Corporation for Public Broadcasting to shut down following Trump budget cuts ~ Share your memories!

Politics & Elections
1

Over in The Trump Administration: The Clusterfuck Continues thread, I posted bit of news.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced on Aug. 1 that it was starting an “orderly wind-down of its operations” weeks after Congress passed a measure that clawed back more than $1 billion in funds to the organization.

The announcement came a day after U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said the Senate Appropriations Committee hadn’t included funding for the corporation in its fiscal 2026 spending bill.

“It is a shameful reality, and now communities across the country will suffer the consequences as over 1,500 stations lose critical funding," Murray said, according to The Hill.

The corporation has said more than 70% of its federal funding, which it disperses to NPR and PBS, goes to local public media stations. PBS advocates previously told USA TODAY the budget cuts would disproportionately affect rural areas.

President Donald Trump called for the outlets’ federal funding to be pulled in May, saying “neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”

In that link is this

“Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,” Corporation for Public Broadcasting President and CEO Patricia Harrison said. “We are deeply grateful to our partners across the system for their resilience, leadership, and unwavering dedication to serving the American people.”

Personally, I am grateful to public broadcasting for bringing into American homes quite a number of excellent programs. Let’s post here what shows you have appreciated and how the mere presence of public broadcasting affected your life since the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was founded on November 7, 1967. I will start out with the obvious ones.

  • Sesame Street. You have to have been living under a rock on Pluto to not know about this show and how it has helped American children enjoy learning their letters and numbers, among other things. Personally, my favorite character is Count von Count. He still is and my childhood days are long past.
  • Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. See above about Plutonian mineral congretate shielding. This show was aimed at preschoolers, but people of all ages enjoyed it. Mister Rogers even testified before congress; his testimony being credited with securing PBS for quite some time.
  • Reading Rainbow. Got children to love reading.
  • All Things Considered. I’ll quote the first part of that wiki article:

Go ahead and add your personal choices and memories here. If you are now living outside the United States or have lived outside the United States, add your personal choicces and memories relating to your country’s version of Public Broadcasting. For example, I was stationed in Japan for five and half years and was very appreciative of Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK.

  • NHK General TV and NHK Educational TV. Both of these stations helped me have an excellent time living in Japan. I was an avid viewer of NHK Educational TV’s Go and Shogi programs. Odd thing was NHK Educational also aired ALF in English with Japanese subtitles. NHK General TV brought me a number of shows of course.

I think this is the correct place to post this thread. I’m reporting it myself to bring it to the mods’/admins’ attention and relocation if needed.

2

NPR apparently intends to keep going.

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/01/nx-s1-5489808/cpb-shut-down-public-broadcasting-trump

**“**The ripple effects of this closure will be felt across every public media organization and, more importantly, in every community across the country that relies on public broadcasting,” NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher said in a statement.

She said NPR would respond by “stepping up to support locally owned, nonprofit public radio stations and local journalism across the country, working to maintain public media’s promise of universal service, and upholding the highest standards for independent journalism and cultural programming in service of our nation.” The network has pledged to take $8 million from its budget to help local stations in crisis

3

Car Talk was a favorite of mine, as was A Prairie Home Companion.

4

I’ll contribute more to them now in order to allow them to stick it to Trump and take the gloves off. They can show him and this country what old style straight political reporting really should be.

5

There was a special episode of Sesame Street that aired when I was a kid, that took place during a pledge drive.

We looked forward to two things: The special extended version of “Put Down the Duckie” with celebrities such as our favorite, Pee-Wee Herman (and people our parents knew such as Rhea Perlman and Danny DeVito, and some of the members of the 1980s New York Giants).

The second thing was that our parents had donated to PBS that year, and our names got put on Big Bird Feathers. They videotaped the special for us, and Ellie and I were the last two names called (in that order, I specifically remember for some reason).

6

One of the first things an autocrat does is shut down media that won’t bend a knee to them. Since the Corp for Public Broadcasting tells the news like it is, Trump doesn’t want it around. It’s as simple as that. Assuming the Democrats ever take control of Congress and the Presidency, it will likely be too late to put it back the way it was before Trumpism.

7

I thought the thread title must be some misunderstanding or exaggeration, but it isn’t. I guess nothing in the Trump world should surprise me any more.

Public broadcasting is essential to an informed public and thus a vibrant democracy. Here is where funding for public broadcasting in the US was before the MAGAts totally obliterated it. Going forward, it won’t even register on the chart any more. Neither will any concept of democracy in America.

8

This, exactly. Trump and his minions have been laser-focused on controlling all outlets of news media. This is just the most blatant.

I watch and have watched CPB/NPR/PBS programming almost exclusively. I’ll miss everything about it, if it isn’t saved somehow. I contribute a lot and will continue to do so.

9

SOOOOO many great memories of Sesame Street. I think it first started a couple years before I was born (1970). My sisters were already too old for it, but I was mesmerized. “I Love Trash” was the first song I learned and sang it all over the house all the time.

I remember the episode where the real life actor Mr. Hooper (Blooper, Dooper, etc., via Big Bird) died and they focused on explaining death to Big Bird who was just so confused by the whole situation. It helped when my grandparents passed.

All the characters, the jokes, stories— my mom loved watching it too.

Anyone who says anything negative about the show is a total effing jackass.

10

Just contributed. I appreciate news with good analysis.

11

Similarly, it appears that PBS is not going to be going away, either, though they, like NPR, are losing the funding which they received from CPB.

For both NPR and PBS, it appears that the loss of CPB and its funding will disproportionately affect the stations and regional networks in smaller markets and rural areas. A PBS or NPR station in a big market, like a Chicago or Los Angeles, will likely keep soldiering on, as they likely have sufficient funding from donors and corporate sponsors for now, even though they may need to tighten their belts. The smaller stations, on the other hand, may not even be able to keep the lights on.

12

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the majority of rurarl voters and even the majority of rural counties go red in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections?

13

You are almost undoubtedly correct. Such voters might well also say, “yeah, I don’t listen to that lefty NPR station, and I don’t watch PBS, so who cares?”

14

Yeah, right. They listen to those stations, especially for emergency weather alerts. You know weather, right, that stuff farmers need to be very concerned about.

15

I’m not particularly convinced that rural MAGA voters, even farmers, are listening to their local NPR stations very often, even for weather news; if they’re listening to radio, I’d suspect that they’re listening to a conservative talk station, or a religious station. (And, for weather alerts, they have their phones, and NOAA weather radios, at least until Trump shuts that down, too.)

16

It’s actually in the playbook.

Although rural areas tend to be predominately politically ‘red’, farmers are necessarily pragmatic with regard to policies and information about weather even if they are ideologically inclined to be socially conservative. As a group, they are also one of the biggest ones about to be bent over spread eagled with tariffs, immigration raids attacking their labor pool, and getting no help from a USDA that is being quietly but thoroughly gutted, eliminating resources for predicting farming conditions and tracking pest hazards.

Stranger

17

Not to mention that Trump and Kennedy want HFCS replaced by sugar, so there goes another market for corn. How many American farmers grow sugar cane?

18

You can also make sucrose from sugar beets, more conducive to the climate in most of america than the tropic-loving sugarcane.

19

When I was a pre-schooler, Susan from Sesame Street made an appearance in my area. She autographed my Sesame Street album, which meant a lot! (Wikipedia tells me she is now 86.)

Who would have thought that Oscar the Grouch would be out-grouched by an occupant of the White House.

20

America must import about 3 million metric tons of sugar yearly to meet the demand for consumption. In 2019/2020, there was an all-time high amount imported at 3.38 million metric tons of sugar.

Stranger