NPR Criticizes House Plan to Slash Corporation for Public Broadcasting Funding

[babsbunny]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/npr-criticizes-house-plan-slash-98944

The elimination of organization’s federal subsidy would affect hundreds of local public radio stations.

NPR spoke out on Saturday about the House Appropriation Committee's proposal to eliminate the $531 million federal subsidy set aside for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
"The elimination of federal funding would be a significant blow to nearly 900 public radio stations that serve the needs of more than 38 million Americans with free over-the-air programming they can’t find anywhere else," said NPR CEO and President Vivian Schiller in a statement. "It would diminish stations' ability to bring high-quality local, national and international news to their communities, as well as local arts, music and cultural programming that other media don’t present."

[notesdev]

1. As much as I like NPR

it's not a worthwhile deal to be borrowing half a billion from China every year to run it, and continue to run up our debt service costs for it.

Given a choice of priorities... home heating for the poor >>>>> NPR

[ShadowLiberal]

3. Government spending is only 2% of NPR's budget, it's news like PBS that need federal funding

NPR has said previously that they could survive without federal funding, back when the neocons were mad at them for firing a guy for spewing their antiMuslim bigotry on other media channels while being identified as an NPR employee.

News outlets like PBS hopwever probably could not survive the blow of no federal funding.

[notesdev]

5. as I understand it it's the affiliate stations that require the subsidies

if government spending is only 2% of their budget the no-brainer decision is to cut costs by 2% and unleash themselves from all the government requirements - which would probably be a net revenue gain.

Doing the math... if $531M = 2%

That would be an annual total budget of over $26B... I'm pretty sure NPR is not spending anywhere near that kind of money even when you roll in all the affiliates.

When you count the entire network it's probably closer to 25-30% of the total operating costs being subsidized.

[1gobluedem]

7. $531M is the total funding to CPB for all of public broadcasting

Which is primarily member stations, not NPR or PBS. 2% of NPR's budget comes from the CPB but it's nowhere near $531M. I run a mid-sized member station; our portion is $198K which we CANNOT afford to do without; it's 20% of our budget. You can learn more at www.170millionamericans.org.

[sendero]

2. Let them get their cash..

... from corporations. They've already sold out their programming to them anyway.

[Liberal Veteran]

4. America has a long distiguished history of doing things in a bad way.

We could have had BBC, but we got PBS and NPR. We could have had Bullet Trains, but we got Amtrak. And don't get me started on what passes for "Health Care" in this country.

[Riftaxe]

6. NPR should just charge more for their commercials

since it has long since forsaken being free from them.

On Edit: Maybe charge more for product advertisement instead of just shilling the corporation names.