This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
By Maya C. Miller and Cayla Mihalovich, CalMatters
Dozens of California public broadcasting stations will lose millions of dollars in funding after Republicans in Congress voted to strip them of federal funding, cutting off a vital lifeline in rural communities and limiting access to local news programming in an era of hyperpartisan national media.
While California broadcasters are assuring audiences that they plan to keep their signals running, they also warn that cost-saving changes are inevitable.
Radio and television stations of all sizes across the Golden State say that to survive, they’ll likely be forced to lay off staff and cut programming unless they’re able to make up the losses through fundraising. Their leaders warn that the cuts will disproportionately harm locally produced programs, the most expensive to create but among their most popular content, that inform millions of listeners and viewers.
Republicans have long wanted to cut funding for public broadcasting, arguing such services should be funded by private donors, not taxpayers. Their efforts prevailed when Congress last week finalized President Donald Trump’s request to rescind $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides grants to National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service, their affiliates and other independent public media creators. All nine of California’s Republican members of Congress voted in favor of the funding cuts.
Now, roughly 35 stations from San Diego to Hoopa in Humboldt County have lost critical funding.
While many public broadcasters remain hopeful that they’ll find ways to endure, all agree the rescission undermines the egalitarian mission of public media – to create a nationwide network that provides access to quality information, stories and music for local communities.
“That has been our superpower,” said Joe Moore, president and general manager of KVPR Valley Public Radio in Fresno. His station lost about 7% of its budget, or $175,000, from the CPB.
“The New York Times doesn’t have the type of investment in Alaska or in North Dakota – or on tribal reservations, bringing local news from these communities – that public radio does.”
Smaller stations whose budgets relied heavily on federal dollars to make ends meet are the most at risk of closure. In Eureka, the community-owned PBS affiliate KEET-TV stands to lose $847,000 – nearly half of its operating budget – due to the defunding of CPB. To survive, all of its funding will need to come from community support, since the station has no institutional backer such as a local college or school district.
David Gordon, KEET’s general manager and executive director, says that as much as he hopes the station will stay afloat even at reduced capacity, he won’t make the same bold proclamation that, “We’re not going anywhere,” like some stations have.
“I can’t guarantee that KEET will be here once the dust settles from this defunding move,” Gordon said. He emphasized that he was speaking for himself and not on behalf of his station.
“I hope it is, and I think there’s a good chance that it’ll survive in some form. But absolutely will it? I don’t know if I can say that.”
Nearby, Mendocino-based NPR member station KZYX was forced to lay off its news director after losing 25% of its operating budget, or $174,000, from the CPB. That means news will include fewer in-depth stories, such as interviews with city council members or county supervisors, said Andre de Channes, KZYX’s general manager and director of operations.
“There isn’t the time to source out those kinds of things,” he said. “So the news gets more like a headline news.”
The station serves roughly 130,000 listeners, including in Mendocino County and part of Lake County. When de Channes first learned about the CPB cuts, he immediately worried about fire safety, since listeners who live in off-the-grid rural areas without access to internet or cell service rely on KZYX for emergency information.
Those potentially lifesaving emergency alerts became a rallying cry for public media providers and their allies as they begged Congress to preserve funding for their stations, especially those in remote, rural areas that also tend to be Republican. Frank Lanzone, the longtime general manager of the NPR-affiliated KCBX in San Luis Obispo, said his station has sometimes been the only on-air source providing emergency information during severe weather events.
“There’s been several times in very bad storms when we’re the only station on the air in our area because of either power outages or people’s generators ran out of propane,” said Lanzone, who has worked in public radio for more than 50 years.
KCBX, which serves about 45,000 listeners from Santa Barbara to Monterey, will lose $240,000 in funding from CPB, about 13% of its operating budget.
“It’s going to hurt the stations and the people that listen to them who need it the most,” Lanzone said. “The most vulnerable, the ones out in the middle of nowhere.”
Local programs are most at risk
Both radio and television station leaders emphasized that local programming – shows that are created and produced in-house rather than purchased from another producer – will be first on the chopping block. To produce locally focused public television programming, stations must invest additional time, money and work on top of the membership dues they pay to be affiliated with PBS, which unlocks a large catalogue of programming that they can air at no additional cost.
For PBS viewers in the Inland Empire, that likely means the loss of popular local programs such as “Inland Edition,” an Emmy-winning weekly half-hour public affairs show, and “Learn With Me,” an award-winning bilingual English-Spanish children’s show, both of which are produced in house by affiliate KVCR.
“The local stuff that’s so important to people is probably the stuff that’ll go away,” said Connie Leyva, executive director of KVCR and a former Democratic state senator. The station stands to lose about $550,000 in annual CPB funding, about 6% of its budget.
She emphasized that the station also wanted to preserve its journalism staff – two full-time reporters and one part-time – who have recently focused on federal immigration raids taking place across the region.
“If we’re not here, the Inland Empire is just hearing about what’s happening in Los Angeles,” Leyva said. “We want to know what’s happening in our backyard, what’s happening at the schools around us, what’s happening at the Home Depots around us.”
Large stations and independents suffer too
While larger radio stations such as KQED in San Francisco are better equipped than their smaller counterparts to withstand the blow to their budgets, they too will lose massive chunks of funding that currently fund journalist positions and popular shows. Tony Marcano, who runs a statewide partnership network of 14 public radio stations and CalMatters known as the California Newsroom, said the loss of public funding will require even more collaboration.
“Smaller stations are likely to be more affected, but that doesn’t mean that the large stations are out of the woods,” Marcano said. “There’ll be pain.”
KQED, one of the country’s most listened-to public radio stations and the largest in California, laid off 45 employees earlier this month and lost 10 more from early retirement offers. The 15% reduction came on the eve of Congress passing the budget cuts and is KQED’s third round of layoffs in just five years. Though the station stressed that the cuts were due to longstanding financial challenges, KQED now stands to lose close to $8 million, or about 8% of its revenue.
LAist, the Los Angeles area’s largest NPR affiliate, laid off eight people earlier this year and has slashed 61 positions since 2023. It will lose $1.7 million in federal funding, about 4% of its budget.
The consequences go beyond newsroom staff and programming. The federal government funds repairs to transmission infrastructure and played a role in helping negotiate artist royalty fees on behalf of local stations.
Radio Bilingüe, a Central Valley-based organization that is one of the largest Spanish-language radio outlets and broadcasts throughout the U.S. and Mexico, was in the final stages of negotiations for a $1.1 million grant from the CPB to improve its transmission equipment, which hasn’t been updated since the 1980s. But the funding rollback means it will have to find the money elsewhere, said Hugo Morales, the group’s co-executive director and founder.
“You’re talking about transmitters that are 40 years old,” Morales said. “At some point, it’s going to give out, and we’re going to have to find somewhere else to raise the money for that.”
Morales also made the difficult decision earlier this year to cancel the construction of three additional stations across Arizona and New Mexico that would have primarily served rural communities and farm workers who don’t have access to broadband. The organization and its stations will lose $300,000 in annual CPB grants, roughly 7.5% of its yearly budget.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Radio Bilingüe shared vital information about testing centers, vaccine availability and how to sign up for social services in Spanish and Indigenous languages such as Mixteco and Triqui.
The loss of CPB funding will also jeopardize independent documentary filmmakers supported by the San Francisco-based ITVS, which Congress created in 1990 as an independent service with a mandate to increase diversity and innovation in public media. It received roughly 86% of its budget, $19 million, from federal grants.
ITVS leaders say the group has partnered with hundreds of independent filmmakers to co-produce more than 900 feature documentaries distributed to PBS stations nationwide.
“Public media is a space for all Americans,” said Carrie Lozano, the organization’s president and CEO. “These films are not partisan. They are, generally speaking, films that touch everybody’s lives. They are there in service of the public.”
In anticipation of the cuts, the organization laid off 13 employees in June, or roughly 20% of its staff. Lozano expects roughly 10 films to lose out on funding this year – a big cut from the 20 to 40 feature and short documentaries that ITVS typically funds every year. While the organization is determined to stay afloat, Lozano worries the loss of federal investment will prevent important stories from being told and create a domino effect on the rest of the ecosystem.
“There’s no question that this is a huge blow to the field,” Lozano said, “and to everything that surrounds it.”
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Public radio is one of the most honest and least biased sources of real news out there. It is no wonder the republican party treats them like an enemy. The internet and social media have been a great boon to those who wish to create false narratives and promote crackpot conspiracy theories.
With the internet and cell phones, Public Radio has gone by the way side.
Not really. It’s not just public radio like NPR that will be affected. In rural areas in the middle of our country, people rely on public broadcasts for tornado and other weather alerts, as well as other emergency broadcasts. Trump’s attack on NPR and PBS because he thinks they’re too “woke” is, like all the other stupid ideas in his bill, going to affect the people who got him elected in ways he never considered. Why? Because, he’s just not very smart. When hate and revenge drive every aspect of policy, a lot of innocent (and not so innocent) people get hurt.
It’s all about taking over the media and controlling what people see and hear. It’s step 1 or 2 in the How-To-Be-A-Fascist and No-Need-To-Vote-Anymore handbooks.
Not at all! My car has a radio, and almost every decent sized NPR station has a website and a mobile app. So you got it 100% backwards. With the internet and cell phones, Public Radio has truly gone nationwide.
Disclaimer: I am not a Republicrat in any way, shape, or form. Not a Leftist. Not a Right winger.
OK so…the way I was taught was pretty clear: If you take someone’s money, you have to take their $h1t. Those grants, gifts, goodies…they all come with a price somewhere down the road. Those funding sources that seem so generous, those “gifts” all come with conditions of some kind. The bill always comes due, and the source holding the purse strings can ALWAYS call in the note in some form. That’s the long version of “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”.
The Feds called in the note, and anyone who isn’t in bed with them in some fashion is going to get hurt. Today it’s Public Broadcasting’s turn in the barrel, and regardless of any nonpartisan public service they may be providing, Trump and his cohorts don’t like them and are going to squash them like a bug.
All the multimillionaire celebrity Leftists who have been preaching their gospel and ramming their politics down everyone’s throats all these years step up and put their money and celebrity power where their mouths have been. They’ve had an unfettered platform for years, and all that they seem to care about is what color people are, what their sexuality is, and the abortion issue. Those three things are it. On the Right we have the MAGAts and their agenda to eliminate all people under a certain income level, and to “get back at” the Leftists who have been pushing their agenda for years.
Meanwhile, the homeless population is exploding, people are struggling for food, medical care and basic survival, any opportunities are yanked out from under regular people and handed to the elite and whomever happens to be in power at that moment, crime is worse than ever, the racial and socioeconomic divisions are almost worse now than ever. Yet…despite all this, we have one side screaming about race, sexuality, and abortion and the other side finding ever more effective ways to step all over the rank and file humans trying to survive. NEITHER of these parties has come through or is coming through for the people. We’re just tools for these people and their associates to keep getting paid more and more and to garner more and more power.
Hey, multimillionaire celebrity Leftists…time to put your money where your mouths are: step up and fund these organizations and programs being squashed by Washington. Otherwise, shut up, because you’re just hypocrites. It’s easy to stand up on the dais at the Academy Awards, the Emmys, et al, and spew your politics whether the audience is interested or not. It’s easy to pull up in that SUV Limo with the uniformed driver and the drone opening and holding the door for you while you strut over the red carpet past the adoring masses lining your path into the big auditorium. Meanwhile, all the homeless people who live on that very same sidewalk have been carefully swept from sight so as not to ruin the party, and shoved back under their blue tarps clipped to the chain link fencing lining the 101 through L.A.
Yeah…I’ve witnessed it. It looks like a Third World slum down there, and all that we hear is how “those people need to be put somewhere else”…against their will if we like, so the rest of us decent folks don’t have to look at them. And those rich celebrities keep on keeping on.
Well…time to step the heck up and live what you’ve been preaching all this time. And no…starting a school or a medical clinic overseas doesn’t count. Time’s up, folks; step up or step off and shut up…your hypocrisy is showing.
Want to see and head Public Broadcasting? You say it has value? Then get together and bail it out and pay for it. Don’t expect the government to do it for you…because THIS is the result. When someone gets in power who dislikes what something does or stands for, and that government is funding it, that government WILL yank the rug right out from under. Guaranteed.
Time’s up, rich celebrities. Stop whining and start pitching in.
X2 Clu
So you’re twice the fool he is.
That’s a lot of writing by someone that isn’t hard-core something or other. It would’ve been nice not to have read such stupid words from an ignoramus. This is nothing more that creating/enforcing the state media and message – not in a good way.
What a crazy screed, normalizing behavior that totally trashes American values.
shoulda added “…and I haven’t one stinking clue about what I’m about to say, but…”
“Disclaimer: I’m an ignorant intellectually dishonest imbecile.”
Cutting costs for all Americans on subsidizing institutions with a very particular political agenda.
Only people averse to facts think NPR had a political agenda.
These people have been brainwashed by the lies pushed by cons and egotarians to deem anything that contradicts them as being “fake news.”
BASIC – explain, in detail, how public emergency broadcasts about weather (think tornados, Einstein) and other catastrophes or health or any other urgent alert have “political agendas.”
Do it.
Now cry some more about how Kermit the Frog tried to turn you into a liberal.
Brother, you know by now you doesn’t care about anything but what FOX tells him he should. He thinks he’s intelligent and probably also think he has a high IQ. Just like the orange monkey – he does NOT. Pretending and thinking you’re smart is a feature (not bug) of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
I fought with myself about the ‘feature’ and ‘bug’ thing I said. Originally I thought it’s totally a ‘feature’ of that mindset. But then I was thinking that – it’s really a ‘bug’ if you account for ‘normal’. So, here I am now thinking it doesn’t matter really. Both of those things are true.
So who subsidizes the swill you apparently guzzle through that big plastic straw you toss out your window on the freeway? Oh yeah, the billionaires that are attempting (successfully after a long concerted effort) to wipe out the American middle class. If we get back to the 19teens and even 1920s I hope you suffer like most did back then. I don’t shame myself for wishing that someone reap what they sow. There’s a real reason that people shouldn’t become wealthy as kings and that corporations aren’t really people my friend. But you’re eating and slurping and guzzling the gizz of island life.
NPR listenership has gone down dramatically according to their own statistics. NPR’s downturn was realized immediately after the 2024 disaster presidential election. People felt that they were lied to (misled?) and question the accuracy of the reporting. NPR took a similar hit after 2016 when listeners were led to believe Hillary was a “slam dunk” that election cycle. I listen to NPR nearly every day and don’t find them to be biased in their reporting, but I will note that they do leave omit news that reflects poorly on the party they support (for example, Biden’s obvious mental and physical decline and some of Kamala’s “interesting” responses to questions). Just like any business that is on the failing end of the spectrum, money should not be pumped in “just because.”
Shovel that horse manure, Bends Knees!