WASHINGTON, D.C.—America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) and Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) both issued statements applauding the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee for proposing $535 million for the CPB for fiscal year 2026 and $60 million for public media stations’ interconnection system.

The APTS also commended the Committee for recommending that $53 million be spent for the Next Generation Warning System at FEMA to upgrade public broadcasting stations’ public safety infrastructure in fiscal year 2024. 

“America’s Public Television Stations are deeply grateful for the bipartisan support of the Senate Appropriations Committee for this continued investment in the work of public television,” said Patrick Butler, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations. 

Separately, Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the CPB commented on the Senate  Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (Labor-H) funding bill by saying “we are grateful for the strong bipartisan support in the Senate that provides level funding for CPB. This essential funding ensures that public media’s educational and informational content and services are available for free to all Americans.”

“Working under the challenging constraints of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, the committee nevertheless made clear its enduring endorsement of our public service missions of education, public safety and civic leadership,” Butler added. “The committee also made clear that fiscal responsibility need not mean a federal retreat from institutions which serve the American people in essential ways, as we do.”

Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies recommended providing no funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), effective in FY 2026, a cut of $535 million from the current appropriation. 

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies has recommended zeroing out public media funding in its FY 2024 appropriations bill, according to America’s Public Television Stations (APTS).

The bill reported out of the subcommittee today would provide no funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), effective in FY 2026, a cut of $535 million from the current appropriation.

There is also no funding for system interconnection and infrastructure for FY 2024, a cut of $60 million from current levels.

The APTS said that the bill does not include information 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 is a dark day for America’s Public Television Stations,” said APTS president and CEO Patrick Butler, “and we are only one of the casualties of a severe cutback that would also affect other important national institutions.”

“We understand the need for fiscal responsibility in the federal budget, and we are proud of the fact that America’s public television stations do so much for our communities and our country with an investment that constitutes less than one-hundredth of one percent of the federal budget – the very definition of fiscal responsibility,” Butler added, noting that ““We’re the only preschool education there is for 60 percent of America’s children. We’re indispensable partners in national, state and local public safety and homeland security communications, from early earthquake warnings in California to Amber Alerts everywhere to presidential communications in times of national emergency. And we’re the only media institutions in the country telling the story of heartland America: its history, culture and civic affairs.”

“We remain hopeful that the strong bipartisan support for public media, both in Congress and among the American people, will ultimately result in full funding for CPB, system interconnection and infrastructure, and Ready To Learn as the appropriations process moves forward,” Butler concluded. 

Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-Texas), is chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The Subcommittee chair is Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.).

WASHINGTON D.C.—America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) has announced the results of the election for its board leaders and trustees.

In terms of the results for Board Officers, Andrew Russell, president and CEO of PBS SoCal and KCET in Los Angeles, California, has been re-elected chair; Susi Elkins, director of broadcasting and general manager of WKAR Public Media at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, has been re-elected professional vice chair; and David Steward II, immediate past board chair of Nine PBS in St. Louis, Missouri, has been re-elected lay vice chair.

The newly-elected trustees are: Annette Herrington, commissioner of Arkansas PBS in Conway, Arkansas, as a lay trustee; John D. Zeglis, retired chairman and CEO of AT&T Wireless Services, former President of AT&T, and a member of the board of WNIT Public TV of South Bend, Indiana, as an at-large trustee. 

APTS Board of Trustees who were re-elected are: Carolyn Edwards, lay trustee of Vegas PBS in Las Vegas, Nevada; Susi Elkins, director of broadcasting and general manager, of WKAR Public Media/MI State University in East Lansing, Michigan; Franz Joachim, general manager and CEO of New Mexico PBS in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Garrett King, board member, Friends of OETA in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Vickie Lawson, president and CEO of East Tennessee PBS in Knoxville, Tennessee; David Steward II, immediate past board chair, Nine Network of Public Media in St. Louis, Missouri. 

John Zeglis began his board term on Wednesday, January 5, 2022. The officers and other trustees will begin their terms on Monday, February 28, 2022.

More biographical information on the officers and trustees can be found here. 

WASHINGTON, D.C.—America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) have issued a statement applauding Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) for recommending $565 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for Fiscal Year 2024.

The recommendation will likely serve as the basis for negotiations with the House of Representatives on the final appropriations bills. The House has already approved the same $565 million for CPB in the two-year advance funding for FY 2024.

APTS also noted that the draft Senate bill providing appropriations for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies also includes $30 million for Ready To Learn and $20 million for public broadcasting interconnection.  

“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 chairman’s mark would restore much of that loss — 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.”

Butler added that “we are also appreciative of the $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. And we are grateful for the $30 million 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.”

WASHINGTON—America’s Public Television Stations has issued a statement praising 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.”

Butler also noted that the APTS was pleased 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 importance of public broadcasting was highlighted during the pandemic, when it played an important role in offering distance learning to students when in person classes were cancelled, the group said. 

“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,” Butler said.  

The group also noted that “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.”

Such services could become more available as public stations roll out ATSC 3.0 signals. The NAB and Howard University recently demonstrated a remote learning prototype using NextGen TV broadcasts. 

WASHINGTON—The Senate Appropriations Committee has recommended that the Corporation of Public Broadcasting be allotted $465 million in funds for Fiscal Year 2021 in its draft spending bill—the same amount it was provided in FY 2020. America’s Public Television Stations, however, would like to see a bit of an increase to that number.

APTS notes that the House of Representatives proposed a $50 million increase to CPB’s FY 2021 budget in July and hopes that will be included in the final appropriations package.

Still, APTS commended the Senate’s proposal to maintain level funding for CPB, particularly as stations deal with the pandemic. The organization also praised the Senate committee’s recommendation of $29 million for the Ready to Learn program and $20 million to continue investing in interconnection.

“Public television stations have dramatically demonstrated their essential role in public service this year, standing up remote learning services in all 50 states in response to the coronavirus pandemic and using our datacasting capability to provide educational resources to students without broadband connections,” said Patrick Butler, president and CEO of APTS.

Butler said that public TV is ready to do more, including expanding public safety services, adopting the ATSC 3.0 next-gen standard and more investment into datacasting. “The greater the federal investment in this work, the more and better and faster we can do it,” he added.

More than 70% of funds committed to CPB go directly to local public TV and radio stations in the form of community service grants, according to APTS.

WASHINGTON—The FCC will need to update its rules regarding the use of broadcast spectrum to help promote the development and deployment of so-called “Broadcast Internet” services enabled by the U.S. broadcasting industry’s transition to ATSC 3.0 (aka “NextGen TV”).

In comments filed with the commission this week, America’s Public Television Stations and the Public Broadcasting Service (collectively, “Public Television”) responded to the commission’s NPRM on updating rules for the help broadcasters use ATSC 3.0 to offer datacasting services, a service that many public broadcasters are already doing via ATSC 1.0, but could be further enhanced by the advanced capabilities of the new standard. 

“Public Television is confident that local public TV stations will be at the forefront of new and innovative uses of ATSC 3.0 for Broadcast Internet,” they told the FCC. “Based on the services currently being provided over the ATSC 1.0 facilities of public TV stations, and experimentation to date using ATSC 3.0 test facilities, Public Television anticipates that Broadcast Internet services by public TV stations will focus on a variety of areas that further their public service missions, especially education, child development, public safety, national security, job training and telehealth.”

To do so, however, the organizations said the FCC will need to do several things.

One is to update the baseline requirements for public TV stations to use their spectrum to fulfill its three public service obligations: serve a community’s educational needs; advance educational programs; and furnish a nonprofit and noncommercial TV broadcast service. Currently FCC rules define the requirements as those met by a “substantial majority;” the public broadcasters want that baseline to be defined as a “simple” majority instead.

Public broadcasters also want the commission to update its rules to expand the definition of datacasting. “The FCC should recognize that a variety of datacasting and other innovative encrypted uses that are not traditional broadcasting but that “serve the educational needs of the community” or further the “advancement of educational programs” are clearly counted among the “primary” purposes (to which a majority of the station’s capacity must be dedicated) as permitted by the plain language of the rule,” they told the commission.

Lastly, they asked the commission to exempt noncommercial educational licensees from all ancillary and supplementary service fees “to the extent that the licensee confirms that the revenues from such services are used to support their non-profit public service activities.”

WASHINGTON—Executives representing noncommercial TV stations and PBS have met with FCC Media Bureau officials in person and by phone in the past two months to press their case for exempting noncom stations from simulcasting requirements in the transition to Next Gen (ATSC 3.0) TV transmissions, according to FCC documents.

The FCC is requiring TV stations to broadcast in both ATSC 3.0 and the current ATSC standard during a transition period since viewers can't receive the new transmissions without a new set or adapter and, unlike the digital transition, there is no program for subsidizing adapters.

In meetings with Martha Heller, chief of the Media Bureau's policy division, America's Public Television Stations EVP Lonna Thompson and PBS assistant general counsel Talia Rosen were pressing the case that the FCC should grant noncoms a blanket waiver of the requirement, given "the unique mission, structure, governance, finances, history, geographic layout, and regulatory treatment" of educational licensees.

ATSC 3.0 will allow for geographically targeted broadcasts and interactivity as well as 4K HD video.

Cable operators have opposed a blanket waiver for noncoms.

"Public broadcasters pay lip service to the need to serve viewers who receive their public television service over cable systems and other MVPDs but ask for the unilateral right to decide when to stop transmitting a viewable ATSC 1.0 signal based on vague and unenforceable factors," NCTA-The Internet & Television Association said in comments last year. "But this type of flash-cut approval is simply another way of arguing that broadcasters, not the Commission, should be able to determine when the transition to ATSC 3.0 ends ..."

Such a blanket waiver would indeed allow noncoms to "flash cut" to ATSC 3.0, but both APTS and PBS have told the FCC that is not their plan—given the centrality of their public service mission not to leave viewers behind—but that a blanket waiver would let them better plan for rolling out interactive curriculum-driven children’s content, advanced public safety measures and robust accessibility features on a rolling, market-by-market, basis.

If noncoms can't get a blanket waiver, they would like a presumptive waiver, which means that the FCC would presume they don't have to simulcast—like a presumption of innocence until proven guilty—and it would be up to opponents of a particular waiver to convince the FCC it was not in the public interest to grant it.

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

This story first appeared on TVT's sister publication B&C.