The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced Friday that it will “begin an orderly wind-down of its operations following the passage of a federal rescissions package… which excludes funding for CPB for the first time in more than five decades.”

The budget for the next two years was $550 million per year, or $1.1 billion total.

What does that mean for audiences who rely on public radio and television? In Chicago, that includes WBEZ and WTTW, but stations across the country will all be affected to some degree.

Josh Shepperd is a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and the author of “Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting.” A Chicago native and WBEZ alum (where he was a broadcast engineer), he shares some initial insights.

The conversa

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