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...