Public Broadcasting Targeted By House
A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government's financial support for public broadcasting, including eliminating taxpayer funds that help underwrite such popular children's educational programs as "Sesame Street," "Reading Rainbow," "Arthur" and "Postcards From Buster."In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- which passes federal funds to public broadcasters -- starting with a 25 percent reduction in CPB's budget for next year, from $400 million to $300 million.
In all, the cuts would represent the most drastic cutback of public broadcasting since Congress created the nonprofit CPB in 1967. The CPB funds are particularly important for small TV and radio stations and account for about 15 percent of the public broadcasting industry's total revenue. . . .
"[A]mericans overwhelmingly see public broadcasting as an unbiased information source," Rep. David Obey (Wis.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said in a statement. "Perhaps that's what the GOP finds so offensive about it. Republican leaders are trying to bring every facet of the federal government under their control. . . . Now they are trying to put their ideological stamp on public broadcasting."
Assholes. Details here from The Washington Post. Or you can write to your Representative here.
Comments
If this Washington Post article is carefully read, you will notice this sentence, "Broadcasters noted, for example, that the 25 percent cutback in next year's CPB budget was a rollback of money that Congress had promised in 2004." Also, "The CPB funds ... account for about 15 percent of the public broadcasting industry's total revenue." So the House sub-committee (17 people) didn't recommend cutting the CPB's budget by 25%, they recommended not increasing the CPB's budget by 33%. Eighty-five percent of the public broadcasting industry's revenue comes from sources other than the CPB. And, If 23.4 million is really being cut from children's programming, that is about a $460,000 reduction per each of the 50 states and DC. I would hope corporate sponsors and wealthy patrons could make up the difference. With all the alarm after reading this article, I wonder if anybody got past the headline!
Leslie Storer
Posted by: Leslie Storer | June 19, 2005 1:58 PM