Public media serves 99% of the United States, including the most remote communities, with high-quality, noncommercial programming and services every day, but that service is now in jeopardy. On July 13, the U.S. House Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittees released its draft fiscal year 2024 appropriations legislation that proposed to zero out federal funding for public media.
The bill eliminates funding (this is not a reduction in funding) for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), public television and radio’s single largest source of funding, and Interconnection, public media’s distribution network that enables viewers and listeners to receive programs and emergency alerts.
Let us be clear: Without federal funding, there is no public media.
Annual federal funding amounts to about $1.40 per American and is leveraged by local stations to raise six times that amount from other sources, which we have been successful in doing thanks to our generous donors, foundations, and corporate supporters.
Cutting public media funding would have little impact on the national debt but would devastate Nine PBS’s ability to serve our community.
Public media is locally rooted. Nine PBS celebrates our region’s successes and unique culture, but we don’t shy away from other important topics. Nine PBS recently held discussions in the community with local experts and broadcast, streamed, or published content about the Holocaust, mental health, gun violence, and the importance of early learning.
Multiple studies confirm that ending funding would devastate, if not destroy, public media, resulting in the loss of programs and services or stations going off air.
How You Can Help Save Public Media
Protect My Public Media, a coalition of grassroots advocates and public media stations and organizations, including Nine PBS, is coordinating outreach to Congress.
- Use hashtag: #SavePublicMedia, please tag Protect My Public Media, in social media posts and shares
- Go to the Protect My Public Media website and join the effort to fully fund public media
- Call Congress
- Email Congress
Contributed by Lynanne Feilen, Communications Manager