Defunding Public Broadcasting is Stupid and Will Cost More Than it’s Meant To Save
On 7 November 1967, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act. This legislation enabled the formation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a nonprofit organization intended to facilitate the development of educational, cultural, and other programming not provided by commercial broadcasters and to make this content accessible to television audiences across the country, regardless of their economic status. A particular emphasis was placed on educational programs for children, and two of the longest-running shows funded by the CPB were Sesame Street, which used a blend of live action, puppetry and animated segments to teach young children rudimentary math and language skills in preparation for formal education, and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, which taught kids the value of healthy emotional management, social skills and generally being a decent person.
Nearly 60 years later, on 1 May 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14290, titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” with the express purpose of ending federal funding for public broadcasting, claiming that the news coverage aired by companies like the Public Broadcasting Service, National Public Radio and their corresponding affiliates is biased against himself and the Republican Party as a whole. In the aftermath of this action, on 1 August, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced that it would begin winding down its operations and that the majority of its staff would be made redundant by 30 September.
Although NPR as a whole receives only one percent of its operational budget from the federal government, many of its affiliate stations, particularly in impoverished and/or rural areas have depended upon the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for funding over the course of decades. Meanwhile, PBS, viewed by nearly three fifths of television households in the United States annually, depends on federal funding for roughly 15% of its revenue.
In California alone, dozens of public broadcasting stations spanning the length and breadth of the state have lost essential revenue as a result of the CPB being defunded. While affiliate stations in large markets with donor bases to match and access to corporate sponsorships and backing from school districts and universities, such as KQED in San Francisco, may naturally have a significant cushion, they are not impervious to the pressure resulting from Trump’s funding cuts. In mid-July, KQED carried out its third round of layoffs in five years, cutting staff by 15%.
In more remote areas, the situation is even more dire, as federal funding notwithstanding, public broadcasting stations are funded by their surrounding communities. For example, as KQED reports, PBS affiliate KEET-TV in Eureka, California expects to see its operating budget halved. In Mendocino, NPR member station KZYX was left with no choice but to lay off its news director and scale back its in-depth reporting.
Trump’s defunding of public broadcasting is not only destructive to the artistic, cultural and educational fabric of our society, it also poses a clear danger to the health and safety of rural America. Residents in more sparsely populated communities such as Mendocino rely on public broadcasting for emergency alerts, as internet coverage can be spotty in more isolated areas and comparatively archaic broadcast technology is able to reach where the worldwide web cannot. Without the ability to transmit such information as events warrant, evacuations and rescues in the event of fires, storms, floods, earthquakes or industrial accidents may become complicated, resulting in more property damages and fatalities, inevitably with a greater fiscal impact attached.
What makes such a scenario all the more infuriating is that funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting before the Trump regime cut the budget only amounted to one percent of one percent of the total federal budget – In other words, one ten-thousandth; a figure so small that it doesn’t even get its own name-check on any of those government spending pie graphs. More specifically, we’re talking about a little more than half a billion dollars per year. On the other hand, in California alone, wildfires have cost the state government roughly ten times as much on average per year in the period spanning 2017 to 2021. These fires also cost the federal government at least $2 billion per year.
Meanwhile, the climate in California is getting hotter and drier, and as a result, the fire season is getting longer every year. Without question, this goes to show how short-sighted and slovenly Trump’s policy decisions are. Obviously, he’s out for himself and nobody else and he doesn’t care who he hurts or how.
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