Hopefully, Republicans Will Save the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Again

Hopefully, Republicans Will Save the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Again

A lot of rural radio and TV stations are partly funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  These stations bring continuing education of high entertainment and information content to the public, including the rural listeners and viewers.  CPB stations reach 95% of Americans.  That includes a lot of rural voters who Republicans depend upon.  By charter, the 50-year-old CPB system, is politically neutral, and demands a balanced representation.

The 2014 CPB budget was $445.5 million dollars.  Straight half goes to supporting local public TV, or $222.8 million.  $69.3 million goes to local public radio.  The CPB supports 1,418 stations, on average, contributing a half of their budgets, the rest being privately funded.  The above figures are from Wikipedia.  Below we concentrate on rural stations.

Of the 577 station grantees in 2014, 219, or 38%, are rural.  60 are public TV stations, and 159 are public radio stations.  CPB spent $94 million, or 21%, at these rural stations.  Rural stations raised $4 for every $1 of CPB seed funding.  CPB funding was 18% on average of the funding of these rural stations.  Of these stations, 102 relied on CPB for 25% of their funding.  The above figures are from cpb.org.

When rural Republicans are reminded every two years about where CPB money goes, they have kept the corporation.  For comparison of the $69 million going to local public radio, the cost of an Osprey VTOL aircraft is $72 million dollars, and we are procuring 408 of them.

 

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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