Last November Free Press released On the Chopping Block: State Budget Battles and the Future of Public Media, an inventory of dramatic state-level funding cuts to public broadcasting. Our report, co-authored by Josh Stearns and Mike Soha, documents how state support for public broadcasting has plunged since the economy took a nosedive in 2008. What’s more, the report notes that politics — not financial considerations — have driven much of this budget cutting.

“Public broadcasters are being expected to weather enormous cuts that are way out of line with reductions in state budgets,” said Stearns. “In most cases state budgets are seeing single-digit percent decreases, while public broadcasters are facing dramatic double-digit cuts, if not total elimination of their funding. This suggests that many of these cuts are being made to score political points, not to balance budgets.”

Three months after the report’s release, the funding picture for public media remains about as lovely as Voldemort.

In Oklahoma, two bills would eliminate all state funding for the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority. A bill in the state Senate would cut all such support as of November, while a proposal in the House would spread the pain out, reducing funding 20 percent per year over the next five years.

Meanwhile, over in Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee has proposed cutting all state funding to PBS affiliate Channel 36. “We’re bare bones as it is right now,” said David Piccerelli, president and CEO of Rhode Island PBS, noting that state support accounts for a third of Channel 36’s budget.

And down in West Virginia, state funding cuts and a decline in corporate underwriting have forced West Virginia Public Broadcasting to slash its programming.

As On the Chopping Block points out, while battles over federal public media funding grab all the headlines — nothing makes a PBS foe weep as much as the sight of Big Bird picketing on Capitol Hill — state support is just as crucial. And with the economy still moving at a hobbler’s pace, public media budgets are sure to remain vulnerable for the foreseeable future.