The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a cornerstone of U.S. culture for three generations, announced Friday it’s taking steps toward its own closure after Congress defunded it.

It would mark the end of a nearly six-decade era of fuelling the production of renowned educational programming, cultural content and even emergency alerts.

The planned closure of CPB, which was established in 1967, is said to be a direct result of U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that public media spread political and cultural views contrary to what the United States should be espousing.

It’s expected a CPB closure would have a profound impact on the journalistic and cultural landscape, in particular, public radio and TV stations in small communities across the United States.

CPB helps fund both the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), but most of the money it receives is distributed to more than 1,500 local public radio and television stations around the U.S.

A stuffed Cookie Monster, a Sesame Street character, is seated in the Arizona PBS control room on May 2. (Katie Oyan/The Associated Press)

The corporation also has deep ties to much of the country’s most familiar programming, from NPR’s All Things Considered to, historically, Sesame Street, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and the documentaries of Ken Burns.

The corporation said its end, 58 years after being signed into law by Lyndon Johnson when he was president, would come in an “orderly wind-down.”

In a statement, it said the decision came after Congress passed a package that clawed back its funding for the next two budget years — totalling about $1.1 billion US. The Senate appropriations committee reinforced that policy change Thursday by excluding funding for the corporation for the first time in more than 50 years as part of a broader spending bill.

“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,” said president and CEO Patricia Harrison. 

Last-ditch try at funding fails

Democratic members of the appropriations committee made a last-ditch effort this week to save the CBP’s funding.

As part of Thursday’s committee deliberations, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, authored but then withdrew an amendment to restore CPB funding for the coming budget year.

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She said she still believed there was a path forward “to fix this before there are devastating consequences for public radio and television stations across the country.”

“It’s hard to believe we’ve ended up in the situation we’re in and I’m going to continue to work with my colleagues to fix it.”

But Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia sounded a less optimistic tone.

“I understand your concerns, but we all know we litigated this two weeks ago,” Capito said. “Adopting this amendment would have been contrary to what we have already voted on.”

CPB said it informed employees Friday that most staff positions will end with the fiscal year on Sept. 30. It said a small transition team will stay in place until January to finish any remaining work, including “ensuring continuity for music rights and royalties that remain essential to the public media system.”

“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,” Harrison said. “We are deeply grateful to our partners across the system for their resilience, leadership and unwavering dedication to serving the American people.”

Widespread fallout expected

NPR stations use millions of dollars in federal funding to pay music licensing fees. Now, many will have to renegotiate these deals. That could impact, in particular, outlets that build their programming around music discovery.

NPR president and CEO Katherine Maher estimated recently, for example, that some 96 per cent of all classical music broadcast in the United States is on public radio stations.

The headquarters for NPR on North Capitol Street in Washington, D.C., are shown in 2013. (Charles Dharapak/The Associated Press)

Federal money for public radio and television has traditionally been appropriated to the CPB, which distributes it to NPR and PBS. Roughly 70 per cent of the money goes directly to the 330 PBS and 246 NPR stations across the country.

Trump, who has called the CPB a “monstrosity,” has long said that public broadcasting displays an extreme liberal bias, helped create the momentum in recent months for an anti-public broadcasting groundswell among his supporters in Congress and around the country.

It is part of a larger initiative in which he has targeted institutions — particularly cultural ones — that produce content or espouse attitudes he considers “un-American.”