1. Monthly archive
  2. February 2020

February 2020

Statement from CPB on the President’s FY 2021 Budget Proposal Eliminating Funding for Public Media

We look forward to working with Congress in the continued pursuit of our statutory public service mission of supporting educational, informational and diverse content that addresses the needs of our nation’s citizens -- a mission the American people overwhelmingly trust in and support. The federal appropriation to CPB is the foundation of our uniquely American, public-private partnership that supports our nation’s public media system --  a system of more than 1,500 locally controlled and operated public television and radio stations across the country.

FCC Mapping Rules Draw Fresh Criticism Amid $20.4B Disbursal

Stakeholder reactions to the Federal Communications Commission's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund have been mixed. The new FCC money will be divvied up in two phases, with the first distributing the majority of the funds, $16 billion, to Census blocks where data shows no service is available. What some stakeholders take issue with, however, is that the FCC is using Form 477 data, which has driven its funding in the past but has also been widely criticized.

FY 2021 FCC Budget Estimate

For FY 2021, the Federal Communications Commission is requesting the following budget and personnel amounts:

Starks Statement on Rural Digital Opportunity Fund

  1. I have zero tolerance for continuing to spend precious universal service funds based on bad data. There is bipartisan—and nearly universal—agreement that our existing broadband deployment data contains fundamental flaws. And yet today’s Report and Order presses ahead with funding decisions based on mapping data that doesn’t reflect reality, plowing the same mission-critical error into a newer, much larger program. We must do better.
  2. We have not done enough to ensure that once broadband is available, families can actually afford it. 

Rosenworcel Statement on Rural Digital Opportunity Fund

While the spirit of this effort is right on—we have a broadband problem—the way we go about addressing it is not right. It will leave so many people, so many communities, and so many places behind. Let me explain why.

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