The Mitt Romney campaign was angry at the broadcast networks, which were not planning any prime-time coverage from the GOP Convention on Monday even before the weather intervened.

Romney's wife, Ann, was scheduled to address the nation on Monday. If that hadn't switched to Tuesday because of Tropical Storm Isaac, the only broadcast network that would have carried her speech was PBS — which will be offering three hours of coverage each night of the convention, while ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are planning one hour each on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

And Romney has made it clear that, if elected, he plans to slash funding for PBS. That he'll eliminate it altogether.

Ironic? You betcha.

John Wilson, PBS' senior vice president and chief programming executive, pointed out that convention coverage is something "the commerical marketplace isn't delivering."

He's absolutely right. And this is just one example of many.

You can't find PBS' kind of programming — from children's educational shows to documentaries to arts to convention coverage — on the commercial broadcast networks.

And you can't find much of it on cable, where channels that began as the homes of arts and learning — A&E, Bravo, TLC — have become the homes of "Dog the Bounty Hunter," "Real Housewives" and "Sister Wives."

Multiple cable networks — CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and more — will offer gavel-to-gavel coverage, but the only way to see either convention if you don't have a cable or satellite hook-up is on public TV.

The PBS team will telecast Tuesday-Thursday, 6-9 p.m. from Tampa on KUED-Channel 7 in Utah and on stations around the country.

If Romney is elected and his funding proposal goes through, that may not be the case in 2016. If the funding that goes annually to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which funds PBS and NPR) is axed, fewer Americans will have access four years from now.

According to PBS president Paula Kerger, public funding represents 15 percent of overall PBS budgets, but up to 50 percent of the budgets at some stations in rural parts of America.

"If that funding was to go away, there are a number of stations that would go dark," Kerger said. "That's really what's at risk."

And the fact is that eliminating funding for public broadcasting ($444 million this year) would be insignificant in cutting the federal budget deficit. In 2011, CPB funding represented 0.00014 percent of the budget.

If you make $50,000 a year, 0.00014 of your salary is 7 cents.

And polls show that a majority of Americans don't want to cut funding to PBS. They see the value in it.

So should Romney and the GOP.

Scott D. Pierce covers television for The Salt Lake Tribune. Email him at spierce@sltrib.com; follow him on Twitter @ScottDPierce.