Like many of us I know that public broadcasting is in the sights of the Trump administration for massive cuts and perhaps elimination. This very real possibility came home to me when I realized that it was in 1965, 60 years ago, when I was 16, that I had my first job. It was for a public television station,.
It was a summer job, for WMHT, Channel 17, in Schenectady, New York. I was a photographer, darkroom tech (yes, photos were made in darkrooms back then), and production assistant. It was a great place to work and to produce quality programs, different from the local commercial stations. I helped with the publicity photography for a documentary the station made on pollution in the Hudson River, called “A Melon in the River.”
The station also broadcast a number of great shows that remain among my all-time favorites. I often wish PBS would dig into its archives and show again “Pablo Casals Master Class” – tapes of the great cellist in one-on-one instruction with his best cello students – and “Conversations with Eric Hoffer,” in which a conservative longshoreman and labor leader would speak spontaneously, and brilliantly, on whatever came into his mind.
My time at WMHT was before PBS even existed. We were “educational television” back then, but with the same mission, to bring new and innovative non-commercial programming to as many people as possible. It was a brilliant success and still offers some of the very best broadcasting anywhere, both in its video and radio versions. It is still the news and programming service that knits together all the smaller communities in Alaska.
So why is it being attacked and targeted? Why is it being wrongly condemned by right-wing politicians as biased, against all the evidence? We could debate it endlessly, but the fact is that if public broadcasting is to continue, we need to do two things:
First, we should all write strong letters of support to both our congressional delegation and our state legislature, demanding continued support for public broadcasting.
And second, we should contribute individually to public broadcasting and its Alaskan affiliates. In Alaska that means Alaska Public Media (Alaskapublic.org), the state affiliate of PBS that supplies programming to most of the state, including Juneau; and to CoastAlaska, which manages broadcast services for all the public radio stations in Southeast Alaska, including KTOO and KRNN in Juneau (coastalaska.org). These are the good folks who bring us the live feed of the Alaska Folk Festival, the Alaska Legislature, local news, and many other important events.
Without these entities and the people who work there, Alaska would be a poorer place.
• Douglas Mertz is a Juneau resident.
