Public Broadcasting Stations Dropping Services as Funding Cuts Hit Home
Wednesday was the start of the first fiscal year in over 50 years without federal funding for public broadcasting stations, and public broadcasters are starting to cut programming and even making plans to eventually go dark in some parts of the country, said America’s Public Television Stations CEO Kate Riley in interviews. “It feels like every day an announcement comes from another station talking about the services that they're having to cut, the layoffs they're having to make,” Riley said. “Our sense is that this is really just the beginning, and that this is going to be a rolling wave of these types of station cuts and reductions in services over the coming months.”
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Stations all over the nation are feeling the impact of the funding loss, Riley said. Last week, the New Jersey PBS network announced that it will have to go dark in June 2026 because of federal and state cuts. It said the New York PBS network WNET has run the NJ PBS station for 14 years but, because of the cuts, couldn’t reach an extension agreement with New Jersey’s Public Broadcasting Authority to continue doing so. “We have been proud to serve the state of New Jersey with content that inspires, educates and informs.”
WPSU in central Pennsylvania has also announced plans to go dark in the coming months. KUAC Fairbanks, Alaska, is facing a $1.2 million shortfall due to the cuts, one-third of its annual budget. Last month, KUAC said it would begin shutting off its over-the-air transmitters at night to save electricity. The station is also cutting two multicast channels and some programming.
Those reductions are coming before stations have even missed what would have been their first payment from the clawed-back federal funds, Riley said. Those payments would have come in November. “I think we're going to continue to see really serious cuts that are going to affect communities and more and more stations that are at high risk of going off-air,” she said. “This is a sudden loss of investment from the federal government that stations have been planning on for the last two years, with really only two months to try to figure out how to fill that gap or restructure.”
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., mourned CPB’s closing Wednesday night. “For the first time in nearly 60 years, [CPB] has permanently shuttered its doors,” she said. “With [President Donald] Trump's attack on the free press and local news disappearing, this silencing of trusted public media comes at the very time Americans need it most.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of the GOP lawmakers who opposed CPB’s funding rescission, hailed the Bureau of Indian Affairs for including 14 of her state’s tribal-serving public broadcasters in the pool of such stations that will receive $9.4 million in repurposed agency funding. The Trump administration pledged that allocation to several Senate Republicans in exchange for their votes to rescind CPB’s money (see 2507150086). “This funding will help some of Alaska’s most rural radio stations make ends meet for now,” Murkowski said. “But it is one-time funding, and the job isn’t done until every station in Alaska has stable, long-term support.”
Other Funding Possibilities?
There isn’t really a prospective replacement for the federal funding, Riley said. Many stations have seen an uptick in donations in the wake of the rescission, but “those types of spikes in donations are not sustained over time.” In rural areas serving less affluent populations, federal funding made up over 30% of stations’ budgets, she noted. Those are often the same areas where PBS stations are some of the only local broadcasting, because they aren’t viable for commercial stations due to low population density. They will be the hardest hit by the cuts, Riley said. “If those stations close, there will be no over-the-air public television broadcast available in communities, which also damages our public safety and emergency alert and warning services.”
Riley said there's still a possibility that Congress could bring federal dollars back to PBS. “We continue to talk to members of Congress on both the Democratic and the Republican side who are extremely concerned about the impacts they're seeing in their local communities.” APTS is working with lawmakers to try to include funding for public TV stations in the final FY 2026 funding package, which Congress will vote on later this year, she added.
Lobbyists said they see almost no chance that Congress will restore CPB funding, at least so long as Republicans retain control of both chambers. All but four GOP lawmakers -- two each in the Senate and House -- voted in July against final passage of the 2025 Rescissions Act, which clawed back $1.1 billion in advance CPB funding (see 2507170045 and 2507180048).
Democrats have been pressing to bring back CPB’s $535 million allocation for FY 2026 via their counteroffer for a continuing resolution (S-2882) to temporarily restore federal appropriations through Oct. 31, but the Senate had rejected that bid at least three times as of Thursday. The upper chamber was set to vote again Friday on invoking cloture on S-2882 and Republicans’ House-passed CR (HR-5371) in hopes of ending the government shutdown, which began Wednesday. The Senate voted 47-53 on S-2882 that day, well below the 60-vote cloture threshold for passage (see 2510010065).
Asked if it's possible that public TV stations could make concessions to lawmakers to secure funding in the vein of Skydance Paramount’s news ombudsman (see 2509090065), Riley said PBS stations already aim to provide “balanced content that reflects all of America.” Lawmakers have told APTS they’re most concerned about the availability of local programming, she said, and APTS is focusing on how funding could keep local programs going.
If Congress does appropriate money for PBS stations, getting it to them might be complicated by the winding down of CPB. The majority of its staff departed the agency Tuesday, APTS said in a release, though its website remained active as of Thursday afternoon. Riley said a restoration of funding could also reverse the closure of CPB, or the funds might have to go through a different federal agency. CPB didn’t respond to a request for comment Thursday.