{"id":11458,"date":"2010-03-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-02T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.keloland.com\/lund\/2010\/03\/02\/elmo-go-bye-bye\/"},"modified":"2023-07-20T21:00:12","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T21:00:12","slug":"elmo-go-bye-bye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/elmo-go-bye-bye\/","title":{"rendered":"Elmo Go Bye Bye?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I can understand why the post office may be cutting off Saturday mail delivery: it&rsquo;s losing nine billion dollars a year.&nbsp;No real secret why;&nbsp;if people want to communicate&nbsp;these days&nbsp;they do it electronically rather than spend 50 cents to send a letter by snail mail.<br \/>\nSame with bills: I&rsquo;m probably one of the few who still sends out checks once a month instead of paying on-line. More and more folks take care of it with a few clicks on the computer.<br \/>\nThe post office is also losing business to the big name package delivery companies who do it faster and cheaper.<br \/>\nI think the public is fed up with annual increases in the price of stamps to make up for the deficit..so if the only financial option&nbsp;is to go to a five day work week, well,&nbsp;I can go along with thatWhat I&nbsp;CANNOT abide, though,&nbsp;is the prospect of losing my public television.<br \/>\nWith the legislative session winding down, South Dakota Public Broadcasting says that it is on the short list of state agencies threatened with a major cut in state funding..or being dropped completely.<br \/>\nSDPB gets its money for programs and program-related services from the federal government and donations from viewers..including endowments.<br \/>\nMoney for the nuts and bolts of SDPB&rsquo;s operation; towers, equipment and employee salaries, comes from the state.<br \/>\nIf that is severely curtailed or dropped altogether, the network says, its ability to reach a statewide audience will be critically hampered.(Read that..shut down)<br \/>\nNo more Big Bird or Elmo. No more state high school tournaments..no more nightly coverage of the state legislature itself for cryin&rsquo; out loud!<br \/>\nSDPB says it has been a good steward of the state&rsquo;s money and while every agency needs to tighten its belt these days, imagine what losing public broadcasting would mean to the people who rely on it each day.<br \/>\nThat would most certainly include me. In fact, I heard about this while watching my DVR recording of Antiques Roadshow. &nbsp;I never miss that program or Nova, American Experience, America&rsquo;s Test Kitchen, the British comedies (even though I&rsquo;ve seen them many times) Dakota Life, South Dakota Focus, This Old House Hour..History Detectives..Frontline..Red Green and on and on.<br \/>\nI tried to look up the size of South Dakota&rsquo;s subsidy..but didn&rsquo;t find it right away.&nbsp;It doesn&rsquo;t matter anyway. SDPB is worth every penny!<br \/>\nSo if, in fact, you lawmakers seriously believe&nbsp;that nobody will care one way or another&nbsp;if you choose to save money by bringing the hatchet down&nbsp;on Public Broadcasting, be prepared for a voter backlash in your e-mail,&nbsp; post office box (except Saturday) or perhaps most importantly at the BALLOT box. &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I can understand why the post office may be cutting off Saturday mail delivery: it&rsquo;s losing nine billion dollars a year.&nbsp;No real secret why;&nbsp;if people want to communicate&nbsp;these days&nbsp;they do it electronically rather than spend 50 cents to send a letter by snail mail. Same with bills: I&rsquo;m probably one of the few who still&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11458"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11901,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11458\/revisions\/11901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}