Young children — and their parents — love and enjoy Sesame Street and all of the award-winning childrens’ programming seen on SOPTV and public television stations across the country. When Governor Mitt Romney prioritized defunding “Big Bird” and PBS to reduce the federal deficit during the first presidential debate, Big Bird became one of the most trafficked Twitter subjects, reaching 17,000 tweets per minute.

Beyond deficit reduction measures, Congress will vote on a bill to completely eliminate all federal support for public broadcasting as early as next week. The complete loss of federal funding threatens SOPTV’s ability to serve you and our entire region with the news, information and entertainment you rely on. The programs you care about are threatened. Your elected Representatives need to hear from you now. Please call your Representative today. Greg Walden, Oregon 2nd (202.225.6730) Peter DeFazio, Oregon 4th (202.225.6416) It’s critical that you make your voice heard. You can make a difference.

SOPTV has just completed its June Pledge Drive, but we couldn’t have done it without the help of our dedicated volunteers and local businesses. Each drive, we rely on people in the community to crew the productions and take your pledges. Equally important are the local restaurants that donate food to feed all of these great people.