what would i like to see on tv. that doesn't matter. i think what we're going to start to see on tv is much more of the pure pay per view packaging of television. you'll see all of it. a lot of people in the world are saying i'm paying for a cable package that i don't want, you know. you're making me -- you're making me pay $69, $89, $125 a month to have a triple package

bundle of my internet streaming and my phone and my cable and -- i mean, i suppose if you have more economic resources, you don't read that bill as carefully as you might. and for other people who do, they read that bill a little bit carefully and more and more those people are saying, what am i paying for? i'm paying for -- that song 500 channels and there's nothing on. and it's not that there's nothing on, it's what you want. i think we're getting much closer now to the age of the a la carte television viewing where you're going to go to a site and whether it's an apple tv style thing and you're going to select your menu of what channels you want and you're going to be charged a la carte for each of those things and that's going to profoundly change the television business. >> you were upset with the "today" show for camping outside your door. would you really have given them an interview if they had called? or tweeted too. >> well, i mean, i think that's something that obviously has

changed in my lifetime. i remember i would watch some morning programming before i became purely a radio person in the morning and listening to npr and so forth. and i would watch morning programming a la good morning america and "today" show and cbs, i was a harry smith fan. i loved harry and i would watch these shows. and then one time toward the end of her tenure, i think it was a special halloween episode of the "today" show. katie couric came down dressed in a marilyn monroe get-up, kind of a revealing dress, a blond wig, and she and the staff of the show -- her hosts did a musical rendition of "diamonds are a girl's best friend." katie couric came down a staircase with jewels on and matt lauer was holding her hand and she was lip syncing "diamonds are a girl's best friend." that was the day i turned off the "today" show and never

watched it again. never watched it again. it was over. and i just didn't need to see people doing lip sync to "diamonds are a girl's best friend" at 7:30 in the morning. those shows, they struggle in that infotainment way having to battle with each other for audience. and from my standpoint. and i don't want to belabor this. that obsession, that interest in the personal lives of people in my business is to a degree i think is strange. i mean, when you are on the inside of that, it is just kind of odd why people -- some of i could see if someone's ill or gets married or has, you know, some more kind of benchmarks in their life. but what i realized was -- and i'll finish with this. what's happened in this business was many years ago and, todd, forgive me if i've said this in

front of you since we've met recently. many years ago you had the people who were trying to get scoops on the stars and wanted to know about who was having an affair and who had an -- who was pregnant and had an abortion and who is sick and dying and who's gay, who's a closet homosexual and the studios had an obligation and a vested interest in managing the flow of that information. controlling the flow of that information. and they did so, largely, at least compared to now very effectively until one day one guy woke up and said why are we killing ourselves protecting these idiots? these fornicating, drug add led, and they sat there and said, why don't we go the other way and make some money off this. so when i go to work at a movie studio, a major company, i go to work and shoot a film for them and down the hall is a

television program owned by the same company that's trying to cut my throat on tv. that's a very, very new world we live in the last 20 years with these entertainment programs. i sign a contract with the major studio and i've got to go to work. and i'm on that contract we have a writer that is a very lengthy writer of all the press we're obligated to do to promote the film and it's a contractual requirement. and sidesteps some of these people who are just out to, you know, to trip you or trip yourself more likely and just to mock you. it's mockery. we live in this world of mockery and reality shows and people wants to laugh at other people and there's kind of a roman circus to the whole thing. but i think that for me i i guess in the case of the "today" show, i expected more from. >> you don't think it's something that required legal action on your behalf was newsworthy? >> i think it's newsworthy, but the problem is, in my particular

case with that story, which all of the facts will be laid bear soon because the woman who was the focus of this who was stalking me, she's going to go to court, i guess i'm told in may. i was asked by the da's office. they said could you not talk about this in the press? and i said, okay. and i kept my comments to a minimum and when i say to you they're going to have this case is going to come before a judge and i have been fortunate enough -- i will say that i have a -- i have a i don't know how to describe, but i have a tsunami, if you will, e-mails and telephone messages and things from this individual who was the friend of a friend of mine. this is someone who i met through someone else. and met with this person at the request of my friend. my friend said i want you to do

me a favor and meet this person to discuss "x." and the ensuing two years since that meeting, something else evolved. and i have a complete deluge of evidentiary material i've given to the da that discusses what i've put up with. and you can see in this line as it goes, it takes some pretty hair-raising turns. >> are you leaving "30 rock?" >> well, it's funny. no in the sense that the show -- we all signed for six years and i did sign a contract extension for a seventh season because right as i was really sick of it, like for everybody -- for all of us who did the show, we all had the feeling that we were on to something in season one and seasons two, three, and four were great. we got all these prizes and rewards. the ratings have never been great, but the online rating is always very strong for us. dvr and hulu and so forth. millions and millions of people watch the show in the ensuing

seven days after the show online. we're the beneficiaries of that technology. but then we got to season five and season five really didn't feel great. everybody felt pretty crappy after season five, thought maybe we'd run out of gas and when they came to me about doing a seventh season, i guess because of their syndication edicts and so forth, i said no. i was like, please, i want a meteor to hit this building right now because i can't do this another day and say these things again. and then we got through with season five and got into season six and the writing as is often the case with great writers. and i say this without an ounce of politeness or kindness. they are the greatest sitcom writers on television. since the "seinfeld" era, this is it. a lot of sitcom programming is more cute than funny. and there's a whole network who will remain nameless who their

monolithic sitcom lineup is just one frat boy sex joke after another. which works, it's popular. they're printing money over there. but the "30 rock" writers are the smartest, best comedy writers on television bar none in the last seven years. and they took a dip and came back in season six. and we agreed we'd do it for a couple more years. i would have done it next year and the year after that. but the truth of the matter is that nbc is in its predicament and probably need to scrape the paint off the building and start all over again. they've got their pride. they're like anybody else in media, they're competitive and want to win and don't want nbc to stay in this predicament. i'll finish this by saying -- and i mentioned this to someone else. working for nbc was not insignificant in my decision. i did not know tina that well before the show began. i had met her on "saturday night

live." but i had little to do with her because she was the head writer and you didn't interact with her in that way. lorn was the one who asked me to do the television series with tina. but the decision was also a part of -- or a silver lining was to work with nbc, which i think is the greatest of the three networks in the long-term when you look at the stocks of the company. some of the other networks have had great legacies in news and sports and one-hour drama and half hour, but none that compares with nbc. nbc to me really is the greatest network. their olympics coverage, heritage in news was to me equal with their legacy rather because equal to cbs and their comedy lineup was king for a long, long time with "friends" and "seinfeld." they've hit this place now, and we'd like to see them get out of it. i'd like to see nbc get out of the predicament they're in ratings wise. unfortunately, they're probably going to have to cancel most of the shows they have on the air now. >> do y s