From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Thursday, July 17th.

The debate is apparently over in Washington on federal funding for public radio and television.

Around 2 o'clock this morning,

the Senate voted to eliminate it in what's known as a rescission vote, rescission because they rescinded about $1.1 billion of tax money that Congress had previously approved for the next two

fiscal years. The House had already passed this rescission, though they

need to vote again probably today or by tomorrow to formalize some changes the Senate made to the other

part of the bill, a much bigger rescission of foreign aid and one small change to the public

broadcasting part, but the House vote is considered pretty automatic at this point.

So for all practical purposes, I guess we have to say this morning

that the more than 50 years of federal funding for PBS, NPR,

and almost all the local public TV and radio stations,

including this one, is over as of the new fiscal year on October 1st,

unless some future Congress votes to restart it.

The Senate did make an exception for Native American tribal radio stations

at the request of Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota.

With more now, we are joined by the president and CEO of WNYC,

LaFontaine Oliver, who has multiple jobs in his background that should make him able to speak to

different aspects of the challenge ahead. Besides running the station, which is the biggest in the

nation, just by virtue of being in New York, the biggest market, he has run smaller public radio stations, so he understands the challenges that they will face,

which are in many ways different.

And he also has top-level national experience, including several years on the board of trustees of NPR itself.

Many of you may not have known this about LaFontaine.

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