Crystal -  Today, the House Appropriations Subcommittee that sets public media funding levels passed a draft bill. We have both great news and bad news. The Great News: The draft bill provided essential public media seed funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in its draft bill. This is a tremendous victory that could not have happened without your outreach to Congress. But your help is needed once again. The Bad News: While we saved one important program, funding for public media's Interconnection infrastructure system was eliminated. Interconnection enables virtually every American to receive local station programming for free - reaching even the most rural parts of the U.S. The system allows your stations to distribute programming, as well as public safety, national alert, and warning communications. If Interconnection funding is eliminated, it becomes nearly impossible for local stations to broadcast your favorite programs and important public safety communications to you. You helped us take an important first step toward providing funding for local stations in the House Bill. Now we need your help to save Interconnection. Email your lawmakers https://protectmypublicmedia.org/email-save-funding/ and tell them to fully fund public media, including Interconnection. Funding levels for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Interconnection are not final, yet. We have a small window of opportunity to voice our support for this program. As early as next week, Congress could move legislation that could help or hurt our cause. We're on the right track to protect all public media funding, but we must stay active. It's going to take all of us - viewers and listeners - working together to keep our nation's public media system strong and accessible to every American. So, please email your Members of Congress today to protect your connection with your stations. We'll keep you posted on what happens next. Sincerely, The Protect My Public Media Team