Public Broadcasting Should Be Supported, Not Killed

In case you missed it, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced that it is shutting down after Republicans in Congress pulled its federal funding. It's a disgrace, for the country and for every politician who supported the cuts.

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which created CPB, he remarked upon Americans' "appetite for excellence" and the quest to "enrich man's spirit" through public investment in broadcast facilities and programming. As a kid growing up in the 80s in rural Ohio, I spent endless hours watching Sesame Street, The Electric Company and 3-2-1 Contact. Cable wasn't an option. We could tune to a handful of channels, sometimes fewer when the leaves filled out in the summer. But the Children's Television Workshop programming, beamed in from WPTD-TV in Dayton, was always there. If the mission of CPB was to enrich, then the mission was accomplished. That programming taught me things, introduced me to friendly, smart people, made my world bigger.

The amount of federal funding for CPB in the scope of the entire federal budget is miniscule, essentially a rounding error, but the dividends on that investment are enormous. In this era when it seems like there's very little holding us together, public TV and radio are still here. Just about anywhere you're trying to tune in, there's usually a local station to be found with interesting programming to keep you company. We will all be poorer if those stations disappear.

Public investment in educational and cultural programming is good. It's OK to believe that. It's even better to say it out loud and to support it. Here's a list of Ohio public TV and radio stations. They could use some extra help, particularly those in smaller markets, to make it through.