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•  ‘It’s Just Gone’: GOP Funding Cuts for Public Media Pose Existential Threat to KEET-TV, Station’s GM Says

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Two not-unrelated items in the news today.

1. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, once the country’s clearinghouse for the public funding of public television and public radio, is closing up shop, following its financial evisceration in the Big, Beautiful Bill.
2. Our local PBS station, KEET-TV, has, as of today, canceled its weekly news broadcast — Headline Humboldt, presented by former Times-Standard reporter and Outpost contributor James Faulk. Tonight’s show will be the last.

KEET has been hurting very badly for the last few months, as our Ryan Burns explored in detail a couple of weeks ago. Not only has half its funding instantly evaporated, but it’s been off the broadcast airwaves for quite a while now, having suffered damage to its transmitter.

Headline Humboldt was kind of a throwback program, in which Faulk ran down the news of the week in a Cronkite-ish fashion and then held a conversation with some local newsmaker or another. Faulk brought some energy to the thing. It’s sad to see it go.

If you want to tune into tonight’s final program, it’ll livestream on KEET’s YouTube channel starting at 7 p.m. Faulk’s guest will be Eric Kirk, a local attorney and omnipresent political commentator. 

KEET is looking very shaky, but here’s hoping Faulk keeps going in some fashion or another. The truth is out there.