Pre-P.S.: Just as I was finishing up this post, I learned that the House voted not to cut $100 million from the CPB. Is it coincidence that this happens within hours of the appointment of the new CPB CEO?
I’m kind of immersed in the non-commercial radio world, at the intersection of public, community and underground. Right now it feels like people are losing their minds over the current threat to CPB funding from Congress and the reign of loyal Bush company man Tomlinson heading up the CPB board pushing whatever cash is left to the right.
The panic is real, and I think pretty justified, even if I’m too jaded to get panicked myself.
Our local, and excellent, news/talk public radio station has already just announced that it is dropping affiliation with American Public Media, and therefore losing several programs, including Prairie Home Companion, Sound Money, As It Happens and The Writer’s Almanac. Personally, I will most miss the CBC’s As It Happens, since it gives me a nice dose of Canadian perspective along with news about our friends north of the border that I would never get on any US news source.
A big cut from the CPB would likely threaten more national programs, and their ability to retain staff.
A massive CPB funding reduction would also hit my local community station, but less severely, and in a more targeted way. WEFT gets a grant from the CPB to pay for syndicated programming, and most of WEFT’s syndicated programming is news and public affairs, like Free Speech Radio News and Democracy Now.
WEFT gets 15 grand a year from the CPB, which isn’t chump change for a non-commercial community station. Losing that would force the station to scramble in order to keep these syndicated programs.
On top of that, a CPB hit would also affect the production of programs like FSRN and DN, which also receive some level of funding.
I say I’m a bit jaded, because it all looks like a big Republican gambit to capture public broadcasting, rather than simply kill it. Installing a right-wing crony at the head of the board of directors with an administration mouthpiece as CEO, it looks to me that the Republicans saw that an outright Gingrichian attack on public broadcasting would be less effective than simply taking it over.
I wonder if the plan isn’t to launch the funding threat from Congress, only to have Tomlinson and the new CEO swoop in and save the day by “convincing” their Republican House cronies to scale back the cuts.
It’s all about the managing of expectations. When you threaten
$100 million in cuts, with the plan to totally defund over the course of a few years, then it’s easier to get the public to accept a lower cut, say $25 or $50 million, as more reasonable.
And then Tomlinson and his new lieutenant Patricia S. Harrison can say, “See, we’re trying to save public broadcasting. We got Congress to back off.”
However, even if this is all spectacle, they’re playing with real bullets, and defunding public media, while it could be a bluff, is a big bluff.
Of course the media reform juggernaut has launched into full action to oppose the attack on public broadcasting, and that’s a good thing. I am glad to hear that our local Republican Rep. Tim Johnson opposes the cuts. He’s certainly not my favorite, but he also knows that his district is a public and community media loving one.
I sure as hell don’t want to see CPB funding go away. While I have real concerns with the institution of the CPB, how its funded and how it operates, I also believe that we need a rich, funded public and community media. Public media in the US is definitely a compromise that was intended to help justify the strip-mining of airwaves by the corporate broadcasters, but public media is necessary and vital, nevertheless.
I would prefer a truly independent CPB receiving its funding not directly from Congress but directly from the monies collected from spectrum sales. Every penny that comes from the impending auction of analog TV spectrum ought to to directly to public broadcasting, without impediment and without strings.
And, yet, I’m also glad that my local community station survives with very little CPB funding, making the station somewhat more immune from these right-wing fiduciary attacks. It does mean that the station is much more dependent on community donations, and because this is a small community, the station doesn’t have as big of a budget or staff as the public station or community stations in bigger cities.
But the independence means that a CPB cut will only be a flesh wound, and perhaps motivate listeners to pony up a bit more to keep the syndicated programming.
Government funding is not so different than corporate funding — it’s always a bargain with the devil.