Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceasing operations

If those stations go off the air, who is buying that content?

It's like arguing it doesn't matter if the stream dries up the plants don't get water from the stream, the plants get the water from the ground. Where did that water in the ground come from? The stream!

You're right, these shows aren't going off the air tomorrow. But this does affect the funding for the shows produced by PBS and NPR.

Off the top of my head, two programs I watch that get CPB funding include: Frontline https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/about-us/our-funders/ NOVA https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/funders/

This is one place some sorta "trickle down" economics worked. CPB contributed to developing the content on PBS. Now PBS either has to cut costs by either canceling programs or ordering cheaper content that corporate sponsors like, run more pledge drives, or seek more corporate sponsors. None of those are appealing to me.

Also CPB helps keep rural stations open means all the niche local productions about state history or geology or whatever can happen.

It's a cut to the already strained budget of a wonderful resource. I'd be surprised if there weren't lost jobs and less quality as a result.

Edit to add: Just sentimental but I'll miss hearing "this program was made possible by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions from viewers like you!"

You’ve framed this as if the disappearance of CPB and its money is basically a big nothing-burger, which is extremely far from the truth.

Source: I work in the system at a level with visibility into these things.

I'm just one person, but I definitely am watching the local PBS over an antenna, and so do several members of my family (living in different households).

The local broadcast is excellent quality, I get a good signal to it, never any glitches, and I enjoy the local news and other programming too.

The PBS budget has been cut by 15%, and the NPR budget by 1%. That's not enough to end either one at the national level. However, local stations depend on the CPB funding for 50% or more of their budgets. (Local stations provide local disaster alert systems and local programming.) There will definitely be local station closures and major cutbacks in the stations that survive. Large metropolitan areas will be the least affected. PBS and NPR will continue at the national level, as before.

The funding cuts are the result of an executive order that Trump issued on May 1, ordering the immediate cessation of all federal funding. Similar executive orders have been found to be illegal in federal court. (Congress had already guaranteed funding for CPB from 2025-2027, and only congress can take that money away.)

However, congress supported Trump a short while later (on July 24) by passing the Rescissions Act, which officially (and legally) ended all funding for CPB. And that's the reason for the current crisis: all federal funding for CPB is ending by the end of this year, which is only a few months away.

I’d happily donate some cash to keep PBS’s lights on in red states.

The more important thing is that this is just another tiny step in the death spiral of the United States. Sad to watch.

Purchased using funds from CPB. Most of the grants went to stations, not content producers. But pulling funds from stations will in fact harm the content producers too.

killing this means cutting of swathes of simple, orderly funding. what remains is donations etc, which is far less regular, and requires work to get, and is also easily attackable by presidential fiat.

we already know there's a bunch of actual lunatics in charge of the federal government, with a very wide variety of very stupid hobby horses. they get to ride them now and then, so how about some guesses at future trips:

- IRS starts going after big non-profit donors to public broadcasters, claiming they're in breach of some somewhat arbitrary and subjective rule that's been poorly enforced in the past, I don't know foundation disbursement rate or something, but also nudge nudge wink wink, if you stopped giving to PBS, maybe we'd forget about it

- FEC "clarifies" that promoting non-traditional-sexuality or whatever is political and thus it's illegal for non-profits to fund it, which of course would be an extremely funny turn given how the Right Wing Lunatics Association of America actually couped the country. this could of course be enforced entirely randomly - go after the NPR stations that are loud and annoying, go after the individual donors to them that the regime wants to make an example of.

- Congress passes some law that "clarifies" the purpose of non-profit status or something, to exclude anti-American speech, which is of course a clear abridgment of the 1st amendment, but of course that's fine in 2025 if it targets notional enemies of the regime.

killing this corporation just grants more power to the extremely partisan executive branch and extremely corrupted government and turns ever more of the functioning of the United States in to just expressions of the whims of the supreme leader and his favoured courtiers.

the current deliberate structural destruction of the united states seems underappreciated - every one of these moves turns the country in to more of a Whimocracy and destroys the bedrock of society that let it weather past terrible administrations.

Nixon was a historically horrible president, but the Washington Post fucking took him down. now almost all the big media is owned by Rich Cunts who make a public show of displaying subservience to the Dear Leader.

... unfortunately, they're the ones who need it most, but when in America has bad government policy not hit the poor hardest and first?

They also state that the bulk of CPB funding pays for national NPR and PBS programs, so those will see cuts, too.

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/house-gives-final-appr...

I'm a big fan of PBS, but I wonder if this common stat is misleading. Don't a huge portion of PBS funds come from member stations, which get a portion of their funds from federal funding?

> Rural stations hit hardest

> Up to 18 percent of about 1,000 member stations would close

This is not a fiscal decision. This is a ideology that demonizes the open exchange of ideas and truth.

That's a nice chunk of change, though low enough that a few friendly billionaires could put some pocket change into a trust today and make up for this funding in perpetuity. And there undoubtedly will be a massive surge in donations from small donors in response to this.

As long as the bigger fish are willing to subsidize the smaller rural stations, I don't think there is anything to be afraid of.

The removal of this Sword of Damocles is in my opinion a great thing for PBS and NPR.

ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox/Etc are big corporations that produce (or commission/license, it gets...weird) shows to be distributed on their affiliates, that, depending on the city you are in, can be owned by the network OR another company that operates it like a franchise. Their affiliate agreement governs how much of the network programming they play -- though there are other agreements for non-network programming -- Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune, for example, are syndicated and NOT network.

PBS on the other hand is more of a consortium of public TV stations around the country. Shows that you might think of as "PBS Shows" are actually produced by these individual stations and then distributed to other stations that want them. Even PBS Newshour and Washington Week are produced by WETA in DC.

Radio gets even more complicated. Many of the shows I've seen referenced on this thread aren't even necessarily NPR. Marketplace, for example, is American Public Media, which is sort of an outcropping from Minnesota Public Radio.

So funding going to ACTUAL PBS is a tiny part of this. What happens to the money going to various stations? What happens to the grants to produce and run these stations, especially in rural areas?

Maybe the revolution will be televised after all.

There was a distinct shift to the right at NPR when Obama took office, and by the time he took his second term, NPR News' social media was posting clickbait trash instead of real headlines. "The liberal media" is an irrational boogeyman used to whip ownership in line. Everyone who complains about "bias in the media" is arguing in bad faith while they continue to turn a blind eye to the overwhelmingly dominant conservative slant of the 21st century American media.

It is the rise of media org like Fox news where these kinds of comments have started surfacing. Because for Fox news is more commentary than facts. And then the narrative trick from Fox and other conservative media outlets have constantly pushed an agenda - "others do it too".

It has led to comments like these and this is fine.

> It's Fox, but for the Left

But then when you start adding stuff like this:

> and with a bit more of an intellectual spin. What makes it most annoying is their utter blindness to their own bias. The Fox hosts know that they're taking one side of a story. I've never gotten the impression that any of the NPR hosts are even that self-aware.

It becomes clear you are regurgitating RW talking points and both side-ism. And because Fox is worse, the only saving argument is that Fox at least knows their bias. God help this country if this is level of intellectual spin people can give to reinforce their points.

America and many Americans have lost their way, and have always struggled to get perspective on a topic.

As out outsider looking in, let me be clear.

This IS a travesty, and will be a notable mark in the history books when people look back in 50 or 100 years and ask “how did it happen?”

See: COVID, vaccines, climate change. You have one side explicitly denying what we can do with the scientific method and decades of peer reviewed research, and then blaming anyone who contradicts them as biased sources.

Comparing to Fox News is even more ridiculous. You say that them knowing they're spouting bullshit is better than the people not spouting bullshit at all?

Cmon now. Take the group that is actually trying to engage in good faith rather than the one that is knowingly producing crap. Maybe this is why people voted for Trump: he told them what he is, and they liked the honesty.

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/app.20170300

https://tonicrowewriter.medium.com/did-maga-farmers-believe-...

What does the "public" in "public broadcasting" mean to you?

What does the "public" in public broadcasting mean to you?

It is certainly not programming with much mass market appeal.

Pay attention to how many segments—even that are sort-of connected to an actual news event, which, many aren't—revolve around political strategy, poll numbers, and (in season, which is now like three years out of four) electoral race polling.

It's, like... a lot of them, outside the human-interest and arts coverage stuff. They consistently divert into talking about political media messaging strategy and poll numbers and crap, and they do it so very much that it's got to be something they're doing on purpose. This isn't news reporting, it's lazy, safe (because you don't have to engage with substantive questions of policy and outcomes, nor even questions of fact) horse-race bullshit. It's a complete waste of the listener's time, if they're there for actual news reporting.

On the flip side, though, I'm not seeing a lot of "sink or swim in the market" US media doing much better, so I wouldn't bet on them shifting to anything better (though shift they might).

Why on earth do you think it will be free of interference? Obviously they will find other ways to pressure and censor them. As they have done in many cases already.

I totally support public broadcasting of all stripes, and do not advocate for this POV at all, but ... there are people who claim the opposite. Sesame Street is 'full woke', apparently, because it has talked about skin color and race with muppets.

What many people consider normal... is 'full woke agenda' to others.

I dunno, the Odd Squad has almost as much green screen as a Guardians of the Galaxy movie. If that's not flashy, I dunno. And Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman was pretty out there; a space ghost style host ordering kids around the streets of Boston.

Also, the reboot of CyberChase was pretty clearly on the Ag agenda, all about Organic this and that. Maybe that doesn't count as an Agenda because the department of agriculture was funding it.

Also, Sesame street has always been in the pocket of those letter and number sponsors.

The local stuff though was quite questionable. For example they’d support different causes or efforts by referencing a single poorly supported research paper. Usually those research papers supported some narrative. It could be homelessness, drug treatments, etc., however there was little if any scrutiny of the paper the whole effort or narrative was based on.

They also had annoying presenters like Kai Ryssdahl. He was insufferable but hardly the only one.

Also, despite being a public system, individual comp is high relative to their listeners', I'd say[1]. I'd guess most listeners would not imagine their comp being as high as it is, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Public_Radio

[1] In addition, those at the top enjoy perks like being invited to elite events, and the perks of schmoozing for donations. Those are experiences that are alien to the average listener.

I wasn't very happy with the PBS defunding. One of their best shows was Frontline and the amount of just straight down the middle documentaries they did was great. For a lot of the issues that became very politicized, I would regularly turn to them for an unbiased view of what was going on.

I agree on the educational stuff as well. How many generations of kids grew up watching PBS kids shows? My parents donated regularly and supported PBS the whole time.

Hopefully they can continue, I'm sad to see such a pillar of goodness go away.

https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru...

Do a mental exercise, if they had joined the MAGA loving trump train, would that have saved them?

Now you have your real answer. They're not going to fund anything unless it's a bunch of lackeys

> I have found public broadcasting to be one of the least biased sources of headline news and information available

> kids programming is the absolute best

Fixed that for you:

> I USED TO FIND public broadcasting provided the least biased sources of headline news and information available

> kids programming WAS the absolute best

There is a degree of quasi-political messaging in PBS children's shows. I can say this because I've watched more hours than I'd like of several of them, but I'd like to focus on on Molly Of Denali. It's a good children's show about an inuit girl who lives in Alaska and teaches children general good morals and specifics of inuit and Alaskan culture.

When I say it's political, I mean that it makes points without nuance on historical and current issues which range from widely accepted and important ideas (example: They didn't let Native Alaskan People vote in the past, so it's important to exercise the right to vote now), to what I would consider less widely agreed upon and important ideas, such as it being deeply upsetting and disrespectful for a "white" teacher to call a native child "T", because she had trouble pronouncing his native name. Another example is them introducing the importance of "land acknowledgements" in a children's show. A final example is the "clueless white" trope wherein the offensive rude white visitor has to be educated by the wise natives over and over and over.

I'm not trying to say that any of these examples are "right" or "wrong", but they do represent "politics" in the mind of wide sections of the population.

This said I like the show and of course we need to fund public broadcasting, I would just prefer if we did our best to keep the most controversial stuff for when the kids are a bit older to make it a smaller target for outrage (from the right or left).

The most jarring part, to me personally, is the drastic shift in tone and presentation for injustices with wildly different levels of impact. Perhaps rudely, I think to myself in the voice of the Inuit grandfather from the show "The white man took me from my family, did not allow me to speak my language, beat me and did not allow me to vote, and worst of all...... He did not let me smile in photos"

I don't mean any of this as racist or disrespectful and I hope this is a nuanced comment for consideration and not a kneeejerk reaction or evidence of my subconscious biases run wild.

Can we break this down?

You open with a effectively derogatory accusation about conservatives making things up…which I have no opinion on.

That immediately shows your own likely liberal bias and then you say you saw no problem with the programming.

Isn’t that exactly the issue? That you saw no issue and everyone that disagrees is just wrong?

How do you know? How would you know if CBP’s biases weren’t just your own?

Do you know the arguments against the biases of CPB, NPR, PBS from the people that can make their most effective arguments against those orgs, or do you know the lines of the people that already agree with you?

Jon Stewart Mill’s On Liberty has a great part about this… [It is not enough to know the refutations from your own teachers, you must learn them from the people that present them in their truest form].

All free.

Donate. Recurring is better.

I’m pretty sure that’s the fundamental problem they have with it. They want media whose content they control.

(All of this is about control/power, not making things nice or doing things right.)

I hated Fox News because it's so full of lies. I hated CNN because it's making mountains out of molehills and manufactured outrage. MSNBC was less yellow, but it's still full of opinion shows engineered to make you upset. NPR didn't do that, ever. They'd say when democrats screwed up just as much as when republicans did. It was true.

That’s not true. It just matches your agenda which you feel is no agenda. Of course you are against getting rid of instruments of persuasion that agree with your world view.

In the end it’s better for you too. Government shouldn’t support media.

I just wish Americans saw some of that saved money either in their pocket or public works. But the reality is probably just going to be one more missile shipped to a foreign country.

This was entirely expected and predicted once neoliberalism took hold in the Democratic and Republican parties and began rotting out the central pillars of American Democracy and Empire.

I would say it isn't that our institutions were built on sand, more that its hard to stop a madman who broke into your house with a chainsaw (a la Musk) from knocking down a few load-bearing walls.

It is easier to destroy almost anything than it is to create it in the first place.

These attacks are not unique to the United States; there is a coordinated effort across many countries by public policy groups and private interests. The United States are highly visible due to their ownership of global media, but the Republican party has been pursuing these objectives publicly and clearly for more than 30 years, and has made incremental progress to the point where they were able to re-engineer the Supreme Court and lower courts, as well as elect far right politicians who would tear up the rules to make it happen.

This is the sharp upwards curve of increase in velocity that is the result of sustained accelleration over the last few decades. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better, and not just in the United States.

You should look up which states/regions/counties provide the funding and which states/regions/counties receive the benefits, it's disproportional. Unironically, unbundling HUD, SNAP, and NWS would probably cause famine in Mississippi.

Most frustratingly, many people know how to be properly skeptical. To use Sagan's example, it comes out in full-force any time someone buys a used car. Never trust the dealer. Everybody knows that.

I really appreciate that Sagan refrains from looking down on anyone. It's all too easy to do and I am guilty of it at times. It also leads to a much more useful conversation. Sagan provides hope that we can educate better. Compared to say, Dawkins, who I think has ultimately hurt the cause. Nobody will listen when they feel insulted.

> So sad to see its worst predictions come true.

The most recent bit of the book I read involved James Randi. I was curious about the guy so I did some other reading. Randi gave out an annual "award" called the "Pigasus Award" to fraudsters and similar. Mehmet Oz received the award [1] three times. Now Oz runs Medicaid!

Sadly, we've lost Sagan and Randi. Sometimes it feels like the world has lost any sort of check against gullibility. To paraphrase from the book, many scientists are particularly not equipped to call these scammers out. Scientists wrestle with nature - nature has laws. Trying to call out the Oz's of the world is hard because they don't play by the rules of reason.

---

[0] https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-709

[1] https://www.latimes.com/health/la-xpm-2011-apr-01-la-heb-dr-...

Update: Just confirmed, no. Federal funds only makes up 15% of PBS's funding. [1]

1: https://foundation.pbs.org/ways-to-give/gifts-to-the-pbs-end...

So if that's true, I guess not. If it was actually a mouthpiece, I guess so

It will drastically scale back the funding and coverage of public broadcasters, but they should (hopefully) survive.

That said, they effectively cease being public at this point. And ironically enough, they have no reason anymore to pander to wider audiences so if anything they will become more "left leaning" over time.

Conservatives have wanted to defund public broadcasting for decades. What made it finally possible was that public broadcasting made their bias obvious and undeniable. Over the past 10 years, the stark shift leftward has been undeniable — they became what they’ve been accused of being for a very long time.

However, NPR also receives funding from member station fees, and those member stations typically get about 13% of their budgets from the federal government.

Putting it all together about 10% of NPR's budget comes from the federal government.

For PBS about 15% of their budget comes from the federal government. Some local PBS affiliates, especially in rural areas, get up to 60% of their budgets from the federal government.

I like hearing perspectives on stories that I won’t hear elsewhere but in general, I don’t need very much political news in my life. I’m happier spending my time on audio books and podcasts.

I’m not sure I’ve ever engaged with NPR beyond seeing conservatives mock some of their silliest propaganda headlines in the past few years.

If you've access to streaming media, podcasts, or shortwave, you still do have options.

There are several excellent national broadcasters, with the CBC, BBC, and ABC (Australia) operating in English, or a reasonable facsimile. There are often English-language broadcasts from non-anglophone countries, including France (France-24) and Germany (Deutsche-Welle English service), off the top of my head.

Of course, these will get you international news (and occasionally national stories from the broadcaster's home state), but you're straight outta luck for journalism local to your area. OTOH, NPR and PBS have struggled to deliver that (as has commercial news media) for the past decade or two.

If you've always wanted to learn a foreign language but never quite had the inspiration to do so, a further option is to start listening to non-anglophone country's native programming, whether broadcast (shortwave or Internet streaming) or podcast. There are many excellent options. I'm particularly fond of German radio's programming (Deutschlandfunk and its variants, the federated public broadcasting model might offer some lessons and learnings to PBS and NPR going forward), though there are others on top of that.

I round things out with text-based news, typically major newspapers (e.g., NYTimes, Guardian), or newswires (Reuters is pretty good).

But yes, the state of streaming / OTA / linear-programmed news media in the US is absolutely abysmal.

Why do you think that? Do you imagine that the individuals and institutions pushing the idea that the media is untrustworthy will suddenly stop pushing their agenda?

Public libraries do already exist and they are labeled "woke" and "socialist" and are dealing with both assaults on their funding and on their function.