BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) – The chief executive for PBS is sounding the alarm about public broadcasting’s future if federal funding is axed as called for by President Donald Trump.
“PBS will not go away, but a number of our stations will,” CEO Paula Kerger said Saturday. “There is no Plan B for that.”
PBS’ share of the roughly $450 million in federal funds allocated for public TV and radio goes largely to support public TV stations nationwide, a number of which rely on it for up to 50 percent of their budgets and can’t survive without it, Kerger told a TV critics’ meeting.
Many of those stations are in rural and underserved areas, she said, with residents who either don’t have access to cable or satellite or can’t afford it and who rely on over-the-air broadcasting.
Kerger, who addressed the issue at a TV critics’ meeting, said observers have speculated, hopefully, that because PBS has survived previous funding threats, ” ‘you’ll be OK, right?’ “