I'm not so sure. Has, say, npr, not always leaned left even during R administrations?
Despite NPR's reputation, many on the left are increasingly distrustful and critical of them, while many listeners on the right seem to prefer their talk shows to be full of yelling. I'm not sure the relentlessly centrist strategy is working for them.
And in some ways, it's unnecessary. Thanks to endowments and listener contributions, NPR could drop government money without major impact. Public funding is a small part of their budget.
Turns out corporations give them a lot of money too.
[0] http://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances
> "According to CPB, in 2009 11.3% of the aggregate revenues of all public radio broadcasting stations were funded from federal sources, principally through CPB; in 2012 10.9% of the revenues for Public Radio came from federal sources."
It appears approximately 10% of NPR funding is from the US government. That's a decent chunk, but not enough to hold sway if it goes against the majority of their donors.
Contrast that with a services like the BBC and RT which are almost all funded by taxpayer money:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#Finances
> "According to the BBC's 2013/14 Annual Report, its total income was £5 billion (£5.066 billion),[2] which can be broken down as follows:
* £3.726 billion in licence fees collected from householders; * £1.023 billion from the BBC's commercial businesses; * £244.6 million from government grants, of which £238.5 million is from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for the BBC World Service; * £72.1 million from other income, such as rental collections and royalties from overseas broadcasts of programming. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)#Budget
"When it was established in 2005, ANO TV-Novosti invested $30 million in start-up costs to establish RT,[14] with a budget of $30 million for its first year of operation. Half of the network's budget came from the Russian government; the other half came from pro-Kremlin commercial banks at the government's request."
"About 80 percent of RT's costs are incurred outside Russia, paying partner networks around $260 million for the distribution of its channels in 2014."
"In 2015, RT was expected to receive 19 billion rubles ($307 million) from the Russian government in 2016."