The House of Representatives passed a bill that could leave Sesame Street and other public radio and television programs homeless.
The House of Representatives in February voted 235-189 along party lines to eliminate federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the 368 public television stations and 934 radio stations under its umbrella, including several New Mexico stations.
The CPB will receive $430 million federal dollars in 2011.
“We live in a day of 150 cable channels — 99 percent of Americans own a TV,” Rep. Doug Lamborn told an NPR affiliate. “We get Internet on our cell phones; we are in a day and age when we no longer need to subsidize broadcasting.”
Rep. Lamborn (R-CO) introduced the legislation that will meet a Democratic majority who mostly supports the CPB. The United States Senate will vote on the measure March 18.
Catherine Mortensen, an aide to Rep. Lamborn, told the Daily Lobo that the bill’s purpose is to protect the taxpayer and
reduce the budget deficit. She said the nation’s spending habits are not sustainable when the federal government borrows nearly 40 cents of every dollar it spends.
“We believe it (CPB) is a nonessential program that wouldn’t be eliminated, just reduced,” Mortensen said.
KNME General Manager Polly Anderson said her station receives a little more than 10 percent of its $10 million annual budget from the CPB. She said the cuts would limit the station’s ability to serve the community.
“We lose the ability to do local productions,” she said. “We lose the ability to provide education outreach services to parents, kids and teachers. It is those kinds of extras that connect us to the community, and to lose the ability to do those activities would be very detrimental.”
Tim Graham, a Media Research Center representative, said that defunding the CPB would have no effect on public media organizations’ ability to stay on air.
“It’s even possible that a full defunding would bring a surge in private contributions,” he said. “This happened to a lesser extent during the threat to CPB funding in 1995-96. The PBS/NPR infrastructure is very rich and entrenched. I cannot imagine these stations would die off the way, say, private newspapers have.”
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Anderson said losing the 10 percent would hurt KNME but it would not knock the station off the air.
“We would lose all of our local services,” she said. “There are smaller stations, including two stations in this state, that the CPB money makes up a nearly 40 to 50 percent of their operating budget.”
Las Cruces PBS member station KRWG has a joint license and operates a television and radio station.
Glen Cerny, the station’s general manager, said the television station receives about 35 percent of its funds from CPB, while the radio station relies on CPB for about 25 percent its budget. He said he could not speculate on the ramifications if Congress eliminates funding.
“I think the threat is real, and we have a lot of work to do,” Cenry said. “If we don’t take it seriously, we are going to feel foolish at some point.”
Graham said that the bill is a symbol of “political seriousness.”
“I think it’s unlikely in the current Congress, with a Democratic-controlled Senate and a Democratic president, that the CPB will be defunded,” he said.
