July 31, 2017

Trump cuts could kill public broadcasting stations

WRAL - The chief executive for PBS is sounding the alarm about public broadcasting's future if federal funding is axed as called for by President Donald Trump.

"PBS will not go away, but a number of our stations will," CEO Paula Kerger said Sunday. "There is no Plan B for that."

PBS' share of the roughly $450 million in federal funds allocated for public TV and radio goes largely to support public TV stations nationwide, a number of which rely on it for up to 50 percent of their budgets and can't survive without it, Kerger told a TV critics' meeting.

3 comments:

Bill Bolivia said...

Communities need to cut that cord. NPR, at least in large cities, delivers offering quite inferior to what's broadcast on community radio stations (e.g., KPFA, WRFG).

Besides, NPR gives us commercials, right? Who really wants that?

Not I, for one.

Bill

Anonymous said...

It's called a free market. Someone needs to step up and support it or the content will go to other platforms that can. Simple.

Anonymous said...

"PBS will not go away, but a number of our stations will," CEO Paula Kerger said Sunday. There is no Plan B for that."

It might be a good thing if Trump does kill funding.

NPR as it stands is a worthless broadcaster. Its Morning Edition, All Things Considered and some featured programs are champions of the propagandistic, mean, violent, depressing, mawkish, irrelevant, aggravating, boring and stupid.

And its ultra-frequent "support comes from" non_commercial commercials are driving folks to distraction.

We need a method of financing public broadcasting that does not depend upon governmental financing at all. Something like the British tax on tv sets which finances the BBC.