{"id":312463,"date":"2025-08-02T17:32:19","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T17:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/312463\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T17:32:19","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T17:32:19","slug":"the-corporation-for-public-broadcasting-has-been-defunded-this-is-the-legacy-of-the-npr-and-pbs-backer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/312463\/","title":{"rendered":"The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been defunded. This is the legacy of the NPR and PBS backer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your support helps us to tell the story<\/p>\n

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The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has helped pay for PBS<\/a>, NPR<\/a>, 1,500 local radio and television stations, and programs such as Sesame Street and Finding Your Roots, announced Friday it would shut down after the U.S. government removed its funding.<\/a><\/p>\n

The organization told staff most positions will end with the fiscal year on September 30. A small transition team will remain until January. <\/a><\/p>\n

The private nonprofit corporation was founded in 1968 after Congress<\/a> authorized its formation. It now comes to an end after almost six decades of fueling the production of celebrated educational programming, cultural content, and emergency alerts about natural disasters.<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump cancels funding<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump signed a bill on July 24, canceling about $1.1 billion<\/a> that had been approved for public broadcasting. The White House<\/a> claims the public media system is politically biased, and an unnecessary expense, and conservatives have particularly directed their anger at NPR and PBS. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

A woman wears a costume of Sesame Street character Big Bird holding a sign in support of public broadcasting (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Lawmakers with large rural constituencies voiced concern about what the cuts could mean for some local public stations in their state. They warned that some stations will have to close.<\/p>\n

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday reinforced the policy change by excluding funding for the corporation for the first time in more than 50 years as part of a broader spending bill.<\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

People participate in a rally to call on Congress to protect funding for U.S. public broadcasters (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

How it started<\/strong><\/p>\n

Congress passed legislation creating the body in 1967. This came several years after Newton Minow, the then-Federal Communications Commission chair, described commercial television as a \u201cvast wasteland\u201d and called for programming in the public interest. <\/p>\n

The corporation doesn’t produce programming, and it doesn’t own, operate, or control any public broadcasting stations. The corporation, PBS, and NPR are independent of each other, as are local public television and radio stations.<\/p>\n

Rural stations hit hard<\/strong><\/p>\n

Roughly 70 percent of the corporation\u2019s money went directly to 330 PBS and 246 NPR stations across the country. The cuts are expected to weigh most heavily on smaller public media outlets away from big cities, and it\u2019s likely some won\u2019t survive. NPR’s president estimated that as many as 80 NPR stations may close in the following year. <\/p>\n

\"U.S.<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

U.S. President-elect Bill Clinton held a trolley car given to him by Fred Rogers (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Mississippi Public Broadcasting has already decided to eliminate a streaming channel that airs children\u2019s programming such as \u2018Caillou\u2019 and \u2018Daniel Tiger\u2019s Neighborhood\u2019 24 hours a day.<\/p>\n

Maine<\/a>\u2019s public media system is looking at a hit of $2.5 million, or about 12 percent of its budget, for the next fiscal year. The state’s rural residents rely heavily on public media for weather updates and disaster alerts. <\/p>\n

In Kodiak, Alaska<\/a>, KMXT estimated the cuts would slice 22 percent from its budget. Public radio stations in the sprawling, heavily rural state often provide not just news but alerts about natural disasters like tsunamis, landslides, and volcanic eruptions. <\/p>\n

\"Then-First<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Then-First Lady Michelle Obama embraces Sesame Street characters Elmo and Rosita (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

From Big Bird to war documentaries<\/p>\n

\u2018Sesame Street\u2019 initially aired in 1969. Child viewers, adults, and guest stars alike were instantly hooked. Over the decades, characters from Big Bird<\/a> to Cookie Monster and Elmo<\/a> have become household favorites. <\/p>\n

Entertainer Carol Burnett<\/a> appeared on that inaugural episode.<\/p>\n

“I would have done anything they wanted me to do,\u201d she said. \u201cI loved being exposed to all that goodness and humor.\u201d <\/p>\n

The New York Times reports \u2018Sesame Street\u2019 will survive without the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. NPR and PBS get a relatively small portion of their annual budget from the corporation, and children’s TV programs are produced independently of those organizations.<\/p>\n

Still, the NYT reports the cutbacks could affect the availability of those shows, particularly in pockets of the country without widespread access to broadband internet and mobile data. <\/p>\n

\"Sesame<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Sesame Street Characters Big Bird, Elmo, Cookie Monster, and Abby Cadabby attend the HBO Premiere of \u2018Sesame Street’s The Magical Wand Chase\u2019 (Getty Images for HBO)<\/p>\n

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. started the program \u2018Finding Your Roots\u2019 in 2006 under the title \u2018African American Lives\u2019. He invited prominent Black celebrities and traced their family trees back to slavery. When the paper trail ran out, they would use DNA to see which ethnic group they were from in Africa<\/a>. Challenged by a viewer to open the show to non-Black celebrities, Gates agreed, and the series was renamed \u2018Faces of America\u2019, which had to be changed again after the name was taken. <\/p>\n

The show is PBS\u2019s most-watched program on linear TV and the most-streamed non-drama program. Season 10 reached nearly 18 million people across linear and digital platforms and also received its first Emmy nomination.<\/p>\n

Grant money from the nonprofit has also funded lesser-known food, history, music, and other shows created by stations across the country. <\/p>\n

\"Julia<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Julia Child sits in her kitchen after being moved and rebuilt from her Cambridge, MA home on 19 August 2002 as part of an exhibit at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Documentarian Ken Burns<\/a>, celebrated for creating the documentaries \u2018The Civil War\u2019, \u2018Baseball\u2019, and \u2018The Vietnam War\u2019, told PBS NewsHour that the corporation accounted for about 20 percent of his films’ budgets. He said he would make it up, but projects receiving 50 percent to 75 percent of their funding from the organization won’t. <\/p>\n

The influence of shows<\/p>\n

Children\u2019s programming in the 1960s was made up of shows including \u2018Captain Kangaroo\u2019, \u2018Romper Room\u2019, and the violent skirmishes between \u2018Tom & Jerry\u2019. \u2018Mr. Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood\u2019 mostly taught social skills. PBS also aired programs by \u2018Monty Python\u2019 and broadcast shows such as \u2018Downton Abbey\u2019 and \u2018The French Chef\u2019 with Julia Child. <\/p>\n

\"Julia<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Julia Child’s kitchen display is seen at the media preview at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Education professionals and child psychologists designed \u2018Sesame Street\u2019 to help low-income and minority students aged between two and five overcome some of the deficiencies they had when entering school. Social scientists had long noted that white and higher-income kids were often better prepared.<\/p>\n

One of the most widely cited studies about the impact of \u2018Sesame Street\u2019 compared households that got access to the show with those who didn\u2019t. It found that the children exposed to \u2018Sesame Street\u2019 were 14 percent more likely to be enrolled in the correct grade level for their age at middle and high school. <\/p>\n

\"Fred<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Fred Rogers rests his arms on a small trolley in this promotional portrait. He mainly taught children social skills in his program (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Over the years, \u2018Finding Your Roots\u2019 showed Natalie Morales discovering she\u2019s related to one of the legendary pirates of the Caribbean, and former \u2018Saturday Night Live\u2019 star Andy Samberg<\/a> finding his biological grandmother and grandfather. It revealed that drag queen RuPaul<\/a> and Senator Cory Booker<\/a> are cousins, as are actors Meryl Streep<\/a> and Eva Longoria.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe two subliminal messages of \u2018Finding Your Roots\u2019, which are needed more urgently today than ever, is that what has made America great is that we\u2019re a nation of immigrants,\u201d said Gates. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd secondly, at the level of the genome, despite our apparent physical differences, we\u2019re 99.99 percent the same.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3937],"tags":[77,382,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-312463","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114960370962150774","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}