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Forbes
02-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Inside Washington Spirit Owner Michele Kang's Plan To Revolutionize Women's Soccer
Settling into a gray upholstered chair in her living room in central London, beneath an enormous chandelier that makes even the nearby grand piano look compact, Michele Kang finds her mind drifting to the PBS home improvement series This Old House. She is fresh off a meeting with architects—down a glass-encased elevator to the conference room below her five-bedroom Knightsbridge apartment—and she has buildings on the brain. She enjoys design, she says, clad in a cardinal-red double-breasted Valentino dress coat against the chill of a February afternoon, but she doesn't have the patience to slog through a long television season. 'I just want to see the before-and-after picture,' says Kang, 65. 'Who cares about the middle? I want to see the final product.' Her entire life, Kang has focused on the endgame. Her outcome-oriented approach has made her a phenomenally successful tech entrepreneur—ranking 28th on Forbes' 2025 list of America's Richest Self-Made Women (which publishes on June 3) with a net worth estimated at $1.2 billion. But while she might privately wish that she could skip the process, she's also a woman who, after earning an economics degree from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Yale, meticulously mapped out the next 30 years of her career. She decided she would spend ten years consulting, to learn all aspects of a business, and then a decade as an executive before finally achieving her lifelong dream: becoming a CEO. She checked that last box in 2008 when she founded Cognosante, a health care IT company, which she sold last year for more than $1 billion. Acquaintances and business partners describe Kang as unfailingly prepared. John Textor, a former executive chairman of sports-focused streaming service FuboTV, says he will try to catch her off-guard at her other home in Florida, but 'it doesn't matter how early I get to her. She's still perfectly ready to go—couture, perfect hair, on her game. She's been taking notes while I'm still waking up.' Even so, Kang never could have foreseen her second act. Six years after a chance meeting at an event on Capitol Hill awakened an interest in professional soccer, she is the owner of three prominent teams: the Washington Spirit of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), OL Lyonnes of France's Première Ligue and the London City Lionesses, recently promoted to England's Women's Super League. Even more unexpected, the humble Kang finds herself widely recognized as the global face of investing in women's sports. GOAL GETTER | Michele Kang's London City Lionesses (top) earned promotion to the Women's Super League by claiming the title in England's second division this year—and it wasn't her first championship as a team owner. Her Lyon club (middle) has won back- to-back titles in France, and the Washington Spirit, built around star Trinity Rodman, won the NWSL Championship in 2021. By The FA/getty images; uefa/Getty Images; brad smith/isi photos/getty images 'I didn't know who Leo Messi was,' she says of the Argentine soccer superstar, laughing. 'Now, here I am.' Kang took control of the Spirit in 2022 at a $35 million valuation, then considered an astronomical price for a women's team. In reality, it was a bargain. Forbes estimates the Spirit are worth $130 million, and they aren't the only NWSL club to have seen such dramatic appreciation. Last year, L.A.'s Angel City FC sold at a record $250 million valuation to Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife, Willow Bay. Then, in January, the league selected Denver as its 16th franchise for a $110 million expansion fee. 'Michele really set the valuation boom in motion,' NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman says. Once again, Kang has an ambitious goal in mind, and this time, she is expecting her grand plan to take a lot less than 30 years. In the not-too-distant future, she believes, women's soccer teams will be trading for $1 billion or more—and she's willing to spend whatever it takes to make that happen. Between purchasing her three clubs, seeding a handful of women-focused sports startups and donating $30 million to the U.S. Soccer federation, Kang entered the sports world with an ante of at least $200 million. And she's not done: Her February meeting with architects centered on her plans to construct a practice facility in Kent, southeast of London, for the Lionesses, and in April, she announced what amounted to a $25 million donation to U.S. Soccer as she handed over the nonprofit research arm of her holding company, which focuses on the biomechanics of female athletes. At the same time, Kang and her fellow owners face a steep climb to approach the valuations of the 124 teams in the four major North American men's sports leagues, which are all worth at least $1 billion and have appreciated nearly 1,800% on average since Forbes started valuing them in 1998. By comparison, the women's leagues are still in their infancy, and many of the clubs have yet to show they're able to generate real money. For example, despite having won the NWSL title in 2021 and reached the 2024 championship game, Kang's Spirit posted roughly $15 million in regular-season revenue last year. Meanwhile, Major League Soccer's D.C. United, playing home games at the same stadium, collected $90 million in 2024, according to Forbes estimates. Those concerns—paired with massive pay gaps between male and female players, unequal media coverage and occasionally outright discrimination—have led some critics to write off the recent women's sports boom as nothing more than a social cause. Kang isn't buying that. 'This is not charity; this is not some corporate DEI project,' she says. 'I'm on a mission to prove that this is good business—not just a business, but a good business.' Kang considers herself a 'very, very private person' and says she is still adjusting to the spotlight that has come with her involvement in professional sports. Sitting with a reporter in her home, she chuckles. 'You're going to interview me for an hour?' she says. 'I don't have a story for an hour.' But don't mistake her modesty for timidity. 'When she comes in the room, she commands that room, and that's hard to do—especially in a male-dominated situation,' says billionaire NBA legend Earvin 'Magic' Johnson, who joined the Spirit last year as a minority investor and strategic partner. Berman, the NWSL's commissioner, remembers her first time meeting Kang, at a breakfast in 2022: 'She was the most put-together human I had ever seen—a little bit intimidating for me.' From her earliest days, Kang has had no trouble taking charge. Growing up in South Korea as a self-described tomboy, she refused to practice piano and would play sports instead. (Years later, after a few of her friends went on to study at Juilliard, she joked with her mother, 'You should have made me practice!') While Kang, whose given name is Yongmee, aspired to follow in her father's footsteps by studying in America, her parents weren't exactly keen to see their youngest daughter cross the Pacific. But she managed to convince them that, amid the 1980s political unrest that pushed South Korea from dictatorship to democracy, they were better off paying for college than saving for a wedding. 'I used a slight threat that 'If you don't let me go, then who knows what could happen to me?'' Kang, now divorced, recalls with a knowing smile. After business school, she became a partner at Ernst & Young, specializing in the high-tech and telecommunications sectors, and in 2000 she jumped to TRW as head of corporate strategy for the nonautomotive divisions at the conglomerate, which developed weapons and spacecraft. When the company was acquired by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman in a hostile takeover two years later, she saw an opportunity. 'They gave me this health IT business that was failing miserably,' she says. 'They felt like, if you screw up, you can't really do damage.' In fact, Kang's timing was perfect. In 2004, President George W. Bush began a push to guarantee Americans access to electronic medical records and created the Nationwide Health Information Network to help. Northrop Grumman was among the four companies selected to build the network and secured a $68 million contract to digitize the medical records of U.S. Defense Department employees. Between 2003 and 2007, Kang more than tripled the revenue of her division. Armed with new expertise in health care IT—an industry that was (and some would argue remains) technologically antiquated—Kang then decided to strike out on her own. In 2008, from an office above her garage in Bethesda, Maryland, she launched Cognosante. To hear Kang tell it, nothing Cognosante did was revolutionary. But she recognized that as hospitals and pharmacies moved their paper records online, too many systems were popping up that couldn't communicate with one another—using different file formats for insurance information, for instance, or different codes to identify diseases. Cognosante essentially connected the dots, helping doctors and health care professionals access notes and imaging results from anywhere, with a particular focus on improving the flow of information at state government agencies. This go-round, her timing wasn't ideal. Within months of Cognosante's founding, the subprime mortgage crisis sent the economy into a nosedive. With banks in disarray, Kang sold around $700,000 of her Northrop Grumman stock to fund her business. 'I had a lot of offers to invest in what I was doing, and I didn't take any of the money—not because I didn't need money but rather because, if I took their money, I could not take the kind of risk that I was planning to take,' she says. After emerging from the financial turmoil, Cognosante expanded its client base to federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. It also extended its services into areas such as cybersecurity and Medicaid fraud detection. The company got to a point where, Kang says, she had two options: go public or bring in new management. Last year, she chose to sell, to a subsidiary of Irish IT giant Accenture. 'At some point, if you really want to take the company to the next level to compete against the big guys, then you need a different set of leaders,' Kang says. 'Even when I started, I knew that ten years was going to be the maximum for me to lead this organization.' Kang imagined that her next decade would center on philanthropy, and that was still the plan when she wrote a roughly $2 million check for 35% of the Spirit in 2020, not long after meeting the team's owners at a D.C. reception held for the U.S. women's national soccer team, which had just won the World Cup. 'It was not an itch—I didn't know anything about it,' she says of the NWSL at that time. But she liked the idea of supporting female athletes, and she believed that if the league could help close the gap with men's sports, 'the future is just incredible—not only for the players but, more importantly, a lot of young girls.' Besides, she says, across her career, 'I'm the first one to jump in when everyone else is trying to figure it out.' 'I see the value, and if I don't start valuing it, who else is going to do it for us?' says Kang, who paid $35 million for her first team. Kang got her chance after a scandal engulfed the team a year later. Three players told the Washington Post that Spirit coach Richie Burke had repeatedly screamed at them, insulted them and threatened to bench them, during games and at practice. Kaiya McCullough, a rookie defender, told the Post that Burke had made racially insensitive jokes and that the experience had sent her 'into survival mode.' She questioned whether she would ever play soccer again. Burke denied any wrongdoing but was fired, and an ensuing leaguewide investigation uncovered similar allegations against coaches at three other clubs. The Spirit's players published an open letter calling on Steve Baldwin, a tech executive who was then the club's CEO and majority owner, to sell the team to Kang. Negotiations turned ugly, with Baldwin reportedly accusing Kang of organizing 'a coup attempt,' but she eventually took control by besting an offer from billionaire bond investor Todd Boehly, who turned around and bought the men's and women's clubs of English soccer powerhouse Chelsea FC for a combined $5.2 billion in May 2022. Kang's $35 million price tag shocked observers, given that valuations in the NWSL historically had been under $5 million and that, despite the success of the U.S. women's national team, women's pro soccer had a bumpy track record. The Women's United Soccer Association, a $40 million effort to capitalize on American excitement around the 1999 Women's World Cup, began play with eight teams in 2001 and folded after three seasons, reportedly racking up $100 million in losses. A second attempt, known as Women's Professional Soccer, also managed to eke out three seasons, from 2009 to 2011. The NWSL arrived in 2013 and showed more promise—enough that Kang was comfortable raising her stake to an estimated 80% in the 2022 sale, despite the league's lack of profitability. 'I see the value, and if I don't start valuing it, who else is going to do it for us?' she says. 'Whether I paid $5 million or $35 million wasn't going to make a whole lot of difference.' Changes came quickly, with investments in the Spirit's front office and coaching staff and a reinforced roster around superstar forward Trinity Rodman (the daughter of NBA great Dennis Rodman). When Kang first joined the Spirit, its annual revenue was an estimated $5 million; by 2024, that number had tripled. Attendance climbed to nearly 14,000 per game, up from fewer than 6,000 in 2022. 'She hasn't wavered on spending money not only to make the Spirit better but also women's sports better, period,' says Magic Johnson, who notes that he had an opportunity to invest in the NWSL's Angel City FC but was won over by Kang and ended up putting his money in the Spirit. 'She won't stop until she's happy about where women's sports can go and she's achieved the goal of taking it there, even if she had to do it herself.' Looking beyond Washington, Kang agreed in May 2023 to buy 53% of the French club then known as Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, separating the operations of one of the world's best women's teams from its male counterpart. Later that year, she acquired the London City Lionesses and formed Kynisca Sports International to house her soccer investments under one roof, in London. She is now targeting a South American squad. Multiclub ownership is common in men's professional sports—for example, City Football Group owns more than a dozen soccer teams, including Manchester City and New York City FC. But that model—and the operating efficiencies that come with it—is a new development in the women's game. By centralizing global scouting and player and coach development, Kang can reduce the organization's spending, and she hopes to attract global brands as sponsors because of her presence in multiple countries. The company is also developing best practices with its facilities as Kang works to build new training centers for all three of her clubs. 'Michele shows up, and she starts talking about the incidence of ligament injuries during the menstrual cycle—she's putting money into research on women's bodies and how to train as women,' says Textor, whose Eagle Football Holdings owned the Lyon team, now known as OL Lyonnes, before Kang's purchase and maintains a minority stake. 'She's definitely not the boat floating up on the rising tide. She is the reason the tide rises.' Now, others are—finally—matching her enthusiasm. The NWSL has added blue-chip sponsors including AT&T and Google in the past year, and it achieved a financial breakthrough in 2023 when it signed media rights deals with CBS, ESPN, Ion and Amazon Prime Video collectively worth $240 million over four years—roughly 60 times the league's previous fees. Kang, at the center of it all, has a hard time wrapping her mind around everything she has accomplished in five years, saying, 'The fact that I'm talking about the word legacy is surreal.' But she is also enjoying the moment and taking pride in her teams, trying to travel to most Spirit games. When the topic of the 2024 championship game loss is broached, she can only laugh and say, 'Don't go there.' So will the Spirit avenge the defeat and raise the trophy in November? 'Absolutely,' she says with a grin. 'Mark my words.'
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Most workers can't afford homes in metro Phoenix. These cities are the most affordable
Single women and essential workers cannot afford to buy a median-priced home in most Arizona cities, according to a recent study. Rapid population growth in the metro Phoenix area has driven up housing prices, making homeownership increasingly difficult for many — despite it being for many a key part of the so-called American dream. The report, produced by the home improvement brand and TV show This Old House, analyzes homebuying affordability across U.S. cities and states by occupation and household type. Another recent study from This Old House noted that Phoenix's home construction industry is growing faster than the national average, likely due to the city's rapid population increase. However, this growth has contributed to decreased housing affordability, disproportionately impacting single women and some essential workers, such as educators, in multiple Arizona cities. Here's everything you need to know about what occupations and household types could most likely afford a median-priced house in Arizona cities. Housing affordability also varies widely by occupation. Among essential workers, there is not a single city where homeownership costs fall within the recommended affordability range for educators, while health care professionals have the most affordable homeownership options. Scottsdale consistently ranks as the least affordable Arizona city for most essential occupations. Tucson routinely ranked among the most affordable. Here's how much of their income essential workers would need to spend on homeownership in Arizona cities: Community and service workers: Scottsdale 182%, Gilbert 121%, Tempe 118%, Chandler 118%, Glendale 115%, Peoria 110%, Mesa 106%, Phoenix 103%, Tucson 89% Educators: Scottsdale 174%, Gilbert 121%, Chandler 114%, Peoria 112%, Tempe 111%, Mesa 103%, Glendale 100%, Phoenix 98%, Tucson 84% Health care professionals: Scottsdale 96%, Tempe 75%, Gilbert 72%, Chandler 71%, Peoria 63%, Mesa 60%, Glendale 60%, Phoenix 58%, Tucson 53% Law enforcement: Scottsdale 107%, Tempe 104%, Glendale 100%, Chandler 85%, Gilbert 80%, Phoenix 77%, Tucson 72%, Mesa 70%, Peoria 63% Firefighters: Scottsdale 198%, Glendale 144%, Tempe 127%, Peoria 112%, Phoenix 112%, Gilbert 110%, Mesa 100%, Tucson 90%, Chandler 75% Lawyers: Peoria 86%, Scottsdale 77%, Glendale 76%, Gilbert 73%, Mesa 71%, Chandler 65%, Tucson 62%, Tempe 57%, Phoenix 53% Metro Phoenix: homes are significantly newer than most US cities. Is that good or bad? Income disparities play a major role in the financial strain of homeownership across different household types, according to This Old House analysts. This Old House analyzed data from Zillow and the U.S. Census and found that the average annual cost of homeownership in the U.S. is $45,643. However, how this expense affects households varies widely by income: Married couples, with a median household income of $115,507 (U.S. Census), spend about 40% of their income on homeownership costs. Single men, earning a median income of $67,890, spend 67% of their income on these costs. Single women, with a median income of $49,821, face the greatest burden, needing to spend a staggering 92% of their income on homeownership — leaving little or no room for savings or emergencies. In many cities, the total housing costs for single women exceed their annual earnings, making homeownership nearly impossible without additional income or financial assistance. This stark imbalance underscores how income inequality affects single earners, particularly women. The study found no cities nationwide where homeownership costs fall below 30% of a single woman's income. In Arizona, the share of income single women would need to spend to afford a median-priced home is especially high: Scottsdale: 147% of income Tempe: 109% of income Mesa: 105% of income Chandler: 105% of income Glendale: 105% of income Tucson: 104% of income Phoenix: 103% of income Peoria: 98% of income Gilbert: 88% of income Despite the rising costs, there are also homebuying assistance programs available that can help Arizonans secure loans, find affordable housing and navigate homeownership. Here's a list of resources for finding affordable places to live and navigating homeownership in Arizona from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development website. You can find the full list on the website. Get help finding affordable places to live: Speak to a HUD Approved Housing Counselor for advice on your specific housing needs. Search online for a HUD Approved Housing Counselor near you or call 800-569-4287. You can also contact your local Public Housing Authority for information about public housing programs like Housing Choice Vouchers. Arizona's Public Housing Authority phone number is 602-771-1000, or you can call 800-955-2232 for help to find your local Public Housing Authority. Information about becoming a homeowner: Learn more about homebuying from HUD's website or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Information about Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans and programs: Visit the Federal Housing Administration Website. You can also call the Federal Housing Administration toll-free at 800-CALL-FHA (800-225-5342) or email the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development at answers@ Information about HUD homes: Use the HUD Home Store to find HUD homes for sale. This Old House experts also gave the following tips to improve homeownership chances: Consider smaller cities or urban areas. Carefully search for homebuyer assistance programs in your state. Shop around for mortgages; do not settle for the most available program. Capitalize on market opportunities. Seek the assistance of a trusted realtor advisor. Know your financial limits to avoid defaulting on your home. To estimate the annual homeownership cost, This Old House utilized data on property taxes and income from the U.S. Census American Community Survey and home values for single-family residences from Zillow. For the overall annual cost, they considered the following: Annual property tax rates were from the U.S. Census. Annual mortgage costs was calculated based on home values from Zillow and assumed an 8% down payment and a 6.93% mortgage rate. Annual home maintenance was estimated as 4% of the home value to account for potential high maintenance or repair costs that homeowners may incur due to unforeseen circumstances. Annual homeowner's insurance estimates were sourced from Quadrant. Analysts then compared the annual homeownership cost to state and city-level incomes for married couples, single male householders, and single female householders to determine if their incomes could cover annual home costs. Lastly, they examined individual occupational income from the U.S. Census to learn if certain essential occupations could afford home costs in these cities. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: The most affordable cities for home prices in Arizona
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Pacific Northwest broadcaster braces for cuts as Trump aims to defund NPR, PBS
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Amid efforts by the Trump administration to defund public media, one broadcasting organization in the Pacific Northwest is facing an uncertain future. For more than 100 years, Northwest Public Broadcasting has delivered news to the Pacific Northwest. Today, NWPB reaches more than three million people across 44 counties in Washington and parts of Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia. NWPB offers a variety of television and radio programs including local news and PBS shows from 'This Old House,' to 'Sesame Street.' They also provide emergency alerts, informing communities of wildfires and earthquakes. Access to those programs could be at risk in the future after President Trump signed an executive order on May 1, directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to defund PBS and NPR. The president has also proposed cutting funds for CFB — a private, nonprofit corporation authorized by Congress in 1967. Their mission is to provide universal access to public media, and they offer critical grants to organizations such as NWPB. The president is aiming to slash federal funding for PBS and NPR, citing 'bias' in their reporting. The White House has also posted on social media that the outlets 'receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news.'' 'My reaction was sadness,' NWPB Director of Audience Sueann Ramella said when she found out about the executive order. 'This is a service created for and by the American people, and I believe that the American people have a voice and the power to save it.'Part of NWPB's funding model relies on grants from the CFB. 'Each taxpayer pays about $1.60 for PBS and NPR material, but it's also for local station programming,' Ramella told KOIN 6 News. 'Some of that funding is used for what we call the operational and programming costs of the overall station, but the single largest source of our income is still from viewers like you and also local business support.' In the last fiscal year, 20% of NWPB's funding came from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. 'To somebody thinking 20% is not that big of a deal for your operational costs – it actually is,' Ramella said. 'We're looking to raise an additional $2 million a year for the next three years because of the potential hit our station alone is going to have.' Fred Meyer employee stole $60K for gambling Grants aren't the only way CFB supports organizations like Northwest Public Broadcasting, Ramella explained. 'The other important thing for people to recognize is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting negotiates music broadcasting rights, meaning my station is able to afford to play the music that we have — the classical music, the jazz, the contemporary music — because it's already been negotiated for us. We don't pay a huge amount that you have to for those rights,' Ramella said. Without CFB's help negotiating those rights, Ramella added, 'It's a daunting task to think about trying to call Sony and BMI and Columbia (Records) individually and try to negotiate those rights when we are a rural station and we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don't think we're going to have the ability to pay to play the music.' On top of negotiating music rights, CFB also works with the Department of Education to develop children's programming for stations. 'I don't think the American people realize it's not just about the federal funding. It's everything the Corporation for Public Broadcasting does on behalf of every station in the nation, everything from creating children's educational programs, and paying those producers, to working with the Department of Education to make sure that those educational programs are up to speed with the latest research and understanding of the way children learn and read,' she added. 'If this funding is rescinded, I believe NWPB will exist in some form,' Ramella hypothesized. 'But it isn't going to be as strong as it is right now. It's going to take us a while to build back up.' Ramella is calling on community members to reach out to their representatives to ensure support for public media. 'Public media was created because when we had this new thing called TV and the radio spectrum, everybody knew in a capitalist society you could make money off those signals, but what doesn't make money is educational programs, programs and documentaries about really difficult things in our history for us to understand,' Ramella explained. 'It's not like you go to the movie theater to see Ken Burns' documentary on the Civil War for eight hours. It has a home on PBS precisely because we are a non-commercial, nonprofit station.' 'If public media across the whole nation is defunded the way that it is, if the executive order to defund public media goes through, if the rescission package is completed by Congress, it means that folks in rural areas will not have access to high quality shows, because we simply cannot afford to pay for them,' Ramella warned. 'What is not understood is the depth at which it takes to bring you that type of programming. It's not magic. It's a lot of bills, it's a lot of paperwork and a lot of staff time and energy to make it happen. All of that will be hurt at the least and devastated at the most, if we have this federal funding rescinded.' Despite efforts to defund public media, Ramella is optimistic. 'I want to believe in the American people that they will call and protect what they value, that they'll call their representatives and express they value public media, and they want to see it continue,' Ramella said. Shuttered Oregon chateau named among America's 'most endangered' historic sites The audience director continued, 'But it's not just us on the table. It's AmeriCorps, it's humanities Washington, it's all these cultural programs that you have valued all your life that are at risk. So it's maybe asking a lot, but what we would love is for the American people to call their representatives daily and tell them to protect these important programs, and I hope to God, public media is one of them, because we work collaboratively with a lot of organizations and schools and libraries to enhance the lives of people who can't afford internet connection or cable connection, and that's the whole mission.' The Trump administration's efforts to defund public media also poses a risk of creating news deserts, or places with limited access to news, in NWPB's coverage area, Ramella said. 'I'm very concerned these areas will become news deserts. I'm one of the people on the staff who looks at the big budget and picks what shows we can afford to air and I have a map above my office that shows me where our signals are in the towns. One of those places is the (Goldendale, Washington and The Dalles, Oregon) area. We just built a new transmitter there to bring a stronger signal and that signal is going to reach even further into that highway, where you don't always get a clear radio signal, of news and information,' Ramella explained. 'I would love to keep the news there. The funding matters. It allows us to afford to do these things. So, when you look at places that no longer have a local newspaper or people are only getting their news from social media, the news desert problem is real. It means your neighbors, your grandparents, even your young kids are not getting trusted information that they need in order to understand their world and what's happening in their region,' she continued. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aiming to protect that mission, filing a lawsuit challenging President Trump's efforts to fire three of CFB's five board members — arguing the president does not have the authority to remove the members, as reported by NPR in late April. 'I think it's important for people to understand that while a lot of young folks are moving into the internet realm, there are so many millions of people who don't and they still get their news from the radio in their car and on old fashioned bunny ear TV and public media is not going to leave them behind,' Ramella said. 'That's also why we need to continue this funding, because your little two-year-old niece to your 88-year-old grandma need trusted cultural information, and that's where they get it. They get it from public media, and it deserves to be protected for them.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Letters to the Editor: Trump's attempt to defund PBS and NPR is 'a travesty' for citizens
To the editor: I wonder what dark cave of misinformation President Trump lives in that makes him fear the cultural richness that PBS and NPR bring to our nation ( 'Trump signs executive order directing federal funding cuts to PBS and NPR,' May 1). His lack of understanding of the service these agencies provide in times of disaster is either willful ignorance or worse — complete disregard for the citizens that he swore to protect in his oath upon his inauguration. PBS and NPR exist because Congress recognized that an educated nation is a powerful nation. The educational and cultural programs provided by these entities are designed to make Americans aware of the abundant talent, patriotism and creativity of the American people. Children's programs reach even the most education-adverse kids and teach them in ways that no lecture can penetrate. News programs provide essential information to citizens in the midst of natural disasters, particularly in rural communities. Destroying public services is a travesty. Janet Sims, Newport Beach .. To the editor: Can Trump explain to me how PBS' 'This Old House' is left-wing propaganda? Or perhaps he is offended by the various cooking shows that educate the viewer on cuisines of other cultures, or even the travel shows that show us how people in other countries live. This kind of move will only add to the division we are now experiencing in this country. He needs to be held accountable — hopefully the courts can accomplish this. Marilyn K. Brown, Beaumont, Calif. .. To the editor: Public broadcasting stations are often the most dependable, especially in rural areas without great cell service or high-speed internet. They alert folks of potential weather disasters and much more. But they also report facts without a provocative spin and actually educate folks young and old. The current president hates that. Presumably those who are ignorant are easier to fool? Marcy Bregman, Agoura Hills This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Letters to the Editor: Trump's attempt to defund PBS and NPR is ‘a travesty' for citizens
The headquarters for National Public Radio in Washington in 2013. To the editor: I wonder what dark cave of misinformation President Trump lives in that makes him fear the cultural richness that PBS and NPR bring to our nation ( 'Trump signs executive order directing federal funding cuts to PBS and NPR,' May 1). His lack of understanding of the service these agencies provide in times of disaster is either willful ignorance or worse — complete disregard for the citizens that he swore to protect in his oath upon his inauguration. PBS and NPR exist because Congress recognized that an educated nation is a powerful nation. The educational and cultural programs provided by these entities are designed to make Americans aware of the abundant talent, patriotism and creativity of the American people. Children's programs reach even the most education-adverse kids and teach them in ways that no lecture can penetrate. News programs provide essential information to citizens in the midst of natural disasters, particularly in rural communities. Destroying public services is a travesty. Janet Sims, Newport Beach .. To the editor: Can Trump explain to me how PBS' 'This Old House' is left-wing propaganda? Or perhaps he is offended by the various cooking shows that educate the viewer on cuisines of other cultures, or even the travel shows that show us how people in other countries live. This kind of move will only add to the division we are now experiencing in this country. He needs to be held accountable — hopefully the courts can accomplish this. Marilyn K. Brown, Beaumont, Calif. .. To the editor: Public broadcasting stations are often the most dependable, especially in rural areas without great cell service or high-speed internet. They alert folks of potential weather disasters and much more. But they also report facts without a provocative spin and actually educate folks young and old. The current president hates that. Presumably those who are ignorant are easier to fool? Marcy Bregman, Agoura Hills
