“This is unprecedented for our industry” Local public broadcast stations deal with funding cuts

Federal funding for public radio and broadcasting officially ran out as of October 1, 2025. 

This comes after President Trump’s decision in July to revoke $9 billion that was allocated for public broadcasting and foreign aid. This amount included $1.1 billion that was allocated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced in August they would begin gradually winding down operations. This meant cutting staff and positions at the end of the fiscal year, leaving only a small team until January.

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” said CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison in a statement. “CPB remains committed to fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities and supporting our partners through this transition with transparency and care.”

The CPB was in charge of allocating federal funds to organizations such as NPR and PBS, and their affiliate stations. These include local stations here in Northeast Ohio. 

Many smaller stations relied heavily on these funds for a large portion of their budgeting, leading to layoffs and station closures. 

“For NPR and PBS, about 1-2% of their budget is provided by the federal government,” said John Volk, research associate on Northwestern’s State of Local News Project. “For small, local stations, that looks a lot more like 15%, which is pretty sizable. Then there’s a handful of stations, especially in rural areas where that number goes way up.”

When these stations shut down or cut back on reporting, there is a potential for news deserts to form, especially in more rural areas.

According to Volk, news deserts occur when communities lack access to a reliable, original source of local news.  

“We now track over 210 counties in the United States that don’t have access to a local newspaper, a local digital only site, or a local public broadcaster,” he said. 

Public broadcasting reaches into these rural communities that might not otherwise have access to local news. These communities may not have the bandwidth to support a digital site or the economy to support a newspaper, Volk said. 

“When we put these stations at risk, it’s really hard to imagine what can go in there instead,” Volk said. “I think in most cases, the answer is going to be nothing, and that’s a really troubling thought.”

When these holes are created, research shows civic and social issues can arise, Volk said.

“We’re talking about taxes going up, government spending going up, civic engagement going down, split ticket voting going down,” Volk said. “You’ve got a more partisan political environment, and in areas that don’t have strong local news, government transparency goes down.”

The closure of the CPB will mark the first time in over 50 years that local Northeast Ohio station, PBS Western Reserve, will not receive the CPB grant, said President and CEO Natalie Pillsbury. 

“At PBS Western Reserve, we’re probably more in the mid-size range for public media stations,” Pillsbury said. “So [CPB] funding was about 22% of our budget; 1.2 million that we received from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”

With federal funding cuts looming, PBS Western Reserve budgeted for their fiscal year with a surplus to offer some cushion for the station. 

Typically, PBS affiliates pay dues to air the PBS programming on their stations. To aid in budget relief for these local stations, PBS cut back on the cost of dues these affiliate stations pay by about $35 million for fiscal year 2026. 

In addition to federal funding cuts, there were also funding cuts on a state level this summer.

For PBS Western Reserve two budget areas were reduced by 13%, with another 27% cut slated for next year, Pillsbury said. 

“One area of funding that we receive from the state for educational services related to technology was zeroed out,” Pillsbury said. “For our station that was about $225,000 for just that one line item that was zeroed out. In total, we lost about $300,000 from the state.”

Overall, the station lost $1.5 million total in state and federal funding, Pillsbury said. 

“We were also able to make a couple of strategic expense reductions internally that did not impact staff or programming or services,” Pillsbury said. “All of that together brought the gap down to $600,000 that we needed to raise in addition to what we have planned to raise already from the community.” 

Membership costs and donations help  keep the station viable, and Pillsbury said PBS Western Reserve has seen a lot of support from community members so far. 

“We are about 30-35% to our goal, our overall goal for the year, and we’re only about 25% through the [fiscal] year,” Pillsbury said. “But, we’re also realistic. We know there are a lot of causes that need support out in the community and people need to make choices about which organization they support.”

Emails, community events, social media, on-air broadcasts, and local partnerships are just some of the ways the station is working to raise funds. One such partnership is with the Cuyahoga Valley National Scenic Railroad, Pillsbury said.

“They generously provided us with some vouchers to ride the [railroad] and so we’ve been offering those,” Pillsbury said. “If you become a member of PBS Western Reserve, your thank you gift will be a pair of vouchers to ride the railroad.”

The overall goal is trying to grow the base of support and bridge that gap of funding that was lost and remind people what these local broadcast services can offer them according to Pillsbury.

“I think sometimes people think of PBS as masterpiece theater or national programming,” Pillsbury said. “But when it comes to your local PBS station, the value to our community locally are those stories that we’re telling that aren’t going to be told anywhere else about our local communities.”

PBS Western Reserve also has educational services that reach thousands of families for free, including giving out books and doing STEM activities, Pillsbury said. 

Another local Northeast Ohio broadcast station, Ideastream Public Media, lost about $2.7 million from their annual budget, Chief Development and Marketing Officer, Yvette Cook Darby said. 

Similar to PBS, Ideastream is bridging this gap by seeking member and community donations. 

“A lot of our members have really stepped up,” Cook Darby said. “They’ve either increased their donations, perhaps maybe someone whose donation had lapsed, they came back in, and then some of our major donors  have really been generous in terms of giving us more money than perhaps they would have given us in the past.”

The donations and memberships are gained through an on-air pledge drive three times a year and email solicitations to current members, Cook Darby said. 

Research shows public media has a long history of being the number one trusted source of news for many people. 

“I think public media is one of the last truth forces of media that nobody can say they control one way or the other,” Cook Darby. “I also believe that has a lot to do with why we got defunded.” 

With the rise of AI and misinformation seeping into the news media, it will become harder for consumers to determine what is real or not. The best kind of media presents facts and information and lets viewers form their own opinions, Cook Darby said.

“This has nothing to do with any politics, has nothing to do with the party, but from a democracy perspective, defunding public media is really almost a silencing of voices,” Cook Darby said.