March 2017

The local PBS stations that would be hardest hit by President Trump’s proposed budget cuts are in states that voted for Trump. Public television receives about 15 percent of its funding from federal sources, according to PBS. But in rural parts of the country — most of which voted overwhelmingly for Trump — that federal funding represents a much larger portion of the budget. Federal taxes provide up to 50 percent of the money for some stations. Federal tax dollars for public TV are administered through the private Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has a $445 million annual budget.

Among the PBS member stations that get roughly half their budgets from the CPB is KYUK in Bethel (AK). Bill Legere, the general manager of KTOO — a joint radio and TV station which serves the approximately 33,000 residents of Juneau (AK) and surrounding villages — said his station would be “devastated” by the proposed cuts. “If there was anything left of the service we provide, there would be very little local content,” Legere said. “Very little content that’s responsive to Alaskan interests and needs. If we could even stay in business.” Alaska voted overwhelmingly for Trump. But Legere said most residents would be “shocked to think about not having this service available here.” In fact, a study commissioned by PBS last year found that 70 percent of Trump voters would oppose cuts to public broadcasting.

President Donald Trump's budget blueprint calls for eliminating dozens of government programs and zeroing out funding for 19 independent agencies. And that may only be a preview of things to come as the Trump administration seeks to reorganize the executive branch. On March 13, President Trump signed the "Presidential Executive Order on a Comprehensive Plan for Reorganizing the Executive Branch," which calls for the director of the Office of Management and Budget to consult with agency heads and within a year develop a plan for improving government efficiency.

A year from now, when President Trump is presented with a plan for reorganizing the government, perhaps even eliminating whole agencies, a major question will be how much political capital the president has to spare. And that will likely depend on whether Congress has passed the health care bill and his yet-to-be-unveiled tax-cut plan.

Network neutrality is in danger, and former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler isn’t pleased. Republicans’ go-to argument against the order is that it gave the FCC the authority to regulate the internet. Wheeler, who stepped down as FCC chair on Inauguration Day in 2017, calls the idea “ridiculous.” “This is no more the regulation of the internet than the First Amendment is the regulation of free speech,” Wheeler said.

The Competitive Carriers Association says the Federal Communications Commission has plenty of reason for undoing the October 2016 broadband privacy order, which Internet service providers, advertisers, congressional Republicans and others are pushing for. In reply comments this week on petitions for reconsideration and those opposing them, CCA said those opposing the rule rollback rely on arguments that "deny the reality of the broadband marketplace" and either "ignore or minimize" the authority the FCC will still have over privacy after the order is dispensed with. One of those realities, CCA says, is that the order is uniquely burdensome on smaller providers, who get "very limited relief" from the rules, and only those with 100,000 subs or fewer, which they argue is too narrow a definition.

The FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai in a separate proceeding expanded the carve-out from Open Internet enhanced transparency rules from systems with 100,000 subs or fewer to 250,000 or fewer to accommodate smaller carriers. CCA applauded the Pai FCC's vote to stay the data-security provisions of the broadband privacy order, saying it prevented them "from investing substantial and potentially unnecessary resources towards compliance."