WASHINGTON—The House Appropriations Committee has officially proposed $515 million in advanced funding for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting in Fiscal Year 2023, which would represent a $50 million increase from the $465 million in funding it received in 2020.

The proposal is included in the FY 2021 Departments of Labor, Health & Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill.

In addition to the increase for FY 2023, the proposal has recommended level funding of $20 million in FY 2021 for station interconnection, what American Public Television Stations (APTS)—which provided the proposal details via a press release—calls “the backbone of the public broadcasting system.”

The proposal also would commit $30 million in FY 2021 to Ready To Learn, a competitive grant program at the Department of Education that supports public television’s work in early childhood education. 

In addition to education, which public broadcast stations took on an increase role in during the COVID-19 pandemic with remote learning, public broadcasting funds also help with public safety services and providing platforms for state governments to produce programming regarding local affairs, elections and history, according to APTS.

“The federal investment in public broadcasting is essential to local public television stations’ public service missions of education, public safety and civic leadership, and to ensuring that everyone, everywhere, every day has access to these essential services,” said Patrick Butler, president and CEO of APTS.

“We are encouraged that this bipartisan congressional support continues to grow year by year, and we will do our best to earn this support every day in service to America’s communities,” Butler added.

WASHINGTON—A week after the U.S. House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee made its recommendation for public broadcasting funding, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee did the same.

The approved funding will see $445 million provided to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2019 Fiscal Year, as well as level funding of $25.7 million for the 2017 Fiscal Year for Ready to Learn, and $10 million for the 2017 for the new public broadcasting interconnection system. According to America’s Public Television Stations President and CEO Patrick Butler, this is first time in six years that both the House Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee and the House Appropriations Committee have voted to provide funding to Ready to Learn, which supports the creation of public television’s on-air, online and on-the-ground educational media content.

“We very much appreciate the Committee’s broad bipartisan support for funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and through it the public service missions of 170 public television licensees serving 99 percent of the American people in the hundreds of communities around the country,” Butler said in a statement. “We remain hopeful that as the appropriations process runs its course, full funding of $50 million will be provided for the new interconnection system to help ensure that public television service remains available to every American everywhere, for free, particularly those in the most rural and remote regions.

“We are especially appreciative of the leadership of Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) and Ranking Member Nita Lowey (D-NY), and subcommittee chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) and Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), in creating a broad bipartisan consensus in favor of this funding. We are greatly encourage by this growing support in Congress—on both sides of the aisle—for public broadcasting’s essential public service missions in education, public safety and civic leadership, and we will continue to serve our communities across the country and earn that essential support every day.”