Federal cuts may hit Pittsburgh public broadcast media

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created through an act of Congress in 1967. It’s a private, nonprofit entity that holds no political stance but exists to channel federal funds to public media across a variety of platforms.

In Pittsburgh, that means WQED Multimedia, which operates television, FM-radio and digital stations. It also means Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting Corp., which has 90.5 WESA and 91.3 WYEP radio stations.

A White House budget office proposal to eliminate the CPB and, in effect, PBS and NPR, which receive grants from CPB, would be problematic locally but “devastating” to underserved populations, one executive said.

“If you go back to 1967, to when [Congress] started the CPB ... it was intended to be ubiquitous,” said Terry O’Reilly, president and CEO of Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting Corp.

“There was the idea that whether you lived in New York City or LA or Pittsburgh, you could have public media, but if you lived in the middle of Oklahoma or on a Native American reservation in Montana, that you’d have access to it, too,” he said.

CPB receives roughly $455 million annually from the federal government. It then distributes about half of that in grants to more than 1,100 locally owned and operated public television stations. Not quite another 25 percent goes to 360 public radio stations.

It also helps fund entities such as PBS, which collects membership fees and creates programming that the local stations purchase.

Government funding accounts for a small percentage of WQED’s annual operating budget of $11.6 million and PCBC’s budget of $5.6 million.

Federally funded public media costs each American $1.35 annually, with private donations from “Viewers Like You” accounting for the biggest share of stations’ revenues.

Maria Sciullo: msciullo@post-gazette.com or @MariaSciulloPG.