On July 16, the Senate voted to claw back funding for soft power initiatives – that is, foreign aid – and for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is important to the Heritage Foundation / far right appointees in the administration and some of the fringe elements of the Republican Party.
I don’t believe Congressional Republicans are excited about these clawbacks, but fear being primaried in the midterm elections far more than they care about eroding the United States’ position as the leader of the free world or providing vital educational, informational and artistic programming across the country.
I could focus my entire column about the above dynamic. It won’t change a caucus without internal resolve or a sense of duty to its constituents, however. We know the administration is against foreign aid, which is a narrow and short-sighted view. The precedent to clawback appropriations approved through bipartisan negotiation and signed into law is terrible.
But it’s this fatwa against public broadcasting that really hits me as unnecessary. Of all the things to jettison, programming focused on learning, broadcast or streamed to millions of homes, seems like one we could keep.
I admit a bias. I have been reading for more than five decades now and I learned from Sesame Street and The Electric Company. There is newer programming now, part of PBS’ Ready To Learn initiative, that focuses on more than just letters and numbers – interpreting data on a map, thinking like scientists, and letters and numbers – that in the last fiscal year was streamed 1.8 billion times, broadcast into 10.2 million homes, saw 2 million mobile app downloads, and 27.6 online gameplays.
We should absolutely, positively, defund all that educational programming. Because clearly no child’s parents are guiding that content and it might make them liberal.
Look at me as a cautionary tale. I grew up watching Sesame Street and The Electric Company, The French Chef, The Frugal Gourmet, The McLaughlin Group, Washington Week in Review, and The PBS NewsHour. And by 1988, the year I turned 18, I was so brainwashed by PBS, I went and registered to vote as a Republican and spent the spring canvassing on campus for Bob Dole.
Clearly, PBS ruined me.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which is the organization which receives Federal funding, only contributes about 15% of the total funding that local public television and radio stations receive nationwide. Smaller markets are more disproportionately affected by this cut. In New Mexico, this is the case.
At KNME, our largest station in the state, affiliated with the University of New Mexico, CPB funds made up 18.1% of total revenues for the latest year for which financial reports are available, 2023. KNME benefits from the largest private donor base in the state, split among Albuquerque, Rio Rancho and Santa Fe.
KRWG in Las Cruces, affiliated with New Mexico State University, receives about 25.3% of its revenues from CPB, according to its 2024 financials. KENW in Portales, affiliated with Eastern New Mexico University, relied on CPB for 27.4% of its revenues for its 2021 fiscal year.
Each of these PBS stations rely on state appropriations, private donations, and other sources like foundations or investment funds for the majority of their funding. But whether it’s a 18% hit or a 27% hit, that doesn’t mean our PBS stations aren’t taking a major cut.
If you already contribute to your local PBS station, continue. If you don’t, it’s time to start. You might not be the Lawrence Welk fangirl I am (and yes, I have written a column on this), but too many of our children need the early childhood learning boost that PBS gives them, in their own home, under their parents’ supervision.
Congress may not be brave enough to fund PBS, but we can be.
Merritt Hamilton Allen is a PR executive and former Navy officer. She appeared regularly as a panelist on NM PBS and is a frequent guest on News Radio KKOB. A Republican for 36 years, she became an independent upon reading the 2024 Republican platform. She lives amicably with her Democratic husband north of I-40 where they run one head of dog, and one of cat. She can be reached at news.ind.merritt@gmail.com.
