Big Bird Gets Mickey Moused In Orlando

Gov. Lex Luthor Rick Scott is back in the news, this time for vetoing all state PBS funding, all but assuring that Orlando, Florida now becomes the first major US city to lose access to a public broadcasting station.

Just as a deal came together late last week to keep PBS programming on the air in Orlando, Florida’s public broadcasters suffered a financial blow when Gov. Rick Scott vetoed the state’s nearly $4.8 million appropriation for public broadcasting.

That figure had already been reduced by 30 percent from the amount broadcasters received last year. With the cuts, each of 13 public radio stations will lose $87,287 in state funds compared with last year, and each of the 13 public television stations will lose a subsidy of $434,837. Stations receive the same subsidy, regardless of size.

“For me, it is critical; for a small station it might be catastrophic,” said Rick Schneider, president and chief executive of Miami’s WPBT-TV. He said there was “no doubt that people are going to have to look at layoffs” and that he would not be surprised if some stations were shut down. The broadcasters will work to get the funds reinstated, he said.

Orlando’s WMFE-TV had already decided to leave public broadcasting, citing financial strain in its decision to sell itself to a religious broadcaster, which would have left the city without PBS programming on July 1.

But, on Thursday, the University of Central Florida in Orlando said it reached a partnership deal with WBCC, at Brevard Community College in nearby Cocoa. U.C.F. will invest up to $1 million in the college station, which had been the market’s secondary PBS station (and already offered some U.C.F. programming on a digital subchannel) and will now become the primary station, pending PBS approval. It will be renamed WUCF.

But now with the state's PBS funding gone, the WUCF deal is in real trouble.  That will leave Orlando with no PBS station.  But remember, Rick Scott insists that Florida must cut corporate taxes to zero on top of all of the financial mess they are in.  What a great guy.  No wonder his approval ratings just five months into his term are in the basement, and for the Republican-controlled legislature are even worse, both now in the upper 20's and falling in the latest Miami Herald state poll (yes, this means we've reached the Twenty-Seven Percent Solution already.)

No wonder Democrats are feeling increasingly confident in Florida, calling Gov. Scott their "secret weapon" in the state.