CPB is the non-profit corporation which funds NPR and PBS.
“CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority,” Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the CPB, said in a statement Friday. “Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government.”
She continued, “In creating CPB, Congress expressly forbade ‘any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors.’”
Correct-ish?
Remembering seeing the DoEd tree seal after Arthur? Or the NSF logo after NOVA?
These were indicators that a non-zero dollar number of federal funds from those agencies went towards production of that show. According to the US government, about 5-15% on average of any given station’s funding comes from either CPB or a federal source. Obviously this is a really sneaky, shitty way of representing this because 98-99% of CPB’s funds do not come from the government and it also doesn’t break down which percentage of that 5-15% comes from CPB or which percentage comes from a federal agency.
A very small amount of CPB’s total funding does actually come from the federal government. The federal allocation to CPB for 2025 was $530 million. The combined direct and indirect federal funds make up between 1% and 2% of CPB’s total funding, and are non-discretionary meaning that every cent is earmarked for a specific use.
Most of that funding goes to keeping the lights on at affiliate stations based on need or to create very specific pieces of PBS programming produced by individual stations such as WGBH-TV in Boston or WQED in Philadelphia.
NOVA, Frontline, Masterpiece (Theater), This Old House, American Experience, Victory Garden, Julia Child’s cooking shows, Zoom, and Arthur are all WGBH shows that were/are at least partially funded in this way. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was produced similarly by WQED. Magic School Bus was produced by the South Carolina PBS affiliates, through SCETV.
TLDR:
PBS didn’t lie: This program was made possible by contributions from Viewers Like You. Those contributions didn’t come from tax dollars, they came from people like you and me calling into PBS telethons and making donations. Older folks leaving funds in their will to their beloved local stations. PMC weirdos who had a crisis of conscience and decided to throw a shitload of money into a trust fund that can only be used to pay for traditionally animated children’s educational programming for some reason.