Who Will Save Public Media?

 Washington Monthly -  This summer, after decades of failed attempts to eliminate federal funding of public media, conservative critics and Republican lawmakers ended support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the non-profit created by Congress in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. Driven by the same political dynamics, some states have made similar cuts. The outlook for local public broadcasting has never seemed as dire as in the past few months. 

Just last week, WNET—the New York-based parent of PBS stations Thirteen and WLIW—announced it will not renew its operating agreement to manage New Jersey PBS, citing steep state and federal funding cuts. 

At the same time, support for public media through philanthropy has never been stronger. Locally, many stations have experienced a rise in donor contributions, sometimes compensating for the loss of CPB resources with viewer and listener support just in the first week after the cuts in Washington. 

Although the massive wave of federal funding cuts may sometimes seem insurmountable for private donors to offset, cuts to public broadcasting are not so severe that private philanthropy cannot overcome them. 

In the wake of the elimination of the CPB, foundations have come together to support the creation of the Public Media Bridge Fund, a pooled fund led by the Public Media Company, with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and a growing list of allied supporters, including The Schmidt Family Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, among others. And this effort is only one example of the philanthropic response, with a powerful spike in audience giving immediately after the cuts occurred in July.  MORE