When Republican lawmakers moved last year to end taxpayer funding for PBS and NPR, a constellation of media CEOs and experts warned that the cuts would result in the closure of dozens, possibly hundreds, of affiliate stations.
It has been nearly seven months since President Trump signed the bill eliminating $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the predicted newsroom Armageddon has yet to materialize.
In fact, of the more than 1,000 television and radio stations that make up the country’s public media system, only one has closed since the CPB was defunded. A second closure is expected later this year.
This is odd.
They told us the budget cuts would kill us all. No, wait. Sorry. That was net neutrality. The cuts to the CPB, whose chief purpose was to funnel taxpayer dollars into public media, were supposed to trigger a media “apocalypse.” Experts and the brass at PBS and NPR repeatedly warned that a loss of public funding would force affiliate stations nationwide to shut down, depriving rural Americans of crucial programming such as All Things Considered and 800-plus-word reports on the racially problematic legacy of the thumbs-up emoji.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member