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Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceasing operations

cpb.org

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Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceasing operations

#541

Post by not2b »

cogman10 wrote: post #349
heavyset_go wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local reporting is basically dead outside of metro areas. Sure, you can stream, but the content will be focused on another locale or won't address local issues.

It's pretty dead even in metro areas. My local NPR broadcasts rarely actually cover anything that's happening in like city or county politics. Heck, even talking about state politics is pretty rare.

In the SF bay area, KQED (NPR affiliate) has a lot of coverage of local SF and Bay Area politics. The Pacifica station, KPFA (public radio but not an NPR affiliate) has more.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceasing operations

#542

Post by dredmorbius »

BeetleB wrote: post #129

I identify neither as a liberal nor as a conservative, but outsiders will likely see a left bent in me. The thing about PBS and NPR: I just don't have any alternatives! Wherever I've lived, all the other radio stations/channels just suck - liberal or not. MSNBC, CNN, Fox News totally suck. ABC, CBS, NBC mostly suck. The half-good radio stations are just way too biased and make NPR/PBS appear like paragons of neutralt…

The flagship big-city / large-state stations will very likely continue to function. The real hit for this action will be in rural regions where alternatives to the local NPR translator station are typically religious stations, right-wing talk, and increasingly Spanish-language programming.

If you've access to streaming media, podcasts, or shortwave, you still do have options.

There are several excellent national broadcasters, with the CBC, BBC, and ABC (Australia) operating in English, or a reasonable facsimile. There are often English-language broadcasts from non-anglophone countries, including France (France-24) and Germany (Deutsche-Welle English service), off the top of my head.

Of course, these will get you international news (and occasionally national stories from the broadcaster's home state), but you're straight outta luck for journalism local to your area. OTOH, NPR and PBS have struggled to deliver that (as has commercial news media) for the past decade or two.

If you've always wanted to learn a foreign language but never quite had the inspiration to do so, a further option is to start listening to non-anglophone country's native programming, whether broadcast (shortwave or Internet streaming) or podcast. There are many excellent options. I'm particularly fond of German radio's programming (Deutschlandfunk and its variants, the federated public broadcasting model might offer some lessons and learnings to PBS and NPR going forward), though there are others on top of that.

I round things out with text-based news, typically major newspapers (e.g., NYTimes, Guardian), or newswires (Reuters is pretty good).

But yes, the state of streaming / OTA / linear-programmed news media in the US is absolutely abysmal.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceasing operations

#543

Post by not2b »

philistine wrote: post #386
not2b wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural stations relied heavily on CPB funding; urban stations get most of their funding from donations or corporate underwriting. So big city public TV and radio will survive, but those in less populated areas might go under unless some other source of funding is found.

Yeah but the shows that the urban stations are running and producing are all bought by the rural stations. So the whole ecosystem needs the rural stations to help fund the productions.

The urban stations raise a lot of money locally (through pledge drives, and by hitting up local companies for underwriting, which is basically advertising). The rural stations don't, too few people. The rural stations get CPB money, and some of that goes back to fund shows that they carry, but mostly it's the cost to operate the stations. The urban stations aren't being propped up by the rural stations, there's too little money, even including the money that they get from CPB.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceasing operations

#544

Post by not2b »

antonymoose wrote: post #432
not2b wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural stations relied heavily on CPB funding; urban stations get most of their funding from donations or corporate underwriting. So big city public TV and radio will survive, but those in less populated areas might go under unless some other source of funding is found.

Are there many rural-only districts? Having moved around my PBS districts always seemed to be a metro+rural zone.

There are vast open spaces, out of FM radio range of a really big city. Some of the worst-hit public radio stations are on reservations.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceasing operations

#545

Post by dang »

wffurr wrote: post #164
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Crossing into personal attack will get you banned here, no matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.

No more of this, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceasing operations

#546

Post by dang »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #227
wffurr wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Crossing into personal attack will get you banned here, no matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.

No more of this, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've been breaking the site guidelines for a long time and we've asked you many times to stop:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44451861 (July 2025)

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38536018 (Dec 2023)

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If you keep this up, we are going to ban you—yea, even after 10 years. Please fix this.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceasing operations

#547

Post by dang »

heavyset_go wrote: post #320
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Crossing into personal attack will get you banned here, no matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.

No more of this, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceasing operations

#548

Post by WalterBright »

ethbr1 wrote: post #538
WalterBright wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was in a place without internet streaming, I'd get Starlink.

Starlink: $600 + $120/month Radio: $20 + $0/month

Musk gave out free Starlinks during Hurricane Helene.

Pretty much everyone has a cell phone.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceasing operations

#549

Post by cryptonector »

Onawa wrote: post #27
thevillagechief wrote: post #13

Woah! This stuff is unwinding faster than my priors. I'm going to have to re-evaluate everything I thought true about the US. I just always assumed "strong institutions" meant something here. That it was all a house built on sand is disconcerting.

The dissolution and dismantling of US gov institutions that we are witnessing is unprecedented in modern times. Hell, a few of the agencies being attacked were created with bipartisan support. I would say it isn't that our institutions were built on sand, more that its hard to stop a madman who broke into your house with a chainsaw (a la Musk) from knocking down a few load-bearing walls. It is easier to destroy almos…

The institutions that are not being dismantled are the ones required by the constitution. The ones being dismantled, being statutory in nature, are fair game, and if anything this shows that the constitutional institutions are in fact able to rule over the statutory ones, thus the constitutional institutions come out of this stronger, not weaker. The constitutional institutions are:

  - Congress
  - the Executive
  - the Judiciary
  - the States and their constitutional
    institutions
  - the jury
CPB and the like are statutory institutions. Those can come and they can go. Sometimes they go. They can come back you know. The next time the Democrats are in power they can bring all those institutions back and then some, and they can tear down any institutions that Trump creates or takes over. The critical thing is that it be possible for the Democrats to win again in the future, and then that Republicans be able to win again in the future, and so on.

Re: Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceasing operations

#550

Post by cryptonector »

BeetleB wrote: post #44
Onawa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dissolution and dismantling of US gov institutions that we are witnessing is unprecedented in modern times. Hell, a few of the agencies being attacked were created with bipartisan support. I would say it isn't that our institutions were built on sand, more that its hard to stop a madman who broke into your house with a chainsaw (a la Musk) from knocking down a few load-bearing walls. It is easier to destroy almos…

> I would say it isn't that our institutions were built on sand, more that its hard to stop a madman who broke into your house with a chainsaw (a la Musk) from knocking down a few load-bearing walls. This isn't due to one man (Musk) or a rogue government agency, or even the executive branch. This is Congress, which tells you how bad things have gotten.

> This is Congress, which tells you how bad things have gotten.

Ok, but to be clear, Congress gets to. Congress has done about-faces like this before, yet the Republic is still here.

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