The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has developed a new means of financing a portion of PBS' national programing--the "Station Program Cooperative" (SPC). Established in April 1974, the SPC is the product of a multifaceted attack on three critical and interrelated problems: (1) an increasing scarcity of funds for national programing; (2) a need for long-range financing for public broadcasting; and (3) political opposition to a centrally administered public television system. The SPC provides a mechanism for the nation's public television stations to select desired programs from a pool of available offerings, thus dimishing central control of national program selection. By sharing the production costs of the programs they select, the SPC taps a new source of funding for national programs, thereby providing programing that might otherwise be unavailable. And finally, by addressing itself to the problems of political opposition to a centrally administered system and developing a strategy for internal economic stability, the SPC indirectly addresses the problem of long-range financing. (LL)