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Illustration by Carlos Carmonamedina
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We ask NPR one question about how the work comes together. |
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One year after federal money was pulled out of public media, how is the public radio network doing? |
For consumers, the most noticeable change is that NPR and local stations are constantly reminding people that the federal money is gone and asking them to become a supporter or to increase their gift. This happens on the radio, on the app, on the website, in your email, across social media and in real life should you attend an event hosted by public media.
Of course, that’s how it should be. Some stations recouped, or came close to compensating for, the loss of money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But the consensus is that some of the generosity will dissipate and it will be harder for stations to maintain that level of fundraising.
“So we know what we saw last year will not be sustainable,” Leone explained. “But if we can hang on to some of the increased giving, if we can do a good job of donor retention while continuing to work on some expense reduction and open up avenues for new revenue, we’ve got a shot at getting through without any real substantive adjustments.”
The entire public media network, including every member station across the country as well as PBS and NPR, runs on about $3.2 billion a year. The federal grants represented about 16% of that total.
Small stations took the biggest hit, in some cases losing half of their revenue. At the same time, many large stations saw the biggest community outpouring.
“It’s a fractured ecosystem,” said Rima Dael, the CEO of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. She represents 200 of the smallest stations. “One of the things that we didn't understand well is that small stations and Native stations are super important to the entire system.”
The fundamental promise of public media is to provide high-quality, free information to everyone, everywhere. Dael pointed out that after the federal money disappeared, the more affluent parts of the network came to recognize that public media is most critical in the places that can least afford to support it – sparsely populated communities with few economic resources. The only way the network can claim to be a national network is by saving public media in those places.
Although the overall amount of money donated to public media increased, it came disproportionately from big donors in big cities.
“Smaller donor dollars and mid-sized donor dollars are going down,” Dael said. “So that doesn't bode well for the average community radio station that relies on sustainers and membership drives and pledge drives. Also, the average gift that you can raise in a small rural community is not necessarily the same as what you can raise in downtown LA or Chicago.”
There is a silver lining. The diffuse nature of the public media in the United States makes reshaping it an incremental task. The Public Media Bridge Fund is a $100 million effort by large foundations to stabilize the network.
“The decentralized nature of the network is what makes us strong and able to not only survive this, but also eventually to start growing again,” said Erik Langner, executive director of the Bridge Fund.
That fund gave out $26 million in the last year to stabilize 74 public media organizations that risked closure. Each of those recipients is currently working with a coach to find a sustainable future. The Public Media Company, the nonprofit that administers the Bridge Fund, is currently reviewing around 20 applications for collaborations, mergers and other cooperative agreements.
Some mergers have already begun. Rocky Mountain Public Media announced earlier this year that it intends to acquire six stations currently run by Community Radio for Northern Colorado, including KUNC and the Colorado Sound. Texas Public Radio and The San Antonio Report merged their operations earlier this month. The combined newsroom includes 31 journalists serving the San Antonio market.
However, the loss of government money made the public media network more vulnerable to threats that come from the generally hostile environment in which journalism now operates. While these threats are widespread across all media, public media has some particular vulnerabilities.
Member stations face pressure from state legislatures and governors who want to cut state funding and pass laws aimed at weakening the news reporting from the public radio network. On top of that, some university license holders no longer wish to be in the public media business. And finally, the number of people who consume news via broadcast is in decline, meaning that for public media to survive it has to deliver its high-quality journalism and other content to an audience outside of radio and television.
State legislatures take aimAlong with the federal effort to defund public media, several states, including Florida, North Dakota and Indiana, cut the money they granted to local public media. Other states like Pennsylvania and New Jersey cut funds in previous years.
In some cases, states have yanked all funding. In other places, legislators have restricted funding to the emergency broadcast network infrastructure, forcing stations to cut back on covering news.
State-level politics in dozens of states will continue to have a profound impact on the future of public media. In Alaska and Alabama, the next governor will influence whether state money for public broadcasting comes back (Alaska) or goes away (Alabama). The Wyoming legislature recently came close to cutting the $800,000 it contributes every year to public media, but restored the money to its budget after a public outcry.
Some universities want out, or less inColleges and universities that hold public media licenses are under both financial and political pressure to change how their stations operate. Because many of the universities are state run, folks in some circles suggest that a transition to community-run boards would be a good thing. Others argue that would be impractical.
“The level of in-kind and cash support that comes to stations from their university licensees is profound,” Langner said. “As universities suffer their own budgetary shortfalls, the potential ripple effect over to the stations that are not generally considered a core offering by that university … that creates a whole other layer of risk.”
Langner hopes that universities that want to get out of public media will remain committed to an orderly transfer of the license and other assets, rather than simply shutting the station down and selling the license.
Penn State University and the University of Missouri are both divesting their public media licenses.
After negotiations to transfer its license initially broke down, Penn State’s board of trustees voted last September to shut down WPSU as a way of saving $3.4 million a year in subsidies the university was supplying to the station. But in response to public pressure, they agreed to transfer the licenses to WHYY in Philadelphia. WHYY will take on the additional fundraising to keep WPSU, which serves central Pennsylvania, running with local programming. That deal is awaiting FCC approval.
The University of Missouri announced in 2025 a three-year window to convert the public media stations in St. Louis and Kansas City to community-run boards. The NPR and PBS stations in both communities are currently working to manage the transition. Mizzou is keeping KBIA in Columbia, which is run by the university’s legendary journalism school.
Other colleges that hold public media licenses are cutting the level of support they provide. WOUB in Athens, Ohio lost $1.2 million in federal funding, which resulted in staff cuts earlier this year. The station then learned that Ohio University was also trimming the station's annual allocation, prompting the acting general manager to warn that more cuts may be coming this year, including possible program cuts.
Some universities want more control Other universities have been more inclined to make programming or staffing changes.
Pensacola State College in Pensacola, Fla., runs a public television station. Their board of trustees voted to stop running PBS programming as of July 1. The school was spending $800,000 a year on fees to PBS. It’s not clear what the true savings are. WSRE has not reported what the replacement programming costs are.
The WSRE Foundation is suing the school to access the $5 million it had raised and wanted to spend on PBS fees.
Just last month, the University of Texas at Austin fired the general manager of KUT Public Radio after she publicly criticized the university over last-minute requirements imposed on a public festival the radio station was hosting.
Former general manager Debbie Hiott had been with the station since 2019, and a presence in Texas journalism for three decades. At the time of her firing she told a reporter she didn’t think the university, which is also home to a prestigious communications college, was opposed to the station’s independent reporting. “Obviously, this is some sort of sea change,” Hiott said to the Texas Tribune.
While the economic and political threats to university licensees seem to be coming at a faster pace, it’s not a foregone conclusion that this will continue.
“I don't think we’re quite seeing a trend yet,” Leone told me. “We’re certainly seeing the edges of it. But how it plays out will be wildly different, driven by everything from state politics to legislative activity to economics.”
Community voices and behavior will have the biggest impactNews consumers will have the last say on public media’s future. Public pressure can clearly influence the way states and universities support public media.
But the biggest impact people can have is by consuming the news and other content that public media creates. For their part, NPR and the member stations must continue their solid work and also find ways to compel listeners and readers to seek it out.
The good news is that NPR and the member stations have some control. The bad news is that NPR is playing catchup when it comes to strengthening its digital technology and the overall infrastructure of the network.
NPR is using a big gift to invest in the engineering and technology that will help public media serve audiences beyond broadcast radio and television.
As a news consumer, you can imagine what this will look like when it works well. Think about the actions you take when you want to find the answer to something or when you are looking to discover something interesting. Of course you pick up your smart phone or open your computer. Whether you go straight to a news source, an AI chatbot, or you go to an intermediary like Google or TikTok, public media content should be there for you.
And it probably already is, only there’s not enough of it. And it may not include the local news that makes public media valuable. But they’re working on it.
A new definition of public mediaAll of this restructuring, reorganizing and finding new methods for serving the public raises the question: What is public media in this new landscape? Until this year, public media in the United States was defined as the radio and television organizations that received support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Now that there is no CPB, there is no clear center. Public media goes beyond those who distribute NPR and PBS. The number of community broadcasters who do not affiliate with NPR or PBS is substantial and likely to grow.
This question is more pressing in local communities where commercial journalism is in decline and nonprofit newsrooms are reinventing local news.
I’m looking to small and mid-sized markets – those that were hardest hit by the loss of government funding – to find the most creative solutions.
Quentin Hope is the executive director of High Plains Public Radio, which serves rural audiences in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. He’s trying to create a network of local partners and contributors. They would not be making stories for the radio.
“We’ve got to serve who we’re serving now better, but also, to really build a new audience with a different approach,” he said. “And primarily, you know, probably 90% digital.”
Smaller stations like High Plains Public Radio will likely transform the most over the next two years, as they create partnerships that go beyond traditional public media and even beyond news.
“It’s a broader definition of public media. You’re really positioning yourself, which we've been trying to do, within the local or regional community,” Hope said. “I think public media is now being seen as a central player in terms of media infrastructure.”
As the rest of this transition shapes up, I’ll be watching for the concrete steps that NPR takes to enhance its network. Will news consumers reliably find a daily local and national news report that leaves them both informed and engaged? Will they find that report in their preferred method of getting news? Can NPR leverage its connections with member stations to enhance the daily report in a way that gives us a deeper understanding of the entire country?
And finally, I’ll be looking at how local stations adapt to the changing needs of the audience. Can your local station, with NPR’s help, find ways to reach new people beyond the radio?
There is not a lot of time. If public media doesn’t look substantially different two years from now, it will likely dwindle. If that happens, the United States would be the only Western democracy that does not have a robust public media system. — Kelly McBride |
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The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Reporters Amaris Castillo and Nicole Slaughter Graham and copy editor Merrill Perlman make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and from our inbox. As always, keep them coming.
Kelly McBride
NPR Public Editor
Chair, Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute |
Kelly McBride
Public Editor |
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Amaris Castillo
Poynter Institute |
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Nicole Slaughter Graham
Poynter Institute |
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The Public Editor stands as a source of independent accountability. Created by NPR's board of directors, the Public Editor serves as a bridge between the newsroom and the audience, striving to both listen to the audience's concerns and explain the newsroom's work and ambitions. The office ensures NPR remains steadfast in its mission to present fair, accurate and comprehensive information in service of democracy.
Read more from the NPR Public Editor, contact us, or follow us on social media. |
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