During the presidential debate, Gov. Romney said he would end the subsidy to public television. While he specifically mentioned PBS, Rooney's plan calls for the elimination of funding for CPB, PBS, and NPR. It is something Romney has said on the campaign trail many times. It has also been included GOP lead budgets in the House.
Today, PBS CEO Paula Kerger said it was stunning that Romeny would target the eli9mination of funding for PBS and Big Bird. Kerger an well-known Obama supporter said, ""This is not
about the budget. It has to be about politics." I'm sorry Ms Kerger but your are wrong, dead wrong.
While several conservatives in Congress wanted to defend NPR totally and to prohibit stations from using federal funds to buy NPR programming after the firing of Juan Williams, in the Romney-Ryan budget it is about the budget.
Funding for public broadcasting, no matter how big or small, is the most visible symbol of hundreds of programs that need to bu cut to help lower the annual deficits and, eventually, the $16 trillion debt. A debt that increased by over fifty percent since Obama took office.
Like the leader of many programs that will be cut, Kerger is only protecting her turf. A turf that is increasingly liberal and losing audience. If it were not for programs like Antiques Roadshow and Downton Abbey, the audience for PBS would be much smaller than it is. It is an audience often forgotten in the search of revenue from sponsors. Yet, Kerger promoted an entire week of opera. A week that found an almost non-existent audience outside of a few opera centers. It failed and Kerger has failed to bring the people and outside the beltway funding to PBS.
Kereger doesn't get that for the best programs to survive they must to begin looking for other sources of revenue. The Federal government can no longer support. If commercial interests will no longer support Ken Burns, then his long and boring programs must go. If the far-left, Obama loving series Frontline cannot find funding in the marketplace, it must go.
Sesame Street may be one of the programs that survive. It supports itself through merchandising and sponsorships. It takes little, if any, federal funds.
PBS is not the problem. It is the symbol of hundreds of programs that cannot be sustained in a still weak economy.
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