Due to the Trump/Congress clawback of funding for public broadcasting, the 13 GBH employees who work on the history documentary series have lost their jobs and production of new episodes is paused indefinitely. Reruns of American Experience documentaries from previous seasons will be broadcast instead. - Current
“In state-run media systems, a government agency hires editors, dictates coverage, and provides full funding from the treasury. Public officials determine — or make up — what is newsworthy. Media operations survive only so long as the party in power is happy. Public broadcasting in the U.S. works in almost exactly the opposite way.” - Nieman Lab
National Public Radio will cut its budget by about $8 million in order to provide that money to member stations most impacted by last week’s rescission of federal funding. - Houston Public Media
“Paramount agreed to buy the global streaming rights (to) South Park (for) the company's digital service, Paramount+, for the first time in the U.S. … The (five-year) deal with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, through their Park County production company, values the global streaming rights at $300 million a year.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
The report notes that "programmes about the arts, international issues, religion and belief were not readily available, prominent or discoverable, particularly on the platforms operated by commercial public service broadcasters". - The Stage
The UK government should intervene to make public broadcaster (PSB) content easier to find on YouTube, the regulator has urged, as it gravely posits that “time is running out” to save the sector. - Deadline
“I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles—it’s big fat bribe,” he said. - The New Yorker
“A report by Ofcom warns that UK-focused programming made by the British public service broadcasters (PSBs) – the BBC, ITV and Channels 4 and 5 – is under threat and there is a ‘strong case’ for legislation to make sure it is easy to find on third-party platforms,” notably YouTube. - The Guardian
“Donald Trump sued Dow Jones, News Corp, Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal reporters on Friday over an explosive report that the president wrote a 2003 birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein that contained suggestive language. Trump claims the Wall Street Journal and its journalists defamed him.” - Variety
Resistance from Murkowski and other lawmakers from rural states exposed an uncomfortable truth about federal funding for public media stations: Rural stations — often in red states — depend heavily on federal funding to survive, unlike stations in larger markets that can better tap donations from listeners with money to spare. - Washington Post
Neil Postman, who died in 2003, predicted that America wasn’t trending toward existence under the boot of totalitarianism, as in George Orwell’s “1984,” but drifting through the languorous haze of a feel-good dystopia that instead resembled Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” Postman was right. - Washington Post
When AI is generating all the scripts, performances, music and visual design, and there are no more creative humans whose work the machines can ingest and regurgitate, we may start to wonder why cinema is so homogenous and cold. - Unherd
The studio is now among the most popular A.I.-powered artists on the internet for its roster of subversive videos released on YouTube and then circulated rapidly across social media, which are made entirely by A.I. tools. It said its revenue crossed $1 million last year for its commercial projects. - The New York Times
Money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting accounts for about 5% of KUOW’s revenue — $1 million — and funds infrastructure like satellite interconnection and emergency alert systems. The additional $400,000-plus raised on Friday will be used to maintain the station’s satellite distribution system. - Seattle Times
People now watch YouTube on TV sets more than on their phones or any other device—an average of more than one billion hours each day. That is more viewing than Disney gets from its broadcast network, dozen-plus cable channels and three streaming services combined. - The Wall Street Journal
