Report: Trump Targets CPB, ONDCP, NEA

The Donald Trump Administration's 2018 budget, which is still a work in progress, may target funding for noncommercial TV (the Corporation for Public Broadcasting), the National Endowments for the Arts (NEA) and Humanities and the office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).

That is according to the New York Times, which says those are on a "hit list" of programs that could be part of domestic spending cuts in the budget, expected to be released in the next couple of weeks now that OMB director Mick Mulvaney has been installed.

CPB was created by Congress to disburse government support for noncommercial TV and radio, which only amounts to about 15% or so of their budgets—the rest comes from corporations and viewers who contribute.

Noncommercial funding has been a target for years, even during the Obama Administration from a budget-cutting advisory committee to the President, though more recently it got bipartisan support on the Hill for full funding.

NEA has similarly drawn heavy Republican criticism for some of the art projects it has funded.

ONDCP is a familiar name for its National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, into which it pumped over a billion and a half dollars to, among other things, pay-TV content producers to work anti-drug messages into TV shows.

Media accepting the public service announcements had to match the dollars spent by the government on ad time with an equivalent value in public-service announcements, programming or other activities.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.