latakia--

they don't get any money from public funds. public radio as a whole gets almost no taxpayer money. the huge bulk of their funding comes from three sources: listener donations, private grant money, and corporate underwriting. public funding was gutted in the 90s and early 2000s by the republican congress, and even then it was pretty steeply on the wane.

also: it's utterly ridiculous to think that they chose may 1st in order to make a political statement. i'm sure they're laughing their assess off at that one. i'd guess that it's far more likely they had it on a thursday because it's a better day then monday tues or wednesday and no movie theater is going to cut into their actual revenue source by monopolizing a screen for a one-off showing of a public radio broadcast on a friday, when they're better off showing iron man or whatever debuted that day. remember that these live broadcasts are a way for movie theaters to try to get people into the theater again because revenues are declining and it costs a lot of money to air condition and staff a huge multiplex on a non-weekend day when there's only a couple of perverts and octogenarians in there watching the talkies.

so yeah, that may 1st argument is pretty asinine.