CNN Business | Trump’s victory over PBS and NPR ‘bias’ will be ‘devastating’ for rural areas, station leaders say

(CNN) — Public television stations will be “forced to make hard decisions in the weeks and months ahead,” PBS CEO Paula Kerger said Thursday, after lawmakers advanced a bill that cancels all the federal funding for the network and for NPR.

Radio and TV stations may need to lay off staffers and cut back on programming. Popular shows like “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” may reach fewer people. Big Bird of “Sesame Street” fame isn’t going away, but the financial system that supported him for decades is being stripped away.

House Republicans passed the spending cuts bill shortly after midnight Friday. Once President Trump signs the bill into law, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s budget will be zeroed out for the first time since 1967, back when television stations still broadcast in black and white.  –read more–