Posted on 12/02/2016 11:23:35 AM PST by Drango
The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States promises sweeping change in Washington, D.C., and members of the public broadcasting community are naturally asking what that may mean for us.
Let’s start with what hasn’t changed.
Three powerful congressional chairmen who support public broadcasting will continue in their key roles in both the House and Senate.
Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), a champion of public broadcasting since his father served as chairman of the Mississippi Public Broadcasting Commission in the 1960s, continues as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who has helped us secure funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Ready To Learn and our updated interconnection system, continues as chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, which oversees funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who accepted the America’s Public Television Stations’ Champion of Public Broadcasting award at the Public Media Summit earlier this year and has been an effective advocate for our federal funding, continues to lead the House Appropriations subcommittee on Labor-HHS-Education.
In addition, the Republican majorities in Congress will retain the same leaders.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) continues as majority leader, though with a slightly smaller 52–48 majority following the Nov. 8 general elections in which Senate Democrats picked up two seats. McConnell is an admirer of Kentucky Educational Television and its commitment to lifelong learning and civic leadership in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, who proposed eliminating CPB funding in his earlier role as chair of the House Budget Committee, speaks at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. APTS has been working to persuade Ryan that modest federal investments in public media yields large dividends for education and public safety. (Photo: Gage Skidmore) Rep. Paul Ryan speaks at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. (Photo: Gage Skidmore, via Flickr/Creative Commons) Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will be re-elected speaker of the House, and he too will have a slightly reduced majority next year.
In his earlier role as chairman of the House Budget Committee, Ryan proposed to eliminate funding for public broadcasting. We at APTS have been working to persuade him that the very modest investment the federal government makes in public broadcasting (0.01 percent of the federal budget) pays very large dividends in the essential fields of education, public safety and civic leadership. The return on investment provided by local stations is a demonstrable record that should appeal to the most diligent watchdog of the public treasury.
Support crosses ideological spectrum
Just such proof converted Vice President-elect Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who was a critic of federal funding for public broadcasting during his service in the House of Representatives. As governor of Indiana he concluded that public television provides a high-quality, cost-effective solution to early-childhood education for the children of the Hoosier State, and in 2013 he became the first Indiana governor in eight years to propose a public investment in public broadcasting. Since the state provided $1.56 million in fiscal 2013, Indiana’s annual funding for public broadcasting has more than doubled, to $3.56 million in FY 2017. APTS honored Pence as a Champion of Public Broadcasting at the 2014 Public Media Summit.
As APTS has sharpened its focus on public television’s service missions of education, public safety and civic leadership, bipartisan support in Congress has grown consistently across the ideological spectrum.
Indiana Governor and Vice President-elect Mike Pence speaks at a campaign rally in September. Earlier in his tenure as governor, Pence was honored by APTS as a ‘Champion of Public Broadcasting’ because he restored and increased state funding of public broadcasters in Indiana. (Photo: Gage Skidmore) Vice President-elect Mike Pence speaks at a campaign rally in September. (Photo: Gage Skidmore) Erstwhile conservative critics have been especially impressed with our emphasis on public safety, including our commitment to support the FirstNet national emergency communications system and our strategic partnership for public safety datacasting with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In addition, a growing number of successful local pilots are demonstrating the abilities of public television stations to significantly enhance emergency communications in rural, suburban and urban America.
Our long-honored role in education, including the work that PBS and stations have done to prepare 90 million preschool kids to succeed in school and in life, has been significantly enhanced in recent years by the introduction of PBS LearningMedia. This service has created more than 100,000 interactive digital learning objects from the best of public television programming — plus excellent resource material from the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and other sources. All of this enables nearly 2 million teachers and 40 million K–12 students (including tens of thousands of home-schoolers) to enrich their classroom experience every day — for free.
Public television stations like WHRO in Hampton Roads, Va., bring world-class teachers and specialty subjects to rural communities through “virtual high school” courses. Kentucky Educational Television serves as the largest nonprofit GED education program in America. And led by the groundbreaking work of VegasPBS, public television stations increasingly provide video coursework and other support for job-training initiatives that place more than 90 percent of their graduates in steady employment.
Public television’s role in civic leadership encompasses everything from stations that serve as the C-SPANs of their state governments to those that host candidate debates at every level of the ballot. Our stations produce the most trusted and civil public affairs programs on television, create documentaries on local history and culture, and reach everybody everywhere with the finest educational and cultural programming available — again, for free — without regard for commercial considerations.
These services are especially important — and especially valued — in America’s heartland, whose citizens clearly expressed themselves in the elections that just concluded. Even before the general election, congressional leaders embraced “evidence-based policymaking” on a bipartisan basis. Speaker Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the new Senate assistant Democratic leader, co-chair a commission on the subject. Under this framework, public television’s impressive return on public investments should be increasingly valuable to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Capitol.
APTS has also made a successful case with the nation’s governors and state lawmakers — most of them Republicans — who increased state funding for public broadcasting by a collective 8 percent from FY 2016 to FY 2017.
What has changed on the Hill is the chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee and the leadership of the Senate Democrats.
Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) is expected to succeed Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) as Appropriations chairman. Frelinghuysen is a friend of public broadcasting, as is the retiring chairman, whose support for our cause in these past critical years has been enormously important.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is the new Democratic leader of the Senate. Also a consistent supporter of public broadcasting and a skilled legislator, Schumer should be an effective champion of our cause, along with Democratic Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), a 2015 Champion of Public Broadcasting.
Known unknowns
The most profound leadership change in Washington is in the White House. For now, we do not know what the new president intends for public broadcasting. There was no discussion of federal support of public broadcasting during the presidential campaign. The platform adopted at the Republican National Convention this summer made no reference to it.
We do know that many Republican presidents, going back to Dwight Eisenhower, have supported our work.
President Eisenhower proposed the first federal funding for public television as part of the National Defense Education Act of 1958. President Ford proposed the advanced-funding mechanism for CPB’s annual appropriation, which shields program decision-making from political influence.
Americans of every political persuasion strongly favor federal funding for public broadcasting, and they rank it as the best investment the federal government makes, after only national defense. After initially proposing to eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting, President Reagan ultimately decided that federal funding effectively “primes the pump” for other substantial private-sector investments in public media and is an appropriate role for the government.
In the last Republican administration, President George W. Bush proposed the elimination of CPB funding. But over the course of his two terms in the White House, including four years with Republican majorities in Congress, our funding actually increased.
Looking beyond the White House and Capitol Hill, Republican members of the Federal Communications Commission have been consistently sympathetic to broadcasters’ interests. We are confident that they will continue to support our work in a new majority.
At this early stage in the transition, there are many other positions of government leadership yet to be filled that will have important bearing public broadcasting’s future. These include the appointment of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education and Steve Mnuchin as Treasury secretary, as well as yet-to-be-named nominees to lead the departments of Homeland Security and Commerce and to administrative positions such as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. President-elect Trump’s appointments for each of these key posts, as well as to his White House staff, will influence our work.
Also largely unknown are the legislative strategies the new president and the congressional leadership will pursue to redirect important national policies for taxation, spending, regulations, trade, health care and infrastructural investments — and how those strategies may affect our funding.
What we do know is this: Americans of every political persuasion strongly favor federal funding for public broadcasting, and they rank it as the best investment the federal government makes, after only national defense.
They do so not only because of the fine educational programming we provide at the national level, but also because locally owned and operated public television and radio stations have proven to be effective dedicated partners in providing essential services to all Americans everywhere.
APTS looks forward to working with the leaders of the new Washington in pursuing these missions of education, public safety and civic leadership. We all know these are the keys to our country’s future success.
Sigh, time to defund the left. Actually cut their budget 5% a year for 4 years. Starve the beast.
Rather disgusting overview of RINOS, looking to dig in our pockets NPR survives because of them.
Will never happen with RINOs running Congress.
NPR has useful programming BUT its dabbling in politics and propaganda must come to an end. If not, defund the tricksters and send them down the road.
DEFUND CPB and its branches. This would be a great first step by Trump to stop the subsidized flow of liberal propaganda.
We have a $20 trillion national debt that urgently needs to be reduced. Every little bit helps.
Let the rich liberals pay for their own programming.
“dabbling in politics and propaganda”?
NPR was non-stop Trump bashing throughout the election. My wife likes to listen to that crap and it got to the point that I made her turn it off whenever I was in the same room. The fact that my tax dollars go to fund that garbage is unacceptable.
I don’t care what Rinos think they’re in charge of, I want NPR de-funded on day one.
NPR has useful programming
*************
Let those who view it pay for it if they want it.
The Christian Broadcasting Network, Discovery, History and Fishing channels all have “useful programming.” NONE of them, especially leftist NPR, should get any our tax money. NPR stations should really become “listener supported.” If it means continual money begging pledge drives and selling more “public announcements” to the movie industry and Starbucks, so be it.
PBS used to be classical music and a few good shows. Now it’s all left-wing propaganda, all the time. And I HATE those voices. I never listen to it, but sometimes I pass by someone who is, and there’s no mistaking it. Idiots.
I want NPR de-funded on day one.>>>>>>>
Hey, no problem. All I listen too is their gardening shows.
But the Trump bashing and running political leftist twink pieces? That could easily be stopped.
But I suppose we can toss the whole lot out.I really don’t care at this point.
NPR stations are some of the wealthiest stations in the country. They do not need government money. If you defund them altogether they would be just fine.
NPR's "useful" programming can go on other networks. Defund NPR.
Stop funding them and let them survive off advertisers as do most other stations....
I would wager that the vast majority of people in red states never listen to the leftist dribble on NPR/PBS.
Defunding is an opportunity for the GOP to show that it is listening to its base, instead of listening to NPR/PBS.
Gag! This thinking at CPB is horrific, but not surprising. Their conclusion is a real barfer:
“What we do know is this: Americans of every political persuasion strongly favor federal funding for public broadcasting, and they rank it as the best investment the federal government makes, after only national defense.”
Shut the damn thing down! What function is it providing that the private sector cannot do better, at lower cost, and (maybe) without the strong pro-government / anti-business propaganda you get from government communications?
Disappointing to see that Pence strongly supported CPB for Indiana.
Absolutely right!
What “useful programming” is exclusively available on PBS that cannot be gotten elsewhere in the private sector. Let the private sector decide what to produce based on market demand. We have more choices than ever before due to the technology explosion and new sources of programming content are popping up every day.
Stop the Leni Riefenstahls at PBS from spewing their pro big-government with our tax dollars.
One of the four subchannels of my local PBS station essentially runs INFOMERCIALS all day long.
No way they should be getting my tax money.
Gravy train meets Trump train.
Like there aren’t enough liberal outlets?
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