PBS bans religion?

In today's FoxNews, they reported about policy decisions at PBS. Now, before I continue, I'll mention that you'd be hard pressed to find a stronger supporter of the religious clauses of the first amendment of the Constitution. That said, this decision by a national board for PBS is a shining example of trying to control something nationally that should be local. If PBS doesn't want religious content in its nationally distributed programming, so be it, I'm all for that. Creating programming at the national level and telling us all we have to have it on PBS could constitute a de facto sense of religious establishment. That would make sense if that is what this decision were about. It isn't. In fact, a national board is telling local PBS stations that they can't have the national programming if they show anything commercial, partisan or sectarian. Huh, that pretty much counts out most of what PBS currently shows, but I digress. Although this is an enforcement of an unenforced rule that dates back to 1985, what made PBS worthwhile was that it showed local programming of local interest. This included religious programming. A local station knows better about what their audience wants to view than a national board could ever know. That's the real issue here. Somebody in Washington dictating to Jackson, Mississippi or Dallas, Texas or Chicago, Illinois what is and isn't appropriate for their local audience. Now, we come to the separation of church and state issue. Really? Has PBS recently been sued and nobody said anything? No, the reality is that this is an excuse, nothing more. In fact, nobody is worried about this except apparently, the PBS board. The Constitution guarantees freedom of exercise and prohibits religious establishment. Would a local PBS station showing a Sunday morning preacher (from any religion) constitute religious establishment? I don't really think it does, and after 40 years of programming and no publically known complaints, I'd say the public doesn't think so either. However, prohibiting such programming might be construed as hostility to religion. This is also prohibited by the Constitution since it violates free exercise. All organizations should have access to PBS and that includes religions. Finally, PBS cites worries that religious programming "would cause the public's trust in PBS to erode, along with the value of the brand,". Really? Again, if this were true, you'd have lost that trust and value decades ago. After all, it is all based on an unenforced rule dating back to 1985. 24 years people! Not to mention the many years before the rule. So, my question becomes, why now? What has suddenly changed that has made this an issue? Could it be who occupies the White House and who is the majority party in Congress? Of course not!