WASHINGTON, D.C. – July 12, 2021 – America’s Public Television Stations today praised the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies for recommending $565 million in advance funding for public broadcasting in Fiscal Year 2024.
“This is an important day for public television,” said Patrick Butler, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations. “We lost $100 million in purchasing power over 10 years of flat federal funding, and this legislation would go a very long way toward restoring that purchasing power — and with it our ability to provide the educational services, the public safety communications, the civic literacy and the beloved programming which millions of Americans need and value.
“We know that this is only the first step in this year’s appropriations process, but it is a giant step, and we are most grateful to subcommittee chair Rosa DeLauro for being such a magnificent champion of public broadcasting.
“We are also appreciative that the subcommittee has recommended level funding of $20 million in FY 2022 for the annual station interconnection account, which is the backbone of the public broadcasting system, supporting nationwide emergency alerting, providing local stations with national programming, connecting stations with each other, and creating operational efficiencies.
“The federal investment in public broadcasting is critical to local public television stations’ public service mission, and to ensuring that everyone, everywhere, every day has access to these essential services for free.
“Throughout the pandemic, public television stations, which serve nearly all Americans, have clearly demonstrated their essential role in public service, standing up remote learning services in all 50 States and U.S. Territories, providing a broad range of standards-based, curriculum-aligned educational services, in collaboration with State and local education authorities, to help students, teachers and parents continue a high-quality learning process, and devoting their entire daytime broadcast schedule to age-appropriate educational programming.
“In addition, public television datacasting has been used to deliver IP data over the broadcast television signal to provide digital educational resources to students without broadband connections, helping to bridge the digital divide and close the homework gap.
“We’ve also conveyed COVID-related information to millions of viewers from Governors, State health and education officials, and other authorities through our role as the “C-SPAN” of many State governments and as the chronicler of hometown America’s history, culture and public affairs. We provide public safety communications to States and local governments across America, and public television stations are the backbone of the national Wireless Emergency Alert system for national emergency communications. And public television stations use our community convening power every day in communities nationwide to help solve our most urgent problems and heal our divisions.
“America’s public television stations are ready to do more, to help revolutionize education in a post-pandemic America, to train more of America’s adults for better jobs, to provide more essential public safety communications services, to create a more well-informed citizenry that considers issues in a civil and constructive manner, and to use a portion of our licensed spectrum to do more to enhance telehealth, national security, Smart Cities connections, transportation efficiency, precision agriculture and more.
“The broad support for public media funding among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress reflects the overwhelming support of the American people for our service in communities throughout America, and we couldn’t be more proud of this vote of confidence in our work.
“We await further word on funding for Ready To Learn, a competitive grant program at the Department of Education that supports the creation and distribution of educational media content to millions of children across America. This program has been proven to help close the achievement gap between children from low-income families and their more affluent peers. We remain hopeful that Ready To Learn’s essential work will continue to be supported through full funding.
“We are most grateful to the bipartisan leadership of Chairwoman DeLauro and Ranking Member Cole, and the full membership of the subcommittee, for the critical support they have provided for the work of local public television stations through this funding for CPB and interconnection.”
###
About APTS
America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) is a nonprofit membership organization ensuring a strong and financially sound public television system and helping member stations provide essential public services in education, public safety and civic leadership to the American people. For more information, visit www.apts.org.
Contact:
Stacey Karp
202-654-4222
skarp@apts.org