Growing up in London, I took the BBC for granted. It formed part of my childhood rituals – in winter, hot chocolate in hand, I’d sit by the fire watching Newsround and Blue Peter. Grange Hill. Rentaghost. Jackanory. Five more minutes, then it’s time to do your homework. At 9 o’clock, mum and dad would switch on the news; a religious observance they still maintain today (only, since 2000, it has moved to 10 o’clock).
Later, it was Newsnight, Panorama, Arena, Horizon, Tomorrow’s World. I remember Judith Hann talking us through future predictions: sat nav in cars and video laser discs – the future of home entertainment. Peter Sissons, Moira Stuart, Martyn Lewis, and Michael Buerk explained what was happening in the Falklands, Northern Ireland, and why the miners were striking. They showed me the aftermath of the Brighton Hotel bombing, images of famine in Ethiopia, of Chernobyl, the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, of Hillsborough, and Tiananmen Square.
The BBC made me aware. And it made me care.
Thanks to our national broadcaster, my generation was raised not just as news literate, but we were taught to connect the dots around the world, too. We learned geopolitics without even knowing what that was. It’s probably why I became a journalist.
When I moved to America in 2003, 12-13 percent of American adults watched one of the nightly network news broadcasts on CBS, ABC or NBC. Today, that percentage has dropped to roughly half that. In the US, commercial media – NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and CNN – is driven by ratings, advertising, and subscriptions. And public trust in the media declines. Last month, a Gallup poll showed US trust in the media at 28 per cent – the lowest level ever recorded. Among Republicans, confidence in the media had plummeted to 8 per cent compared to 51 per cent of Democrats. When Gallup first began polling that question in the 1970s, trust in the media hovered around 70 per cent.
It was in a 2010 interview when President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said that he was “very worried that most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world”. Brzezinski was concerned that this lack of global awareness among the US public would make it difficult for the country to sustain responsible foreign policy leadership in an increasingly complex world. But he had no idea how much decline there would be in informed knowledge.
Today, in America, a 2025 survey from SmartNews found seven in 10 Americans (71 per cent) consume little to no foreign news and when they do, social media is the most popular source of that news (35 per cent). Ironically, when asked which news outlet they believe provides the most trustworthy foreign news coverage, respondents most frequently chose the BBC, followed by CNN and Fox News..
While there is a channel called PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), it’s a private charity organisation that is only partially funded by the state (15 per cent). With a mission statement to provide content that informs, educates, inspires and entertains, the intention is to serve citizens rather than consumers by providing high-quality, noncommercial programming which supports informed public discourse.
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PBS is free to watch but certain on-demand shows require a paid-for membership (Getty)
Since the 1960s, Congress has given money to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private nonprofit corporation, which in turn awards grants to local public stations. Those local member stations (there are about 350 in total) are independently owned public TV stations that employ producers, technical staff, fundraising staff, etc. and retain editorial control. The central PBS station, which does not run those member stations, provides programming, distribution, and other services to them in return for membership dues.
Anyone in America with a TV and an aerial can receive their local PBS station without paying a subscription. Viewers can also watch PBS through a cable or satellite subscription, or stream online via an app, but certain on-demand shows require a monthly donation in the form of a membership.
In the 1970s and 80s, PBS was free to watch – funding came from a mix of federal grants, donations, and corporate underwriting – and it was available if you had a TV aerial. It’s the same today, but few American households watch it that way. PBS Passport launched in the 2010s and requires a monthly donation to unlock full on-demand content.
Each month, PBS reaches over 36 million adult Americans via television (that’s 13.7 per cent of Americans over 18) and more than 15 million users on PBS streaming platforms (5.7 per cent of US adults). Today, Fox News has on average each night, roughly 2.5 times as many nightly viewers as PBS NewsHour. And that is not counting all the other commercial channels, plus cable networks, plus streaming combined. In fact, in May, streaming services dethroned broadcast and cable television in the US, winning more viewers than both broadcast and cable put together.
And like every channel, PBS is now competing with the big streamers like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO. Today, it’s one of many options, and under a Trump administration, it’s really struggling. As Steve Bass, Former CEO of Oregon Public Broadcasting, a PBS affiliate, wrote: “Audiences grew for public broadcasting in an environment of limited competition.” Times have changed.
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Shows such as ‘Sesame Street’ have become globally loved after debuting on public broadcasting in the US (Netflix)
Of course, the BBC is the UK’s PBS on steroids, and losing it would leave a far bigger hole, because its scope and influence are vastly bigger. PBS would need to reach 183 million additional American adults per month to match the BBC’s proportional coverage of UK households.
Under the current charter, the BBC is funded almost entirely by the licence fee – which covers TV, radio, online, entertainment and drama. The number of households paying the £174 annual fee has fallen (latest official figures show roughly 4.8 million households do not have a licence), but it still generates annual revenue of around £3.8bn per year.
The BBC is having to fight harder than ever to make its case for a public service universal licence fee. Not only is it having to compete with streaming services, but today, when we pay for something, the expectation is that it represents our views. In 2024, 71 per cent of UK adults said they consumed news via online sources, with more than half of UK adults turning to social media. In 2025, when we can create our political bubbles, the idea of hearing or seeing what “the other side” has to say is rapidly becoming anathema to many.
The BBC may have suffered a brutal blow this week, but with the renewal of its charter on the horizon, the fight to protect independent public broadcasting is just beginning.
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PBS recently announced it was cutting around 15 per cent of jobs due to the move by Republicans in Congress to eliminate all federal funding for public broadcasting (AFP/Getty)
PBS may not be the behemoth that is the BBC, but it is too battling to survive under Trump-era defunding. Four months ago, the US president signed an executive order cancelling $9bn (£6.83bn) of federal money earmarked for both public broadcasting (including funds for PBS) and foreign aid. On the White House website, that order is headlined “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media”.
In September, PBS’s chief executive told public television officials that it was cutting about 15 per cent of jobs due to the move by Republicans in Congress to eliminate all federal funding for public broadcasting.
PBS is certainly diminished, but not beaten and determined to continue despite relentless threats. PBS (along with one of its member stations) have filed a lawsuit challenging the executive order, arguing it violates the first amendment and improperly conditions funding based on editorial content. That lawsuit is still pending.
In this age of disinformation, it’s clear to me that what’s at stake, on both sides of the Atlantic, is how future generations will understand our world. And, we must fight like hell to defend it.