A leftist critique for defunding PBS

We don't own the content: we can do better. And if we can't, we're not losing much.

For the purposes of this article, I ignore the distinction between the Center for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service.

Defunding PBS isn’t very unpopular as far as Republican priorities go. According to a Pew Poll from March 25, 2025, which polled on PBS and NPR,

• A minority — 43% — want to see PBS funded.¹

• A minority — 24% — want to see PBS defunded.

• 33% are unsure.

Defunding PBS only trails funding PBS by 20 points! Compare that to the chasm of a 94% disagreement on the Republican coverup and handling of the Epstein files. Still, for me this is alarming. I have a son. He watches material funded by PBS. I understand the visceral desire to save it and the liberal outrage.

Why then am I relatively indifferent to defunding it? I have two reasons. For this I’ll focus on one element of PBS which is probably the most beloved: Sesame Street. The show I personally grew up on. The last 10 years have been peppered with campaigns which have been built around framing the demise of Sesame Street as apocalyptic: take for example this five year old clip from AJ+, “Why There Will Never Be Another Sesame Street.” In this article, I’ll optimistically challenge that narrative.

The Left’s problem with PBS

With regard to PBS, there are two problems facing it today:

• The content doesn’t stand out.

• The ownership of the material doesn’t stand out.

As for the content not standing out: that’s simple: Ms. Rachel is amazing. I don’t have a strong opinion as to what is better for my son: Ms. Rachel, or Sesame Street. Newer material has come along which, even if not better, is comparable.

The other issue is the focal point of my gripe. It is what I see as a critical failure of PBS: the ownership model of the content they fund.

Content Ownership

Now that I’m older and have a child, I want to download Sesame Street for him. I want that to be the only content on his video player. I have funded this content, one may reason it’s mine. However, it’s not, and I can’t do this — legally anyway.

Rando public domain image for thumbnail

Sesame Street is not in the public domain, and there is no license that would allow me to make use of the content. Like any Tesla or Apple product you’ll never “own” Sesame Street. This is probably a shock, since you pay five million dollars a year to fund it. However, it is what it is. The characters are privately owned. The show is privately owned. PBS only ever obtains a “license” for it. As does HBO, and Netflix.

• I can’t download the episodes.

• I can’t publicly show them.

• I can’t use them in my own products and services.

This is in my opinion crazy. I’m being asked to fund Sesame Workshop — a private franchise — which I have no control over in exchange for very limited access to the material I funded. That access is defined in their “Terms of Use" where they write,

We require users to respect our copyrights, trademarks, and other intellectual property rights; we enforce those rights.

Their copyrights? Why am I funding the growth of “their copyrights?” How is this different from funding Disney with tax money? Granted, Disney is corporately owned rather than owned by a non-profit, but does it matter? And, if so, why? I don’t want a nicer owner. I want to own it.

How does this propriety play out? Sesame Workshop sues companies for making “knock-off” products available which is capitalist for “more affordable:” a lack of licensing fees makes the product cheaper with the cost-savings rolled back to the consumer. They attempt to control culture by restricting use of references to Sesame Street. And, they issue DMCA takedowns on YouTube for people who share “their” content. While I can’t find any examples of them suing individuals for personal infringement, they could liquidate their entire catalog and sell it to Disney or Lionsgate at any point in time which certainly would prosecute personal infringement.

I’m not trying to make Sesame Worship out to be malicious. On the contrary, they’re at the very least exceptionally transparent². According to their filings in 2024,

• Their CEO, Stephen Youngwood, makes in excess of 1 million.

• The president makes in excess of $850,000.

• The next 11 highest earners in the organization average $420,000.

It’s interesting how much money there is to be made managing the copyrights and trademarks on the business side for content that we should own.

If it seems abrasive to attack Sesame Street, there is no nice way for Sesame Street to own that which we already paid for. There is no nice way to direct government funds into driving the further growth of an asset portfolio which currently sits at $560 million USD. There is no nice way to take money from PBS licensing when your yearly revenue is $187 million USD.

The commons, or die

Change the dynamic a bit, and my reception would be totally different. If we owned the characters and the franchise collectively then public educators could use, modify, and adapt the characters as they’d see fit. If I could download the episodes legally, I could host and stream the episodes internally in my house. I could take them on road trips without needing an internet connection. Everything about my assessment would change. Then we’d be justifying an investment rather than a subscription. I would love to see open text books, coloring books, and interactive material made with Sesame Street characters; I have none of that because it’s not ours.

All of these issues raised are remedied with the Creative Commons licenses. If Sesame Street was licensed under CC-SA-BY, you could remix, modify, and share the content that you’re funding. But, as Americans, we can be even more demanding than that. We have a category for things that all Americans own in common, the “public domain.” Things we fund should immediately be placed in it. Not held by a private non-profit holding company.

Conclusion

I want my country to own the children’s shows we fund. For five million dollars a year, we should be working towards that. Not funding a cartel of Elmo via Sesame Workshop, or “The Fred Rogers Company” (the similar non-profit holding firm for Mr. Rogers). We shouldn’t be putting ourselves in a position to perpetually license the content we already funded. It’s unacceptable, and we should demand more.

The last time we lost a beloved resource owned by a private entity which time has shown no one would miss was Britannica. Britannica was an Encyclopedia owned by the University of Chicago. It was one of many that you could purchase in print, and digitally. In the 1990s, every middle school, high school, and library owned both formats. A single copy cost $1,500. A subscription (still sold) runs $199/year. If you feel an Encyclopedia is necessary for education, imagine forcing all educational institutions to license or buy a copy. Worse, imagine a world where public schools were sued for recording and distributing content owned by the publisher of Britannica. This was the state of affairs.

Now we all have Wikipedia. Individuals made the investment to create an Encyclopedia which we all own. You can copy it, edit it, modify it, use it in your educational materials, talk about it in anyway you’d like, reproduce it (fully), download it and host it offline. For all its shortcomings, it’s ours. I wouldn’t go back to Britannica even if they stopped charging. This is the mode of ownership PBS needs to embrace. We need to bid Big Bird farewell. He needs to go the way of Britannica.

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Is this really even worth talking about? Probably not. I am being idealistic. Moreover, if my only choice is my dollar in the hands of big-Big Bird, or my dollar in the hands of Israel’s genocide-industrial complex, I’ll go with The Bird.

Scientific Journal of Objective Truths and Proof 2025:7-29.0.0

1. A similar poll by Pew, also in March of 2025, found 34% percent support for funding “art and culture” in other countries).

2. Though, from my perspective, it seems awkward that Sherie Westin’s family seems to have a pattern of getting $500,000 a year for “market research” (according to the filings in FY2024 and FY2023). I’d love to know what kind of “Market Research” they do for kids programming and products. Guessing on the lines of “yeah, there is still a market for them.”