DAVID MARCUS: Public broadcasting's purpose has passed. It's time to pull the plug

Rep. Brandon Gill, R- Tex., got into a heated exchange with CNN host Pamela Brown over the Trump administration's crackdown on government spending, specifically for public broadcasting at PBS and NPR. By 1970, both PBS and NPR sprang forth from the CBP, and Americans were treated to the "News Hour," "Sesame Street," British comedies and science programming at a time when there were only three networks, cable TV was strictly for the boondocks, and VCRs were science fiction. A big part of the reason that programming was limited was that production costs for broadcasting were incredibly high. In David Grzybowski's book, 'The Big Story,' he cites Philadelphia news anchor Larry Kane talking about how hard it was during the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear scare to just get a live TV shot from Harrisburg to Philly: "I know we had a live microwave, but the microwaves didn't go that far. I think we sought some satellite time. The satellite times in those days were 5,000 a minute."