We have heard from many supporters asking for guidance with respect to recent events facing public media. As followers of UCC Media Justice know from our recent advocacy, Congress voted to cancel the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s (CPB) funding in July. CPB announced last week that it was shutting down as of the end of September.
So what happens when CPB shuts down?
CPB has been an important source of funding for mostly individual programs and small radio and TV stations—focused on serving rural areas or smaller communities that cannot financially support the stations through donations alone. Stations, in turn, are members of networks like National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
The biggest impact will be on the smaller stations, some of which receive more than 50 percent of their annual funding from CPB. NPR and PBS are going to take financial hits because some of their member stations and their programming were supported by CPB.
But programs like NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts or All Things Considered are not going to disappear overnight, or, likely, at all. Those programs are supported through existing volunteer donations and through fees charged to member stations.
This CPB diagram shows how CPB funding used to work:
So, what can you do?
There will be a huge and devastating impact with the loss of the CPB funds. If you want to help replace funds lost when CPB was de-funded, a great website was recently produced by Semi-public, a substack site run by a former NPR employee that tracks a lot of data about public broadcasting. It has produced https://adoptastation.org, which allows members of the public to view their local public stations and find out how much funding they lost from CPB, and learn more about stations nationwide—some of which lost between 54 and 99 percent of their funding.
Also, consider what you want to fund. As those who watched last year’s Parker Lecture know, we are facing a local journalism crisis in our country. As Paul Farhi explained, 55 million Americans now live in 212 counties that are already news deserts or another 228 that are on the verge of becoming one, according to the Medill School.
Some public media stations do offer dynamic journalism about local issues. In other cases, it is a local digital journalism site that is filling the gap and could probably use your dollars. For example, in the DC area, I subscribe to the Baltimore Banner and the 51st.
Or, LPFM micro-radio stations around the country are non-profit stations that didn’t receive CPB funding but are often the kind of grassroots local radio with programming by volunteers that could use your help. The Missouri Mid-South Conference of the United Church of Christ has just announced that, with the help of UCC Media Justice, it has received a license for an LPFM station, KPVF-LP, and will be launching later this year! They could use your support. Near me in the DC metro area, I support WOWD-LP.
UCC Media Justice is working every day to help create an accountable and just media ecosystem—one that produces local journalism, includes all people in its reporting, and allows people to tell their own stories.
When considering how to support better media, whether funded by CPB or not, consider volunteering with UCC Media Justice or making a generous financial donation to sustain our work.