Credit...Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times
Corporation for Public Broadcasting Votes to Shut Down
Executives debated whether to allow the corporation to lie dormant after federal funding ended last year, but decided against it.
by https://www.nytimes.com/by/benjamin-mullin · NY TimesThe Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funded NPR, PBS and hundreds of local radio and TV stations across the United States for more than a half-century, said on Monday that its board of directors had voted to dissolve the organization because Congress cut off its federal money.
The vote formalized plans announced last year to wind down operations after lawmakers voted to strip more than $500 million in annual funding from the organization. Executives have been emptying the corporation’s coffers in recent months by making grants to public media organizations.
After the federal funding ended, executives at the corporation discussed putting the organization into hibernation, keeping it alive in case Congress eventually voted to restore its federal appropriation. But in a statement on Monday, the corporation said that allowing the organization to lie dormant could have resulted in “political manipulation or misuse,” threatening the independence of public media.
“C.P.B.’s final act would be to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks,” Patricia Harrison, the president and chief executive of the corporation, said in a statement.
The end of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, founded in 1968, begins a new era in public media, with local stations across the United States fighting for survival. Donations from listeners are up, and philanthropists have stepped in, but the long-term future of public TV and radio is far from certain.