On the subject of Public Radio Funding

[TeyshaBlue]

I was under the assumption that Federal funding was a small part of the overall funding picture. Perhaps that's true in the macro. However, in the local view, maybe not so much.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/04/12/2996056/marfa-public-radio-has-earned.html

"He didn't bring this up, but the station's friends have: KRTS runs on a $250,000 budget. This was the week for a $60,000 spring pledge drive.
Half of Marfa Radio's budget comes from its scattered but loyal listeners.
The other half -- $125,000 -- comes from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The station tower was even built with a federal grant.
"If the federal dollars went away, then I think we would go away," Michael said.
They've earned our money."


The Marfa station's dilema is a fairly good argument for the continued funding of NPR IMO.

[boutons_deux]

If USF (also under corporate attack) is justifiable for rural areas, then federal funding for Marfa-size stations is also justifiable.

===========

PBS, NPR Funding Spared In Budget Deal

Despite efforts to strip government funding for public broadcasting, PBS chief Paula Kerger said the federal budget deal retains most of the money that President Barack Obama had set aside for public television and radio stations.

The deal allocates nearly $430 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a 0.2 percent cut from what the president had proposed. PBS is also due to receive $6 million to help public TV stations make the transition to digital services, less than it had hoped for, and another amount for an education initiative with the funding to be determined by the Department of Education, she said.

If passed by Congress and signed into law, this would make for another year where there was much talk about defunding public broadcasting, but no action.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/14/pbs-npr-funding-spared-in_n_849017.html?view=print

[boutons_deux]

Cut Limbaugh and Hannity

The tumultuous managerial shakeup at National Public Radio headquarters for trivial verbal miscues once again has highlighted the ludicrous corporatist right-wing charge that public radio and public TV are replete with left-leaning or leftist programming.

Ludicrous, that is, unless this criticism's yardstick is the propaganda regularly exuded by the extreme right-wing Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. These "capitalists" use the public's airwaves free-of-charge to make big money.

The truth is that the frightened executives at public TV and radio have long been more hospitable to interviews with right of center or extreme right-wing and corporatist talking heads than liberal or progressive guests.

PBS's Charlie Rose has had war-loving William Kristol on 31 times, Henry Kissinger 55 times, Richard Perle 10 times, the global corporatist cheerleader, Tom Friedman 70 times. Compare that guest list with Rose's interviews of widely published left of center guests - Noam Chomsky two times, William Grieder two times, Jim Hightower two times, Charlie Peters two times, Lewis Lapham three times, Bob Herbert six times, Paul Krugman 21 times, Victor Navasky one time, Mark Green five times and Sy Hersh, once a frequent guest, has not been on since January 2005.

Dr. Sidney Wolfe, the widely-quoted super-accurate drug industry critic, who is often featured on the commercial TV network shows, has never been on Rose's show. Nor has the long-time head of Citizens for Tax Justice and widely respected progressive tax analyst, Robert McIntyre.

Far more corporate executives, not known for their leftist inclinations, appear on Rose's show than do leaders of environmental, consumer, labor and poverty organizations.

In case you are wondering, I've appeared four times, but not since August 2005, and not once on the hostile Terri Gross radio show.

The unabashed progressive Bill Moyer's Show is off the air and has not been replaced. No one can charge PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer with anything other than very straightforward news delivery, bland opinion exchanges and a troubling inclination to avoid much reporting that upsets the power structures in Congress, the White House, the Pentagon or Wall Street.

The longest running show on PBS was hard-line conservative William F. Buckley's show - Firing Line - which came on the air in 1966 and ended in 1999.

Sponsorship by large corporations, such as Coca Cola and AT&T, have abounded - a largesse not likely to be continued year after year for a leftist media organization.

None of this deters the Far Right that presently got a majority in the House of Representatives to defund the $422 million annual appropriation to the umbrella entity - Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). About 15% of all revenues for all public broadcasting stations comes from this Congressional contribution.

Though he admits to liking National Public Radio, conservative columnist David Harsanyi, believes there is no "practical argument" left "in the defense of federal funding in an era of nearly unlimited choices."

Really? Do commercial radio stations give you much news between the Niagara of advertisements and music? Even the frenetic news, sports, traffic and weather flashes, garnished by ads, are either redundant or made up of soundbytes (apart from the merely 2 minutes of CBS radio news every half-hour). If you want serious news, features and interviews on the radio, you go to public radio or the few community and Pacifica radio stations.

Harsanyi continues: "Something, though, seems awfully wrong with continuing to force taxpayers who disagree with the mission - even if their perceptions are false - to keep giving."

Public radio's popular Morning Edition and All Things Considered are the most listened to radio shows after Rush Limbaugh's, and any taxpayer can turn them off. Compare the relatively small public radio and TV budget allocations with the tens of billions of dollars each year - not counting the Wall Street bailout - in compelling taxpayers to subsidize, through hundreds of programs, greedy, mismanaged, corrupt or polluting corporations either directly in handouts, giveaways and guarantees or indirectly in tax escapes, bloated contracts and grants. Can the taxpayer turn them off?

Here is a solution that will avoid any need for Congressional contributions to CPB. The people own the public airwaves. They are the landlords. The commercial radio and TV stations are the tenants that pay nothing for their 24 hour use of this public property. You pay more for your auto license than the largest television station in New York pays the Federal Communications Commission for its broadcasting license - which is nothing. It has been that way since the 1927 and 1934 communication laws.

Why not charge these profitable businesses rent for use of the public airwaves and direct some of the ample proceeds to nonprofit public radio and public TV as well as an assortment of audience controlled TV and radio channels that could broadcast what is going on in our country locally, regionally, nationally and internationally? (See: Ralph Nader & Claire Riley, Oh, Say Can You See: A Broadcast Network for the Audience, 5 J.L. & POL. 1, [1988])

Now that would be a worthy program for public broadcasting. Get Limbaugh's and Hannity's companies off welfare. Want to guess what their listeners think about corporate welfare?

http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/276-74/5610-cut-limbaugh-and-hannity?tmpl=component&print=1&layout=default&page=

[RandomGuy]

I was under the assumption that Federal funding was a small part of the overall funding picture. Perhaps that's true in the macro. However, in the local view, maybe not so much.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/04/12/2996056/marfa-public-radio-has-earned.html

"He didn't bring this up, but the station's friends have: KRTS runs on a $250,000 budget. This was the week for a $60,000 spring pledge drive.
Half of Marfa Radio's budget comes from its scattered but loyal listeners.
The other half -- $125,000 -- comes from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The station tower was even built with a federal grant.
"If the federal dollars went away, then I think we would go away," Michael said.
They've earned our money."


The Marfa station's dilema is a fairly good argument for the continued funding of NPR IMO.

That's the burn.

Often these public radio stations in rural areas are *the* radio station for the area, and are the ones most dependent on federal funding.

That funding, while representing a small part of the overall budget at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, disproportionately goes to such small rural stations to cover the funding gaps.

With the death of the "free" broadcast TV model, and this seeming to be in danger, I wonder what will step into those rather poor, sparsely populated markets. I would note that internet is not really an option there either.

[TeyshaBlue]

@ bd....Congrats. You've just killed small radio stations across the country.

[TeyshaBlue]

@ bd....Congrats. You've just killed small radio stations across the country.

Well mebbe not. I think I misread your post.

[boutons_deux]

Nader's stats on conservative vs liberal hosts on NPR/PBS proves that the VRWC campaign to defund NPR/PBS, like all their campaigns (ACORN), is nothing but lies and slander, and has NOTHING to with liberal bias, just like ACORN had nothing do with voter fraud.

Since NPR/PBS isn't for VRWC like a Fox Repug Propaganda network is, then NPR/PBS is against VRWC and must be eliminated.

[CosmicCowboy]

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcROrrJRaGeGbbC8sBUbvoxHLm6Bo859o PyN0J6sDqGBV08jE-YO

[mouse]

So much or free speech.

[Wild Cobra]

So much or free speech.
Free speech does not mean speech for free.

[ChumpDumper]

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcROrrJRaGeGbbC8sBUbvoxHLm6Bo859o PyN0J6sDqGBV08jE-YOWhich satellite channel is the local Marfa one?

[baseline bum]

Free speech does not mean speech for free.

That should be the slogan of America; free speech for sale.

[mouse]

Free speech does not mean speech for free.


And who is to blame for that?

[lazerelmo]

http://i51.tinypic.com/28l781s.jpg

[ManuBalboa]

brb small town hillbillies are complete mayberry morons clinging to guns and the angry bearded white man in the sky, but they are important now that NPR must be funded!