WASHINGTON—A week after the U.S. House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee made its recommendation for public broadcasting funding, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee did the same.
The approved funding will see $445 million provided to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2019 Fiscal Year, as well as level funding of $25.7 million for the 2017 Fiscal Year for Ready to Learn, and $10 million for the 2017 for the new public broadcasting interconnection system. According to America’s Public Television Stations President and CEO Patrick Butler, this is first time in six years that both the House Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee and the House Appropriations Committee have voted to provide funding to Ready to Learn, which supports the creation of public television’s on-air, online and on-the-ground educational media content.
“We very much appreciate the Committee’s broad bipartisan support for funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and through it the public service missions of 170 public television licensees serving 99 percent of the American people in the hundreds of communities around the country,” Butler said in a statement. “We remain hopeful that as the appropriations process runs its course, full funding of $50 million will be provided for the new interconnection system to help ensure that public television service remains available to every American everywhere, for free, particularly those in the most rural and remote regions.
“We are especially appreciative of the leadership of Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) and Ranking Member Nita Lowey (D-NY), and subcommittee chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) and Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), in creating a broad bipartisan consensus in favor of this funding. We are greatly encourage by this growing support in Congress—on both sides of the aisle—for public broadcasting’s essential public service missions in education, public safety and civic leadership, and we will continue to serve our communities across the country and earn that essential support every day.”
