APTS Praises Washington for Preserving Noncommercial TV Funding

The Association of Public Television Stations gave the White House and Congress a shout-out for preserving noncom funding in the FY2012 appropriations bill that was approved over the weekend and signed by President Barack Obama.

That funding had been under fire, including from a bipartisan panel advising the administration on budget cuts, but in the end the Corporation for Public Broadcasting got $445 million for FY2012, it is forward-funded to try to insulate it from politics, plus preservation of that forward-funding mechanism, which some Republicans wanted to phase out. The bill also retains $27.2 million for Ready To Learn, the curriculum-based early learning program that has been in Republican sites since its somewhat-less-curriculum-based days of the Postcards from Buster controversy.