On the recordFebruary 11, 2011
This next week we are going to have a very interesting conversation here in Washington, D.C., where the zeal that some of our friends have for both an ideological agenda and an effort at trying to cut government spending wherever they can, will put public broadcasting in the crosshairs. I think it's an unfortunate development, one that's going to be a disappointment to the 170 million Americans who rely on public broadcasting every month. It's going to be particularly unfortunate if this agenda succeeds because it's not going to punish people in New York, or Portland, Oregon, or Seattle, or San Francisco. They will always have public broadcasting, although it will be diminished because of what some of my friends on the other side of the aisle hope to accomplish. But the real losers are going to be people in small-town and rural America. It costs 11 times as much to broadcast a signal to the far reaches of eastern Oregon than it does in the metropolitan Portland area. People should watch this discussion carefully. A lot depends on it.
