I am from the generation that first grew up with television. In the early days everything was black and white, literally. The shows rarely ran for more than thirty minutes and there were only three channels until PBS came along. At a certain time each night each station played the national anthem and went off the air until morning. 

I spent many evenings watching comedy shows with my father and Captain Kangaroo each morning after he went to work. After he died my mother restricted the number of hours that my brothers and I were allowed to spend in front of the television. The only time when we got away with total freedom was on Saturday mornings when we tuned in to our favorite kid shows that aired until around noon. Since our mother often slept in a bit on the weekend we took full advantage of being able to watch Fury, Sky King, My Friend Flicka and a host of other programming. 

As we grew older our mother was a tiny bit more permissive in expanding our free time in front of what became known as “the boob tube.” We began to look forward to Bonanza each week and even imagined what it must have been like to see that show in living color for the first time. It would be many more years until I was actually treated to the luxury of watching my favorite shows in anything other than black and white and shades of grey. 

After I got married my husband and I were both busy continuing our college educations so our television was more of a piece of furniture than a center for entertainment. Eventually we got more settled and turned our attention to watching reruns of Star Trek late in the evening when my husband came home from a nightshift at the bank where he worked. I still recall those late night viewings with utter delight. 

When I was still in the hospital after my second daughter was born I remember watching Sesame Street just an hour or so after she entered the world. After that PBS became the gold standard for viewing in our home. My little girls grew up on the programing for children on that local public station. I often watched the shows with them and realized how delightful they were and how much all of us learned from them. My husband and I found ourselves spending more and more of our own viewing time on PBS as well enjoying Masterpiece Theater and other wonderful offerings that seemed to be a cut above the less elegant programing on the three big stations. 

That is not to say that we did not find joy from ABC, NBC, and CBS. We had our favorites on each channel and we got our local news from those stations. Soon enough we installed cable television and then went to streaming services. Our television screen grew in size with a sound system worthy of a movie theater. The whole world seemed to be at our fingertips and yet we found ourselves reverting back to PBS again and again. I once remarked that if we were forced to choose only one outlet to watch forevermore I would pick PBS without hesitation. 

I can’t imagine how anyone considers PBS to be too liberal or biased. They simply offer a wide variety of programming that is generally of higher quality than much of what is available on other channels. As for the news hour, there is no doubt in my mind that it is more fair and balanced than any other source. It is old school in that it does more reporting of facts than analyzing what is right and what is wrong. Even the editorial discussions are presented by people representing both liberal and conservative thinking. I have always seen the Public Broadcasting System as one of the best investments of our tax payer dollars but I also understood that they need more than government money to insure the quality of their programming so I have donated to the fundraising efforts for many years. 

I am a late comer to NPR radio. I mostly listened to music for most of my adult life but my tastes began to change a bit as I grew older. In the city where I live the airwaves on the radio are filled with conservative talk radio that is so one sided that it is annoying. There are also dozens of Christian radio stations and those that offer programing and music for virtually every ethnic group . I was looking for a more information oriented channel when I stumbled upon NPR. I haven’t changed stations since I found it. Like PBS it is filled with programming that keeps me up to date with what is happening locally and on the state level in Texas. On the national level I get to hear incredible offerings like The Moth where people tell their stories and Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me which is a competition featuring the week’s news with a comic bent. I’ve learned how to cook and how to care for my car on NPR. It is a wonderful way to learn about music and musicians and to stay abreast to scientific inventiveness. 

I live in the fourth largest city in the United States so I hope that there will be enough of us supporting PBS and NPR to keep them going. I fear that we will soon be subjected to lots of advertisements and the kind of financial pressures that water down the freedom and honesty of other media sites. I am both saddened and angry that our Congressional representatives did not have enough foresight to keep these national treasures going and growing for now and the future.

I suspect that those who voted against funding for them have rarely if ever watched them. If they had taken to the time to see for themselves they would know that there is nothing suspect about these wonderful outlets. In fact, they are exactly the kind of responsible and educational sites that we should be wanting more and more. I’m ready to open my pocketbook to save these wonderful institutions that have been presenting quality programming for as long as I can remember. They are truely wonderful if we can keep them.