Butler: 'Daunting' Funding Environment for Public TV in New Congress
Public TV will have a difficult time getting additional funding from the Republican-controlled House during the next budget cycle and could face bills to cut or eliminate funding, America’s Public Television Stations CEO Patrick Butler told the APTS Media Summit Monday. Butler said he plans to seek a $40 million increase in CPB’s funding but conceded that “level funding is a win for the next two years ... And under the House's new rules for debate, an amendment to reduce or eliminate our funding could well come to a vote in the full House.”
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In an interview, Butler said the legislative environment isn’t quite as bad as 2011, when Tea Party Republicans made defunding PBS a major part of their platform and the House passed a bill proposing cutting funding to NPR. “That was pretty bad, but they had a 49-seat majority in 2011,” Butler said. “They've got a nine-seat majority now,” he said.
Public TV has the support of “senior bipartisan leaders of the Senate and House Appropriations committees, members of the Senate and House leadership, and the president of the United States,” he said. Funds for public media “are not even a rounding error” in the federal budget, but many rural public TV stations would be unable to survive without those funds, he said. The funding situation is concerning, but public television has weathered similar environments in the past, said WCMU Public Media Executive Director Debbie Hamlett in an interview.
In addition to the $40 million increase Butler will seek for CPB in the next appropriations cycle, he will call for "level funding for Ready to Learn, interconnection and system infrastructure, and the next-gen warning system,” he said, calling lobbying for the increase “a daunting prospect.” Congress has increased CPB funding every year since 2020 for a total of $70 million, Butler said. The CPB appropriation “now stands at an all-time high of $535 million,” he said.
The House’s new rules mean an amendment to cut or reduce funding could come up for a vote suddenly, said APTS Vice President-Government and Public Affairs Kate Riley on a panel. She told an audience of public TV officials the threat of a sudden amendment is why it's important for public TV stations to make contact with their local representatives ahead of time. “We know that a network of 750,000 grassroots advocates in Protect My Public Media stands ready to send thousands of supportive messages to Congress at a moment’s notice,” said Butler in his remarks: “We hope we’re going to be OK.”