Public Broadcasting Has Always Been a Home for Comedy

On Friday, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced that it would be shutting down after President Donald Trump pulled $1.1 billion in funding for the institution. CPB oversaw federal funding for 1,286 public radio stations and 365 public TV stations, which 99 percent of Americans had access to. This is obviously a devastating blow to accessible, local information for communities throughout the U.S. 

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB President Patricia Harrison said in a statement released to the public. 

“Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse and cultural connection to every corner of the country," she continued.

While CPB isn’t the sole funder of those 1,286 radio stations, the vast majority of them heavily rely on CPB according to NPR, which also gets some funding through CPB. Some stations, such as the behemoth that is NPR, will be able to continue to operate — though it remains to be seen at what sort of scale and capacity. 

Other public radio stations and TV stations might have to shutter completely. CPB will lay off nearly all staff by September 30th, keeping on a few people through January to ensure compliance. 

Beyond the sheer evil motivating Trump to pull this funding, and how it will take away vital access to information in rural communities — it will also kill another home to comedy. Saturday Night Live started as a radio show, for Christ's sake. Whether it’s popular current programs like WNYC’s All of It, or The Novelizers on Cincinnati Public Radio, PBS comedy specials like Stand Up Planet, or timeless classics like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, all of it is now at risk of disappearing.

That doesn’t even cover the hyper-local shows that you probably wouldn’t know about unless you lived there. Whether it was comedy itself or a space to inform and discuss the things making us laugh, public broadcasting was an opportunity for it to exist. It’s not like public radio and television were thriving until today — there’s been a steady decline in audiences for years now. But that doesn’t mean public radio and TV isn’t still a cornerstone for our society. 

 And while it’s all secondary to the other major losses coming with CPB’s closure — infrastructure for emergency alert systems and developing content for underserved communities — it’s still infuriating. Trump wants to control information, of course, but he’s also trying to control when and how we laugh.