This is Scott Smith, General Manager of Allegheny Mountain Radio, and I’d like to take a moment to talk about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB is an American publicly funded non-profit corporation, created by The Public Broadcasting Act in 1967 to promote and help support public broadcasting. The corporation's mission is to ensure universal access to non-commercial, high-quality content and telecommunications services.

Many people think CPB, NPR and PBS are one and the same, but this is not the case. NPR and PBS do get funding from the CPB – roughly 1% of their total budgets. The bulk of CPB funds got to support small rural tv and radio stations, including Allegheny Mountain Radio. CPB funding accounts for approximately half of our annual budget.

A government funding appropriation bill which recently passed out of subcommittee would end all funding to the CPB. If the CPB goes away, NPR and PBS will be fine – Allegheny Mountain Radio will not. We will not be able to continue in our current format. What AMR would become is unsure yet, but it would likely mean the closure of one or more stations, reductions to an already small staff, and the loss of our local focus, and flavor.

If Allegheny Mountain Radio is important to you, I would urge you to contact your Congressional representatives and ask them to ensure continued funding for CPB.

.Convenient ways to do this are by visiting the website www.protectmypublicmedia.org, or by calling the U.S. House of Representatives switchboard at 202-225-3121 or the U.S. Senate switchboard at 202-224-3121, where you will be directly connected to your representatives’ office.

And as always, thank you for your support!