How vulnerable pubcasters are handling federal funding threats

As he describes it, Scott Smith lives “back in the sticks,” an hour and a half from the nearest Walmart. 

Smith, GM of Allegheny Mountain Radio, said he’s approaching businesses far outside his listening area — but where people in his “extremely rural area” of West Virginia and Virginia shop — to buy sponsorships. It’s one option he’s exploring to keep the station going in the face of federal funding threats. 

But even if those new revenue sources come through, it likely wouldn’t be enough to close the gap that would result from a loss of federal funding. The station could not make up the loss of a CPB Community Service Grant from underwriting and individual giving, Smith said.

“What we are now and what we would become and how we continue to serve the community is an unknown at this point,” he said. “… I could care less whether I have a job or not. What I do care the most about is whether we still have this organization and it still serves our community the way that we do.” 

Preparing for a loss of federal funding has become more than a thought exercise for Smith and leaders like him whose stations rely heavily on the support. In his second term, President Trump has raised fears of funding cuts from a simmer to a full boil. He’s zeroed out funding in his budget, threatened a rescission of support already appropriated by Congress and signed an executive order directing CPB’s board and all executive departments and agencies “to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS.”

Legal experts say the order should have no legal effect. But with the threats coming from multiple angles, stations are facing uncertain futures. 

According to an analysis by Current, the average public radio station gets about 15% of its funding from federal sources, while the average TV station gets 18% from federal funds. But more than a dozen stations get over half of their budgets from federal sources. Three of the top five stations that are most reliant on federal funding are in Alaska, while the other two are Native stations. 

‘Devastating’ impact

Allegheny Mountain Radio is one of those organizations. It gets CPB funding for two of its three stations, representing more than 65% of its budget. The stations air music, public affairs and high school sports in an area with limited cellular coverage.

Smith said a loss of federal funding would be “devastating.” 

“We cannot make that up through our other two revenue streams” of underwriting and individual giving, Smith said. Residents in the low-income area are already giving what they can, he said, and expecting them to give more isn’t realistic.

As the station has sought to grow underwriting, “we have probably already talked to every business or every organization that might underwrite us, and they’re either a yes or a no,” he said. “It’s not like there’s 10 to 20 new businesses popping up every quarter,” Smith said, despite the attempt to secure distant sponsors. 

The stations serve an older population that tends to get “their information and news and entertainment from legacy sources,” Smith said. 

“We definitely serve a listening area that is reliant on us to fill in the gaps where citizens may not be getting that information when it comes to news, when it comes to weather, when it comes to emergency broadcasts, school cancellations [and] all that sort of thing,” Smith said. “We’re putting that out there for people whose first instinct might not be to grab the cellphone.”

The network has been “ramping up” its search for foundation funding, but Smith is not optimistic that it would close the gap. “I hope I’m wrong,” he said.

He points out that eliminating CPB would also raise costs because it pays SoundExchange for music royalties. “All of a sudden, we’ve got another …  large expense that we have to pay to the publishing companies for the royalties to be able to use this music,” he said.

Anxiety about the unknown

Rima Dael, CEO of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, said that SoundExchange is “one of the largest reasons why community radio stations belong to NFCB.”

Only a third of NFCB’s 200 member stations receive CSG grants. But even the stations that don’t would be affected by a loss of federal funding because they still benefit from CPB’s SoundExchange agreement, a perk of their NFCB membership. 

If CPB were eliminated, “what goes away is the safety net,” Dael said. “It’s the insurance that we all have that the emergency alert system on small community radio stations can still work.”

“The news and the stories that are produced at the hyperlocal level can’t be replicated by what currently exists regionally or nationally,” Dael added. “When you add on top of that the impact of having to pay royalties … there might not be the time and effort for another volunteer to add that on top of just getting through the day-to-day.”

Federal funding cuts could have a “trickle-down” effect for community radio stations that receive CSGs, Dael said. An NFCB membership provides support in areas such as fundraising or executive transitions. If a station can no longer afford a membership, its already small staff would need to take on additional work. NFCB can also help a station move to all-volunteer staffing, “but they may no longer be a member of NFCB because they’ve decided to make that cut,” Deal said.

The organization has been working on scenario planning with its board since the election, but part of the issue is “the anxiety of just not knowing,” she said. If Congress clawed back funds for CSGs but left intact CPB’s SoundExchange deal, the emergency alert system and the Public Radio Satellite System, Dael said, “that’ll impact all of us differently than the complete dismantling of CPB.”

‘Cautious optimism’

KTNA in Talkeetna, Alaska, typically gets more than 60% of its annual funding from federal sources. If that went away, the radio station wouldn’t “immediately shut the doors,” said GM Phillip Manning. 

However, it would cause a “drastic reduction in service,” Manning said. 

The station has part-time reporters and a new full-time producer. “Per minute of airtime, by far the most expensive thing we produce is the local news,” Manning said. It’s also what KTNA’s listeners most value, according to a recent survey. That local coverage would be at risk if federal funding ended. 

The news department “would be ideally the last thing to go, but it would be diminished,” Manning said. “… We wouldn’t be able to tackle as many of the stories of local relevance as we’d like to, and then I’m not sure what the longevity of the station as a whole would be in those circumstances.”

And with a budget of about $300,000, “there’s not a lot of fat to trim,” he said.

“There are certain irreducible costs that mean that programming and staffing is really the only place that you could even trim,” he said. “… We still have to pay our mortgage. We still have to pay the utilities.”

The station is exploring options for supplemental income, no matter what happens with CPB and CSGs. Manning said he’s had conversations with philanthropic organizations and “received some very positive responses,” but that “wouldn’t be a long-term solution, I don’t believe,” he said. “I think it would be impossible for those local organizations to close the gap fully for us.”

Despite the threats to federal funding, Manning remains hopeful “that we’ll find a way through.”

“We have had the explicit support of both of our Republican senators here in Alaska, recognizing the importance of stations like ours, which gives me cause for some cautious optimism,” he said.

KEDT ‘would go off the air’

Public TV stations that are especially dependent on CPB funds are also bracing for cuts. For KEET in Eureka, Calif., federal funds make up 41% of the station’s budget. The station is considering various funding scenarios, said Executive Director David Gordon, ranging from a gradual decline of federal support to a total loss.

“Preserving as much of the service is the primary goal for us,” Gordon said. “What that would be, especially in the face of 100% federal defunding, we can’t exactly say yet, but there’s lots of thoughts about it.”

Gordon stressed that broadcast services are important in more rural areas like Eureka and that the station also serves the Indigenous community with shows from FNX, a nationally distributed channel for Indigenous programming.

“We’re tiny, but we’ve managed to stay in business and service the community for over 50 years now,” Gordon said. “… We are the last locally owned and operated television outlet in our community. We need to preserve that local ownership and that local voice. If something were to happen to KEET, that would just go away completely in our service area.”

Forty-two percent of the total budget for TV operations at KEDT in Corpus Christi, Texas, comes from federal support, according to fiscal year 2024 figures. The dual licensee’s radio operations derive almost 25% of their budget from federal support.

“KEDT would go off the air without CPB funding,” GM Don Dunlap said in an email.

“We are doing everything we can in the way of communications to try to get our members of Congress to oppose the Trump cuts,” Dunlap added. “That includes on-air spots, social media, letters to members, meetings with congressmen, using politically connected community spokesmen and interviews on local TV news.”

Dunlap stressed KEDT’s importance to the local community. “This region has a very high poverty rate, low level of educational achievement, and Spanish is still the household language for many families,” he said. “If there is a community that truly benefits from public broadcasting, it is South Texas.”

A loss of federal funding “would be devastating” for Delta College Public Media in University Center, Mich., according to GM Thomas Bennett. The dual licensee’s TV station receives 33% of its budget from federal funding and has 14 employees.

“Unlike larger stations, we don’t have a deep bench of employees, so we rely upon the dedicated individuals that we employ,” Bennett said.

Bennett said the station has been able to allocate a portion of its annual operating budget over the past couple of decades to a rainy day fund that covers unexpected equipment failures or tower repairs. It could tap this emergency fund to stay on the air in the short term, but that wouldn’t last long.

“There is no substitute for the long-term security of receiving federal funding through CPB,” Bennett said.

This article has been updated with federal support percentages from KEDT’s fiscal year 2024 revenues.