Since I moved to Central Florida 25 years ago, WMFE, our local public television station, has been a big part of my life. When the kids were small, I could get a few precious minutes to myself courtesy of my live-in babysitters Big Bird and his pals on Sesame Street. My husband picked up countless tips that have saved us money on home repairs by watching Hometime and This Old House. Rick Steves gave me the travel bug and with his encouragement, I’ve been to Europe many times, avoiding tourist traps and enriching my experiences thanks to his advice. Julia Child? The woman single-handedly (the other one probably had a big bandage on it) transformed Americans' attitude toward cooking.
I still love public television. My DVR is full of old episodes of Nova. I’ve got Food, Inc. on there, and the Ken Burns series on our National Parks is sacrosanct. Just this week, I DVR’d Plan B: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
Conscious of the value I receive from my local PBS station, (or easily guilted into action) I’ve been a long-time donor, so it was a shock and disappointment when I opened an e-mail from them this morning to discover that the television station will be sold, as it is no longer financially viable for it to continue operating. From the e-mail:
What you may not be aware of, is that since 2007, direct TV support has decreased 68 percent from corporate donations and 40 percent from individuals. At the same time, the fees we pay for programming have risen and are projected to increase even more.
Like many areas of the country, Central Florida has been hard hit by the recession, so the drop in individual donations doesn’t surprise me. What does sadden, depress and anger me is the even bigger drop in corporate donations, at a time when corporate profits are at record levels.
The argument put forward by the management and Board of WMFE is that there are other public broadcasting stations which serve our area. True, but my cable company has moved the only other one to the top tier—accessible only to those who subscribe to digital cable. This, of course, means that people in the lowest income brackets who can’t afford premium cable or satellite won’t have access to the wonders of what was referred to in my youth at “educational tv.”
The press release didn’t explicitly cite the Republicans’ desire to defund NPR as a factor, but I’m sure it weighed on the decision process.
So, thank you so much, Republicans and corporate America. Your zeal to silence any possible critics of your radical agenda has left a hole in the lives of many people in Central Florida. I wonder what the companies who have been sponsoring programming on WMFE will do. Will they continue to invest in the community in other ways, or ignore the tax write-off and keep the money for themselves?