It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone.

Well, as you were just hearing on the news, 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rescission vote, rescission because they rescinded about $1.1 billion of tax money that Congress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. So what happens now? Well,

here's one take from former All Things Considered host, Michelle Norris, speaking yesterday on MSNBC.

Oh, we don't have the Michelle Norris clip. Okay, we'll try to come back to that. Instead, I will just say,

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

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