Defund NPR & PBS

There is no shortage of media in the United States today.  When I was a kid, there were 7 TV channels and PBS.  That was a lot.  I remember visiting my grandparents and they only had 4 channels.  In those days, you could argue that the government should subsidize some programming that would not be aired on the limited stations.  That is not true now.  We have a glut of programming on a vast array of topics.  Niche programming abounds.  If you can't find your thing on TV, the internet - YouTube, Hulu, Rumble, and so on will have it.  Government-funded media was always questionable and is now just wasteful.  Any programming that has a sufficient audience will find private media to air it.  There is no reason for the American taxpayer to subsidize programming for anyone.

Big Bird will be fine

Contrary to what some think, Sesame Street will be just fine if the Federal Government stops subsidizing PBS and NPR.  It is a hot commodity and ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox will get in a bidding war to air the further adventures of Big Bird, Elmo, Grover, Cookie Monster, and all the rest.  Yes, there will be commercials but the program will be otherwise the same.  In fact, PBS will probably stay on the air as it is and just have commercials.

 

That aside, why do we need public radio or public television?  I have hundreds of TV stations and countless radio station that don't require my tax dollars.  Why should one station get subsidized with my taxes?  Perhaps there was a call for that when there were only 3 broadcast stations but that is no longer the case.  Between satellite and cable, there is no reason for a state-sponsored channel.  To make matters worse, we have a yearly deficit over a trillion dollars a year and we can't cut the $445 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting?  Rather than extort through taxes that money from the citizenry and then give it to CPB, why not let the citizens keep that money and voluntarily fund CPB if they want it?

 

No matter who wins on Tuesday, I fully expect CPB to live on as a needless budget item.  It takes a Herculean effort to reduce the rate of growth of the budget and a Sisyphean task to actually cut the budget.  If we can't cut an entirely non-essential program like CPB, then we're doomed to become Greece.