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Iowa PBS sticking with PBS

Mark Roberts

Mark Roberts

Though Arkansas's educational television authority says it's cutting ties with PBS, Iowa's not following suit, even though it's a strongly Republican-dominated state.

Dave Busiek, the former news director of KCCI in Des Moines, asked Iowa PBS this week about its plans regarding PBS:

Fortunately, Iowa viewers can breathe easier. Iowa PBS executive director Andrew Batt told me flatly, “We have no interest in withdrawing from PBS.” He notes that PBS supplies a huge share of the programming Iowans rely on—from “PBS NewsHour” to primetime series to daytime children’s shows. “They give us a lot of content,” he said.

But that content isn’t cheap. Iowa PBS pays $2.7 million a year to remain a PBS affiliate—more than 10% of its roughly $20 million budget.
Click to expand...
Link to Busiek's substack: No more “Sesame Street”: How politics just erased Arkansas PBS

To date, Arkansas is the only state that's withdrawing from PBS, though there are a few individual PBS stations that have made such a decision.

Thread regarding Arkansas: https://radiodiscussions.com/threads/arkansas-ending-pbs-programming-next-year.779019/
 
Good decision for Iowa PBS to keep their affiliation with PBS. This situation is similar to Alabama when they considered cutting their affiliation with PBS until Alabama Public Television board voted keeping their affiliation. This is not like NJ PBS losing their affiliation due to New Jersey within the viewing areas of WNET and WHYY or KCSM San Mateo/KPJK Santa Rosa losing their affiliation with PBS because they have to deal with the issue of KQED getting the majority of Public Media Donations in the San Francisco TV Market. The Arkansas one hit differently given that we have no idea who would cover the state and who would get a Superstation status to cover that state.

Yes but its not like KQED covering a next door TV Market like Monterey in addition to its home market San Francisco. Or KOCE Los Angeles is included in places like Santa Barbara and Palm Springs. It's rife with the fallout of the CPB recissions and the political decisions that made Arkansas TV go the way they did in cutting the PBS affiliation.
 


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