I’m going to miss Masterpiece Theatre if that doesn’t survive this move. I watch several of those shows.
My local Public Radio station was already not getting any funding from CPB – due to some financial mismanagement by their previous manager they haven’t been eligible for CPB funding for the past few years. So they already went through the painful cutbacks a few years ago. The laid off 10% of their staff (including their music director), canceled all their music related shows, and been trying to focus more on local news / culture.
PragerU to step in to producing content for Public Broadcasting:
In one video, one of the Founding Fathers, John Adams, is caught quoting Ben Shapiro, conservative pundit on the internet.
Stranger
Didn’t we already try that with TrumpTV?
I’m glad that Netflix is jumping in to save the Street.
Just to note, because that article doesn’t do a good job of explaining it: in 2015, Sesame Workshop signed a deal with HBO to help fund production of new episodes; as part of that deal, the new episodes were initially running only on HBO Max, before being made available to PBS.
Warner Bros. Discovery (the parent company of HBO) announced at the end of last year that they weren’t renewing that deal; the announcement in your link (from a couple of months ago now) is for Sesame Workshop’s new partner, Netflix.
This article from March indicates that only 4% of Sesame Workshop’s funding came from the federal government.
I have no memories of CPB, I’ve never interacted with the organization.
Much of what I’ve watched or listened to in the past was funded partially through them, but AFAIK for the most part any of those programs that are still on the air that I consume will carry on, they’ll just need more donations now.
(I donate every month to the local NPR station here via subscription, and have done so for over a year now. It’s worth it to me.)
Most of what the CPB does is to provide grants to local public radio and television stations so it’s not really something individuals interact with. (I think its other big role is providing grants for productions.)
The New York Times reported on some really rural public radio stations in Alaska, where these stations are the only ones available. The Times also reported on the the ending of the public television program American Experience, which funded and broadcast documentaries. According to the article, it was the most expensive program on public television.
Exactly, and as noted earlier in the thread (which was weeks ago now), this is where things will disproportionately damage the stations in smaller markets and rural areas, like the ones in Alaska which you mention.
PBS and NPR stations in big markets likely only got a small proportion of their operating funds from the CPB; they’ll have to tighten their belts, hit up their viewers and listeners harder for donations, and do the same for corporate sponsors (though it wouldn’t surprise me if some corporate sponsors back off from supporting public stations, due to fear of reprisals from the Trump administration), but at least for now, those stations are likely to survive, until Trump finds another way to try to shut them down.
The smaller stations, OTOH, were likely far more dependent on the CPB. With smaller viewer/listener bases from which to draw donation support, and likely fewer options for corporate sponsors in their operating areas, those are the ones that are going to be scaling back massively, if not shutting down outright.