WNYC offers free programs to stations affected by funding cuts

WNYC in New York announced Wednesday that it will provide its nationally distributed programs at no cost to stations affected by federal funding cuts to public media.

The Station-to-Station Programming Project will offer public media organizations access to WNYC’s program portfolio for free if they received 10% or more of their budget from CPB. Stations below that threshold could also be eligible “on an as-needed basis,” according to a press release. Noncommercial stations that don’t receive CPB funds are also eligible to air the programs for free.

“Hopefully this will give station leaders a bit of financial breathing room to be able to think about sustainability, whatever that means at a local level for them, to think about whether they can reinvest this in local reporting or just other areas of their vital local service,” LaFontaine Oliver, New York Public Radio’s president and CEO and executive chair, told Current in an interview.

The program begins Oct. 1 and will run for one year. 

“The plan was to make it simple and easy for the most impacted stations in the system” to receive fee relief, Oliver said.

WNYC distributes the New York Public Radio productions Radiolab, On the Media, Terrestrials, The New Yorker Radio Hour and Carnegie Hall Live. Three programs that WNYC distributes but does not produce — Freakonomics Radio, Science Friday and Today, Explained — will be included in the program. 

“We’re really happy that we have distribution partners like the folks at Freakonomics Radio and Science Friday and Today, Explained that really saw the importance of stepping up in this moment of just really existential change in the system to support the stations and support us,” Oliver said.

“We are undeterred,” said Ira Flatow, founder and host of Science Friday, in the release. “At a time when scientific discoveries are impacting our lives at the most rapid rate in history, everyone loses if science and news are put behind a paywall.”

Oliver estimates that about two-thirds of public radio stations are eligible for the free programming, and total cost savings would likely be “a few million,” he said. 

WNYC is hoping to secure additional funding to expand the program beyond the first year, according to Oliver.

“None of us really knows what the full impact of this loss of federal funding is going to be on stations,” Oliver said. “And so we want this to be scalable, and we want to be able to continue to raise money to help be able to offer this program.”

The project is part of WNYC’s “Stand Together” campaign, which seeks to “build a financial firewall to protect against the full impact of funding cuts—to NYPR and the broader public media system,” according to the release.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Oliver’s title. He is president and CEO and executive chair.