We Can Save Public Radio and Television
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As a kid, my PBS station was the now-defunct KNCT, which served most of the Central Texas region.
I attended four or five different elementary schools in Waco, Harker Heights, Killeen, and Fort Cavazos (then known as Fort Hood), which, as you might imagine, ain’t great for stability.
Moving around a lot was tough. It was hard to make friends, hard to build community, hard to feel secure. The first twelve years of my life always had the fear of things being yanked away suddenly.
But there was never a fear of losing PBS.
Even with the scarcity all around me—food and clothes and basic school supplies and whatever the hell else that had my mother stressed all the time—it never once occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to watch Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Reading Rainbow and Bill Nye the Science Guy and Sesame Street and Arthur and The Magic School Bus, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
No matter where I lived, I knew this was guaranteed because after moving into a new place, we’d plug in our old box television, adjust the shitty little antenna just so, and voila, like magic, there was PBS.
It was free.
If the electric bill had been paid, I knew I could count on LeVar Burton giving me the skinny on his latest favorite books. I knew I’d get to see Bill Nye give his delightful, wacky rundowns on basic physics. I knew Ms. Frizzle would be eager me up into space or down into the human blood stream.
As I got a bit older, being a precocious little shit and interested in politics, I’d watch the adult programs: The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Washington Week, Firing Line (with William F. Buckley, Jr.), and Frontline (with Bill Moyers).
I didn’t understand most of what I was watching, but that didn’t matter. It was fascinating, and it was free. It challenged me, and I liked being challenged. I needed to be challenged at that age in that home environment. It was an escape and a reminder that there was a whole world outside of our fraught situation.
I didn’t have two nickels to rub together during most of my early childhood, but some of the world’s best television programming was available to me for free.
Back in May, Trump signed an executive order forcing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to halt funding to PBS and National Public Radio (NPR).
In June, the House passed the Rescissions Act by two votes; in July, the Senate passed it by three votes; and nine days ago, Trump signed it into law, formally ending all federal funding for CPB, about $1.1 billion.
Yesterday, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it will be shutting down operations after nearly 60 years of serving the American people with high quality journalism, educational and cultural programming, and emergency communications.
PBS is the hardest hit of the two. The CBP accounts for about 15 percent of its overall funding, which may not seem devastating at first glance, but most of that went to keeping 330 of its local stations nationwide afloat.
So, while national programming—such as NewsHour, Frontline, etc.—will continue, the vast majority of local stations will take take some degree of a hit in funding, many of them likely closing down or having to significantly scale back programming.
How that will play out over the next several years is especially worrisome — if philanthropists and grassroots donors don’t step up to fill the gap, how fast will the problem metastasize?
NPR’s national budget is comparatively in a much stronger position: no more than two percent comes from CBP funding. Thus, national programming will take a very small hit.
But most of the more than 1,000 NPR member and affiliate stations nationwide—and upwards of 1,400 public radio stations total who received CBP grants—will see some belt tightening and at least 80 of them are in danger of closing within the next year, mostly in rural areas.
This is not an overnight problem for public radio and television. You’re not gonna wake up tomorrow to find your local NPR or PBS member station have gone off-air, but it is a slow burning problem with permanent consequences if left unaddressed.
We’re gonna have to step up here. All of us who love public radio and television can rally to save these stations. This is a fixable problem but only if we come together to support this essential network of public broadcasting.
If we can spend the next several years making up this gap and win back the White House and Congress in 2028, there’s no reason why the Corporation for Public Broadcasting can’t be restored.
I know, I know, it’s probably painful to try looking that far ahead. It feels impossibly far away and a lifetime of obstacles and disappointments before then.
But imagine when we look back on this moment with great pride in how local communities across the country stepped up to save our member stations, refusing to give Trump and the GOP exactly what they want: the elimination of essential, honest journalism that educates the public in good faith.
Go here to look up your PBS member station: https://www.pbs.org/stations/
Go here to look up your NPR member station: https://www.npr.org/stations/
Make a donation. Get your friends and family to make a donation.
Show this administration that their fascist tactics against public broadcasting will not work because the public won’t let it.
Think about the kids in rural areas across the country who will remember when a bunch of adults they don’t know made sure they would have access to this programming and prioritize essential journalism and ensure emergency communications were saved for vast swaths of the nation.
We can do this. I know we can.