I grew up watching Sesame Street and The Electric Company on PBS, where curiosity and learning were celebrated every day. Like many readers of the Chattanoogan, these programs shaped my childhood by fostering an early love of learning that prepared me for school.
Today, WTCI provides that same vital link for countless families throughout the Tennessee Valley, helping kids learn how to learn in ways that commercial broadcasts and social media simply cannot.
Unfortunately, President Trump has proposed rescinding $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, jeopardizing local PBS member stations like Chattanooga’s WTCI-TV. Losing these federal funds could devastate WTCI’s award-winning educational initiatives, as well as its outstanding local programming.
Critics unfairly dismiss public media as unnecessary or biased, but the data tells a different story: poll after poll indicates that PBS has been among America’s most trusted media organizations for decades. Eliminating funding for WTCI does nothing but dismantle a valued Chattanooga institution and essential public resource. The result will not be savings for taxpayers -- instead, we'll only be more polarized, less informed, and without a valuable educational resource that so many families rely on.
Chattanooga must stand up to defend this shared resource and the enduring value it provides.
Kerry Hayes
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PBS/NPR have historically been insular elitist entities with audiences with the liberal proclivity for attacking ad hominem anyone who dared criticize.
Only when an insider like Senior Editor Uri Berliner echoed what we already knew have they pretended to be balanced. NPR in Berliner’s words offered “the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.”
If PBS/NPR were as valuable to the public as claimed here they wouldn’t need taxpayer support, yet their proponents assume WTCI is not valuable enough to the community to draw a supporting audience like the other self supporting 22+ self supporting licensed stations in our listening area.
Patrick “Steve” Campbell
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I am answering Kerry Hayes’ call to stand up for PBS funding and I respectfully request Congressman Fleischmann to do the same.
I don’t have the figures for the number of local folks who cherish the programming on WTCI (PBS) and WUTC (NPR), but nationally PBS and NPR are enjoyed by an estimated 170 million citizens, of which I am one. That number exceeds the total number of votes cast in the 2024 presidential election (155,238,302), which was won by a popular vote of less than 2.5 million. This should give pause to every member of Congress considering the President’s request to rescind the funding for PBS and NPR that had previously been approved by Congress and signed into law.
My instinct is that the 2026 elections would bring swift retribution to members of Congress who take part in robbing the American people of these beloved educational and cultural treasures.
I only hope that it doesn’t come to that.
Steve Winningham
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In his letter supporting more government funding for NPR and PBS, Steve Winningham says, "I don’t have the figures for the number of local folks who cherish the programming on WTCI (PBS) and WUTC (NPR), but nationally PBS and NPR are enjoyed by an estimated 170 million citizens, of which I am one. That number exceeds the total number of votes cast in the 2024 presidential election (155,238,302), which was won by a popular vote of less than 2.5 million."
That is exactly why neither NPR nor PBS should get any more taxpayers' dollars. They are both popular enough to survive and perhaps even thrive in a free market, supported voluntarily by their willing audiences.
Andy Walker
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I would have to guess that Patrick "Steve” Campbell does not watch public TV or listen to public radio. Because they are too biased. He probably watches FOX where everything is pure, simple, unbiased, honest and true to genuine journalistic standards. I don’t think that Mr. Campbell knows that public TV and radio cannot accept advertisements like ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN.
There is no such thing as a self-supporting broadcast station, whether it be radio or TV, aside from the public stations they are supported by advertisers and I have seen newspapers that ran an editorial that most of their advertisers disagreed with and withdrew advertising all together. I have seen TV stations with the same problem.
Raleigh Perry