According to this page [1] PBS only receives about 15% of its funds from federal funding. The rest is from donations.
1: https://foundation.pbs.org/ways-to-give/gifts-to-the-pbs-end...
So this certainly won't be the death of PBS, as I had feared.
Update 2: For the record (easier to respond in this original post than to each response), I am not defending the decision at all. I grew up listening to NPR, and have been on recurring monthly donations to PBS for years.
I was genuinely curious about what percentage comes from federal funds. So I am just trying to level-set and get ahead of any hysteria about the actual impact.
PBS and NPR do not operate like the commercial networks --
ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox/Etc are big corporations that produce (or commission/license, it gets...weird) shows to be distributed on their affiliates, that, depending on the city you are in, can be owned by the network OR another company that operates it like a franchise. Their affiliate agreement governs how much of the network programming they play -- though there are other agreements for non-network programming -- Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune, for example, are syndicated and NOT network.
PBS on the other hand is more of a consortium of public TV stations around the country. Shows that you might think of as "PBS Shows" are actually produced by these individual stations and then distributed to other stations that want them. Even PBS Newshour and Washington Week are produced by WETA in DC.
Radio gets even more complicated. Many of the shows I've seen referenced on this thread aren't even necessarily NPR. Marketplace, for example, is American Public Media, which is sort of an outcropping from Minnesota Public Radio.
So funding going to ACTUAL PBS is a tiny part of this. What happens to the money going to various stations? What happens to the grants to produce and run these stations, especially in rural areas?
As others have said, the big guys (WGBH in Boston, WETA in DC, etc) will have minimal impact since they have a large pool of donors.
But the little guys will suffer more. Ultimately, I think we can all agree that we hope the impact won't be catastrophic as far as the number of listeners impacted.
Yep. Public media operations in rural and small-city markets are often as small as one full-time employee and cover large spans of territory. A cut to each of those stations might be as small as $150k but could represent much of their ability to do much more than minimal playback of out-of-market packages (which also degrade since many are published in part or full through CPB grants).
My guess is that things will largely continue as they have been, but we'll get a lot fewer of those cute little stories about a random one-off issue in a town of 300 people or whatever.
Probably not the biggest loss if I'm right, but still a major bummer, and yet another connection between the rural and the urban is severed.
I think people are interested in local news, so the gap will certainly be replaced but by monied interests, e.g. Sinclair [1] or similar. Who will promote their narrative and further polarize the information landscape.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group
ah so like the cathedral vs the bazaar...
PBS themselves[1] state that CPB funding is what kept local stations solvent, so without funding, they will likely close.
They also state that the bulk of CPB funding pays for national NPR and PBS programs, so those will see cuts, too.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/house-gives-final-appr...
Rural stations relied heavily on CPB funding; urban stations get most of their funding from donations or corporate underwriting. So big city public TV and radio will survive, but those in less populated areas might go under unless some other source of funding is found.
Yeah but the shows that the urban stations are running and producing are all bought by the rural stations. So the whole ecosystem needs the rural stations to help fund the productions.
The urban stations raise a lot of money locally (through pledge drives, and by hitting up local companies for underwriting, which is basically advertising). The rural stations don't, too few people. The rural stations get CPB money, and some of that goes back to fund shows that they carry, but mostly it's the cost to operate the stations. The urban stations aren't being propped up by the rural stations, there's too little money, even including the money that they get from CPB.
I agree overall that this is not a good thing for also furthering a knowledge gap between rural and urban areas. But in the age of internet streaming, wouldn't rural areas still have access to stream public radio? Genuinely asking.
I tried looking for sources on station audience sizes, alternatives they might have, etc. But it was difficult to find.
> But in the age of internet streaming, wouldn't rural areas still have access to stream public radio?
Sometimes streaming isn't an option. When Helene hit WNC we lost power, cell, internet, and water all at the same time. The local NPR stations were the only ones broadcasting updates on a regular cadence so we could learn what in the world was going on. And we're not far from downtown Asheville.
Some extremely rural areas only have spotty internet or no internet or cell at all and public radio is the only thing they have.
Local reporting is basically dead outside of metro areas.
Sure, you can stream, but the content will be focused on another locale or won't address local issues.
When I'm not busy worrying about everything else, I worry that there's assuredly an explosion of local corruption, especially outside of cities large enough to still have something resembling actual local news media, that we can't even begin to get a handle on because it's... well, it's invisible now, that's why it's (surely—I mean, we can't possibly think corruption is dropping or even remaining steady, with the death of the small town paper and small-market TV news rooms, right?) happening in the first place.
I think it's, quietly and slowly, the thing that's going to doom our country to decline if something else doesn't get us first (which, there are certainly some things giving this one a run for its money). The Internet killed a pillar of democracy, replaced it with nothing that serves the same role, and we didn't even try to keep it from happening, so here we are, we doomed ourselves by embracing the Internet quickly and not trying to mitigate any harm it causes.
For some your comment might sound even comic but it is damn true. It safens me that the dangerous spiral is not seen by many others.
After all, the milenia old adage "bread and games" silences to many.
It's pretty dead even in metro areas.
My local NPR broadcasts rarely actually cover anything that's happening in like city or county politics. Heck, even talking about state politics is pretty rare.
In the SF bay area, KQED (NPR affiliate) has a lot of coverage of local SF and Bay Area politics. The Pacifica station, KPFA (public radio but not an NPR affiliate) has more.
Yes, all the rural PBS markets will retain streaming access, which, again, is how most people under the age of 60 get access to PBS today.
Public radio and local broadcasting has been gobbled up by right-wing sources, including Sinclair
Watch this clip:
https://youtu.be/xwA4k0E51Oo?feature=shared
As a long time listener of AM radio. Literally nothing has changed from a programming perspective. The only noticeable difference is who supplies the on the hour news.
Well a counter argument would be, how would you know if anything is changed? If you're not part of the editors for a newsrooms how would you know which stories are cut and which make the broadcast?
Are there many rural-only districts?
Having moved around my PBS districts always seemed to be a metro+rural zone.
There are vast open spaces, out of FM radio range of a really big city. Some of the worst-hit public radio stations are on reservations.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5408014-rural-stations-vu...
> Rural stations hit hardest
> Up to 18 percent of about 1,000 member stations would close
> PBS only receives about 15% of its funds from federal funding
I'm a big fan of PBS, but I wonder if this common stat is misleading. Don't a huge portion of PBS funds come from member stations, which get a portion of their funds from federal funding?
Yes it is so obviously misleading and incorrect that only the mainstream media could have perpetuated this unquestioned for decades.
The federal money goes to member stations which then hands it right over to NPR to pay for programming, I believe it’s $500 per hour. It’s 1 layer of indirection but no one seemed to mention this in all of the reporting
$500 per hour for a media production seems like a weird number. It's either fantastically cheap for production costs and an atypical model for licensing costs. From what I understand radio licensing is usually done either per listener per time or per content (which might be only 25 or 50ish minutes a piece to allow for ads). It's quite high if it's the latter and would probably be a significant fraction of the operational costs for many smaller stations, far above their music costs.
My link is from PBS's donation page. Are you saying they're misleading people about their own funds?
> ...hands it right over to NPR to pay for programming, I believe it’s $500 per hour...
So - does that mean a member station could just cut back on their NPR-sourced programming, then fill the air time by playing more Frank Sinatra, and broadcasting local HS football games, and such?
I suspect that many will be forced to close entirely now. Others may not longer be able to afford pay for NPR shows at all (they'd have to pay for both membership and individual shows), while others will have to fill their airtime with things besides news and other NPR programs
I am also really annoyed when people repeat that it's only 15% government funded or whatever. It's a misrepresentation to the point of lying. Which is further reinforced by: if it's only 15%, why are you having to shut down? It's so dumb.
The CPB is closing, not PBS. PBS says it's 15% funding from federal sources. CPB, well they're closing so who knows.
Please check my link again. It's from PBS.
Are you suggesting that PBS is misinforming people about how much of PBS's funds are government funded?
My link is literally from the PBS foundation. I'm very careful about my sources in this age of constant misinformation.
I don't know about the situation at all (non-American here), but hypothetically if a local (say State level or something) organisation, that was 100% funded by the federal government, chose to donate 10% of their revenue to PBS, then PBS would accurately classify that as a donation rather than federal funding, but it would still potentially be affected by federal funding cuts.
I've no idea of that is at all the case with any of PBS' donations, but it seems like a hypothetical that might be true and that could be hidden despite you being diligent in finding out what PBS truthfully reported.
Yes. I think 15% of funds from direct federal funding is totally correct, but I think there's also a portion from indirect federal funding.
Man, sometimes losing 15% is enough to make things unsustainable. It is not like they are an Ivy League university with an endowment bigger than a developing country's GDP.
Totally agree. But there's a much bigger chance to survive with a 15% change, rather than a 30% or 40% change, for example.
The CEO stated repeatedly that many small stations are likely to be forced to shutdown
Per https://cpb.org/funding, $357m goes to public tv and $119m to public radio.
That's a nice chunk of change, though low enough that a few friendly billionaires could put some pocket change into a trust today and make up for this funding in perpetuity. And there undoubtedly will be a massive surge in donations from small donors in response to this.
As long as the bigger fish are willing to subsidize the smaller rural stations, I don't think there is anything to be afraid of.
The removal of this Sword of Damocles is in my opinion a great thing for PBS and NPR.
A few friendly billionaires could have funded them entirely for the last 60 years. I see no reason to think that they suddenly will now. Many stations will be closed, and people will lose out on valued programing.
Joan Kroc gave NPR its biggest gift ever, $200 million. Alas, that was unusual.
I think your usage of the word “only” is a mistake. This is an important piece of information but if you are going to imply value like that then you should also explain the consequences of that cut.
It will be the death of public radio and television in small markets. Not all stations are affected equally.
This is not a fiscal decision. This is a ideology that demonizes the open exchange of ideas and truth.
No I totally understand. I'm not trying to defend the decision or anything.
But I am just trying to set expectations of what people should expect to see. I'm trying to get ahead of the predictable hysteria about the death of public radio/tv.
Honestly, given the news that the Trump administration now has editorial control over all of CBS, it’s probably good that they’re no longer holding NPR’s purse strings anymore.
Maybe the revolution will be televised after all.