Latest news with #KEET
San Francisco Chronicle
22-07-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
This Northern California PBS station will lose half its budget to Trump cuts
KEET-TV transmitted its first lineup of fledgling programming from inside a garage before moving atop what locals call 'Humboldt Hill' in 1975. The hilltop station overlooking Eureka has, for decades, broadcast a mix of national and local programming. Its lean staff has produced documentaries chronicling suicide prevention and drug addiction across Humboldt County. It has carried classics like 'Mr. Rogers' and 'Sesame Street.' Now, the station is at risk of becoming a casualty of President Donald Trump's plans to claw back $9 billion in funds for public broadcasting and foreign aid. The cuts will hurt all public broadcasters, but for smaller stations the sudden loss of funding could be catastrophic. Northern California's rural public TV stations will lose the largest shares of their budgets in the region, putting them at the greatest risk of shuttering. Smaller stations nationwide are facing similar crises. 'We've been watching this in slow motion,' said Robert Stein, KEET's interim director of development. Nearly half of KEET's budget — about $700,000 — has historically come from federal funds, making it one of the state's most vulnerable stations under the recently passed Rescissions Act. In an open letter to the community Friday, KEET's Executive Director David Gordon told viewers the station would be forced to 'make painful cuts to both staff and programming in the days ahead.' California's rural TV stations are awaiting a Wednesday meeting with the PBS national office to learn more about what the broadcaster may be able to offer them. If nothing were to change regarding how PBS bills rural stations, most — if not all — would no longer be able to afford remaining affiliated stations, Stein said. 'The immediate impact on this is existential,' he said. 'Junk spending' On Friday, the House gave the Rescissions Act final approval, making what KEET and others in public broadcasting feared a reality. The Republican-led House passed the bill by a 216-213 vote along party lines. Trump has called tax dollars to local broadcasting wasteful spending. His May executive order directing federal agencies to cut off funding argued NPR and PBS both don't present 'fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events' — something the broadcasters have adamantly refuted. 'We're cutting junk spending, foreign aid giveaways, woke public broadcasting, and other bloated programs that do nothing for the average American,' Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Redding, posted to X following the House vote. LaMalfa's district includes another at-risk PBS affiliate, KIXE. The station has historically received about 37% of its budget from the federal funds, said General Manager Rob Keenan. LaMalfa told the Chronicle on Monday he is sympathetic to rural stations such as KIXE, but said it isn't taxpayers' place to prop them up. 'We're looking at every place to try and save tax dollars and narrow that $2 trillion deficit down to something more responsible,' he said. Under the prior system, PBS stations would receive about half their annual funding in early October. The allocation is timed with when broadcasters are supposed to pay their bill to carry national PBS programming. KIXE joined the Public Broadcasting Service network in 1969. In 2020, it began broadcasting online. 'We are the system we have,' said Keenan, the KIXE manager. 'Especially in rural areas, especially in smaller markets, you don't have public media without an infusion of federal money.' There isn't the same concentration of wealthy donors in rural California as there is in the Bay Area, he said. 'Some of the bigger stations are going to fare it better, but not necessarily,' Keenan said. 'Story of a community' San Francisco's two NPR affiliate stations are already campaigning for donors to help make up the shortfall. For KQED, that's a staggering $8 million per year — about 8% of its $100 million budget for both TV and radio. For KALW, a smaller FM station, the funding cuts represent about $400,000, or about 7%, of its budget. 'I don't think we would stop streaming NPR,' Kass said. 'For us, like most stations, it will affect our ability to do local programming.' Before the cuts were finalized on the Hill, KQED — San Francisco's leading NPR affiliate — had already announced plans to cut 15% of its staff, or 45 positions. 'The defunding of public media poses grave financial challenges for NPR, PBS, and all local stations like KQED,' CEO Michael Isip said in a statement. 'This cut will be especially devastating for smaller stations and some will shut down in the coming months or years.' Because so much of the NPR system is linked, the cuts will likely mean fewer opportunities for stories originating in smaller cities across the country to make their way to California listeners.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘Catastrophic': Rural public media stations brace for GOP cuts
Public media stations around the country are anxiously awaiting the results of Thursday's House vote that could claw back $1.1 billion from public broadcasting, with leaders warning that the cuts present an existential crisis for public media's future. For smaller stations — many of which are in rural parts of the country — the funding makes up critical chunks of their yearly operating budgets. Many of them are being forced to plan how they'll survive the cuts, if they can at all, public media executives say. Local leaders say the cuts would not only deprive their audiences of news and educational programming, but could also lead to a breakdown of the emergency broadcast message infrastructure that is critical for communities with less reliable internet or cellular service. 'That would mean an almost immediate disappearance of almost half our operating budget,' David Gordon, executive director of KEET in Eureka, California, said of the rescission proposal. 'Assuming [KEET] would continue, it would be in a very, very different form than it is right now.' The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity that distributes federal money to public media stations via grants, said about 45 percent of public radio and TV stations it provided grants to in 2023 are in rural areas. Nearly half of those rural stations relied on CPB funding for 25 percent or more of their revenue. But that funding is being targeted for a vote as part of a push from President Donald Trump that also aims to cut $8.3 billion in foreign aid. The rescissions package would cut CPB funding already approved by Congress for the next two fiscal years. The proposal, which only needs approval from a simple majority, must pass both chambers of Congress within 45 legislative days from the day it's introduced. The House is set to vote on Thursday. If the House and Senate follow their current schedules, the deadline to vote on the cuts is July 18. If the deadline passes and Congress has not approved the cuts, the White House will be required to spend the money — but funding could still be cut in future budgets. If approved, the package would codify a series of cuts first picked out by the Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year. Both Trump and Elon Musk, former head of DOGE, have repeatedly accused NPR and PBS of bias against Republicans. In 2023, the Musk-owned social media site X labeled NPR as "state-affiliated media," falsely suggesting the organization produces propaganda. Trump regularly suggested cutting federal funding for public media during his first term. But his second term has brought increased hostility to mainstream media outlets, including the Associated Press, Voice of America, ABC News and CBS News. Approximately 19 percent of NPR member stations count on CPB funding for at least 30 percent of their revenue — a level at which stations would be unlikely to make up if Congress approves the rescissions, according to an NPR spokesperson. Ed Ulman, CEO of Alaska Public Media, predicts over a third of public media stations in Alaska alone would be forced to shut down 'within three to six months' if their federal funding disappears. PBS CEO Paula Kerger said in an interview she expects 'a couple dozen stations' to have 'significant' funding problems 'in the very near term' without federal funding. And she believes more could be in long-term jeopardy even if they survive the immediate aftermath of the cuts. 'A number of [stations] are hesitant to say it publicly,' she said. 'I know that some of our stations are very, very worried about the fact that they might be able to keep it pieced together for a short period of time. But for them, it will be existential.' Smaller stations with high dependency on federal funding may be forced into hard choices about where to make cuts. Some stations are considering cutting some of what little full-time staff they have, or canceling some of the NPR and PBS programming they pay to air. Phil Meyer, CEO of Southern Oregon PBS in Medford, Oregon, said his station will have to get creative just to stay afloat. 'If we eliminated all our staff, it still wouldn't save us enough money,' Meyer said. 'It becomes an existential scenario planning exercise where, if that funding does go away, we would have to look at a different way of doing business.' Some rural stations are worried they won't be able to cover the costs to maintain the satellite and broadcast infrastructure used to relay emergency broadcast messages without the federal grants. In remote areas without reliable broadband or internet coverage, public media stations can be the only way for residents to get natural disaster warnings or hear information about evacuation routes. After Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina last year, leaving the region without electricity for days, Blue Ridge Public Radio in Asheville, North Carolina, provided vital information on road closure and access to drinking water for people using battery-powered and hand-cranked radios. 'I think it's pretty catastrophic,' Sherece Lamke, president and general manager of Pioneer PBS in Granite Falls, Minnesota, said of the potential consequences of losing the 30 percent of her station's budget supplied by CPB. Station managers around the country have made direct pleas to their home congressional delegations in the past year, urging them to protect public broadcasting from the rescission proposal and publicly opposing Trump's executive order calling on CPB to stop providing funding to stations. PBS, NPR and some local stations have sued the Trump administration to block the order. Brian Duggan, general manager of KUNR Public Radio in Reno, Nevada, said he's optimistic about the chances of the House voting down the funding cuts, particularly after talking with his local member of Congress, Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), who co-signed a statement opposing cuts to public media on Monday. 'I maintain optimism … based on my conversations with the congressman,' Duggan said. 'I will just hold out hope to see what happens ultimately on the House floor.' Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, whose public media stations are among the most dependent on federal grants in the country, told POLITICO on Wednesday she's concerned about stations in her state and is trying to get the package changed. In the wake of Trump administration pressure, some stations have seen an uptick in grassroots donations. But while larger stations in well-populated metro areas have broader, wealthier donor bases to draw on for additional support, many rural stations can only expect so much help from their community. Some of the stations in rural areas are forced to navigate the added complication of asking for donations from Republican voters as Trump rails against the public media ecosystem. 'We live in a very purple district up here,' Sarah Bignall, CEO and general manager of KAXE in Grand Rapids, Minnesota said. 'If we started kind of doing the push and the fundraising efforts that were done in the Twin Cities, it would be very off-putting to a lot of our listeners.' Increases in donations, sponsors and state funding — only some states fund public broadcasting, and other states are pushing their own cuts to public broadcasting — would be unlikely to cover the full loss of smaller stations with heavy dependence on federal grants. 'It's not like we can just go, you know, 'Let's find a million dollars somewhere else.'' Lamke said. 'If we knew how to do that, we would have.' Longtime public media employees have experience in managing the lack of certainty that comes with the nonprofit funding model. But some said that the federal cuts, along with the White House effort to eliminate the public media model, have made forecasting the future of their stations more difficult than ever. 'I think this is the biggest risk that we've had, certainly in the time that I've been in public broadcasting,' Kruger said. 'And I've been in this business 30 years.' Calen Razor contributed to this report.
