March 2017

Us Weekly, a celebrity magazine that has long been a staple at checkout counters, is changing hands. On March 15, American Media Inc., which owns entertainment publications like the National Enquirer and Radar Online, announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Us Weekly from Wenner Media, which has owned it since 1985. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but two people briefed on the deal said the price was $100 million. The acquisition of Us Weekly will give American Media a younger, more affluent audience, and a larger digital presence. It will also increase American Media’s heft in celebrity gossip — along with the National Enquirer and Radar Online, the company publishes the supermarket staples Star and OK!

When politicians talk about infrastructure, they typically mean the basics: Roads, bridges, ports. The electric grid. Maybe rail, if it's lucky. But Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai wants the government to expand that thinking by including a type of network that 3 out of 4 Americans use on a daily basis, but doesn't often make it on the politicians' lists: high-speed Internet.

“If Congress moves forward with a major infrastructure package, broadband should be included,” said Chairman Pai. He is proposing an ambitious program whereby the FCC could expand corporate subsidies for building networks while scaling back regulations that, he said, deter private investment. In addition, Chairman Pai is asking that Congress offer tax credits to Internet service providers and entrepreneurs who agree to set up shop in “gigabit opportunity zones” that could be as large as a county or as small as a city block.

President Trump's impending budget proposal is expected to include deep cuts to public media, among other things, which would surely delight Republican lawmakers who have been trying, on and off, to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for five decades. If Republican lawmakers are hoping to cripple political coverage by NPR and PBS, however, stopping the flow of taxpayer dollars to the CPB might not have the desired effect.

NPR relies on the corporation for less than 1 percent of its revenue, and PBS depends on the agency for less than 7 percent, according to data from 2014, the most recent year for which audited financial statements for all three entities were available. Because the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has low overhead costs, it distributes almost all of the taxpayer money it receives, in the form of grants. From its $445 million appropriation in 2014, the corporation paid out $441.7 million, or 99.3 percent. Defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would primarily affect local public broadcasters, not PBS and NPR. The CPB noted this when the wrote, "The federal investment in public media is vital seed money — especially for stations located in rural America, and those serving underserved populations where the appropriation counts for 40 to 50 percent of their budget. The loss of this seed money would have a devastating effect. These stations would have to raise approximately 200 percent more in private donations to replace the federal investment." In other words, defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would mean hurting the local TV and radio stations that a whole lot of Republican voters watch and listen to.