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The Guardian
7 hours ago
- General
- The Guardian
‘Rural America costs a lot of money': Trump cuts are decimating a radio station at the edge of the world
In Sand Point, Alaska, the radio dial is mostly empty. For a commercial broadcaster, running a station in this Aleutian Island fishing town of about 600 people just is not worth the cost of doing business. But KSDP, the local public radio station for Sand Point, is a community anchor, bringing listeners music, emergency alerts, live color commentary of high school sports, state and local news. Without a newspaper specifically serving the town, the station is residents' resource for all things local. On 1 August, for example, KSDP hosted an interview with local fish biologist Matthew Keyes. Asking the questions was Austin Roof, general manager of the station. Over fuzzy microphones, the two volleyed stats back and forth about the escapement rates of 'pinks' and 'kings' (colloquialisms for two of the most fished species of salmon). Roof served as a stand-in for the laborers listening at home or aboard their ships, asking about the noticeably low catches early that summer; Keyes told listeners that while June was among the lowest harvests on record, July had been much better. He then announced the fishing schedule for early August: there would be no fishing allowed for 60 hours straight as officials monitored fish populations, after that, anglers could tune to the radio daily for specific opening and closing times. In a region where livelihoods are tied to this turbulent and highly regulated industry, this information gave residents a chance to plan their summer of labor. In just the past few summer months KSDP has brought listeners not only crucial information about local fisheries, but also delivered updates and orders to get to high ground in the wake of two tsunamis. All the while, legislators 4,000 miles away in Washington DC were solidifying a decision that will fundamentally alter the media available to millions of Americans, especially in rural areas: on 17 July, Congress voted to rescind all funding for public broadcasting. Within hours of Roof's fishery interview, the hammer dropped: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), through which federal funding is disbursed to public radio and television stations, announced it will close down at the end of September. The average public radio station in the US gets less than 13% of its budget from the federal government. For many coastal and big-city stations, it is an even smaller portion. But at smalltown and rural stations, where donor bases are less robust, that number can climb above 50%. KSDP, which operates a far-reaching AM signal, a web stream and four small FM repeater signals placed in villages across a several hundred mile stretch of islands, gets 70% of its operating budget from CPB – among the highest shares of federal support for any station in the country. 'The rural communities are definitely gonna be hit the hardest,' Roof says. 'How do you prepare for the end of the world? The loss of federal funding is truly that seismic for us.' Chairs in KSDP's broadcasting studio and office are stacked high with jackets. Shoes overflow from a cardboard box in the small meeting room, and haphazardly folded garments fill any unused tables or shelf space. Crammed in Sand Point's city hall, the station doubles as a donation center and hosts clothing swaps a few times a year. If you attend a community barbecue in town, a public back-to-school party, or holiday celebration, there's a good chance the radio station put it on. Power tools are a permanent fixture in the studio, and there is always a neighbor ready to do the simple fixes for free or cheap. Roof has personally ascended the station's 200ft AM tower in climbing gear many times to save money on repairs. Until a few years ago, KSDP and the Sand Point area did not have a reporter dedicated to their stretch of the Aleutian Islands: a remote archipelago extending south and west from mainland Alaska, and home to roughly a dozen communities ranging in size from about 20 to a few thousand residents. For years, KSDP relied on coverage from the radio station KUCB in the larger Aleutian town of Unalaska, nearly 400 miles (644km) south-west, as well as statewide and national programs. Now the station finally has its own reporter: Theo Greenly, who splits his time between KSDP and two other radio stations, KUCB and KUHB, each hundreds of miles apart across the Pribilof and Aleutian Islands. Together with his colleagues Sofia Stuart-Rasi and Maggie Nelson at KUCB in the larger 4,400-person town of Unalaska, Greenly is one of just three journalists covering the 1,000-mile archipelago, and the only one assigned to cover Sand Point. Greenly's reporting regularly brings him to isolated communities for weeks at a time, as ferries between towns in his coverage area sometimes run only monthly, and flights are often delayed or cancelled. 'There are many, many places to get news from Washington or New York,' says Greenly. 'But there are zero alternatives for news from this region.' Greenly has covered dangerous sea algae blooms, Indigenous language revitalization efforts, and a cargo ship carrying lithium batteries that caught on fire in a local port. He was on the ground when the Aleutian town of King Cove's main employer, the Peter Pan fishing cannery, closed down, leaving many residents without jobs and many anglers unpaid for the hauls they had already delivered. In July, a resident of the 400-person town St Paul, located about 400 miles north-west of Sand Point, informed Greenly that the town was running out of food; the sole grocery store, owned by the local tribal government, had been waiting over a month to receive a large shipment of stock that it had paid for, but was stuck at the Anchorage airport. Ace Air Cargo had not flown to St Paul in all that time, citing weather issues. Not long after Greenly reported the story, the company got its cargo planes in the air, delivering more than 10,000lb of food and two tons of mail to St Paul. It costs money to report these stories but there is not a lot of money to be made in sharing them – especially in the far-flung, sparsely populated Aleutian Islands. Commercial radio stations are exceedingly rare here; there's simply not enough listeners. Public media, by design, fills the market gap. 'Rural America costs a lot of money,' says Roof. Alaska is one of the most heavily federally subsidized states in the US in terms of public services such as education, internet connection and media. Nevertheless, Nick Begich, Alaska's sole congressperson, voted with all but two of his fellow Republicans to take back federal funds that had been allocated for broadcasting. Greenly followed debate on the cuts closely. 'I mean, there is nobody covering this stuff,' he says, noting that he and his two colleagues in the Aleutians essentially double as the region's only newspaper reporters, as the paper serving the archipelago runs print versions of the public radio pieces alongside stories reported out of Anchorage or by national newsrooms. And he says it is not just locals who will suffer if public journalism in Alaska takes a hit, mentioning that his colleagues were key in covering the 2023 story of the possible Chinese surveillance balloons over Alaska. 'When Shell was doing exploratory drilling in the Arctic, this was their home port. When Chinese and Russian military ships cross into the Exclusive Economic Zone, we are the closest reporters,' he says. 'If you don't have reporters here, the nation is missing out on vital information.' Roof, the general manager, says KSDP has enough to 'keep the lights on for a while'. And while he doesn't have imminent plans to close, he knows that losing more than two-thirds of the station's operating budget will fundamentally change what they can do. He says they will have to rely increasingly on volunteers rather than paid staff if they want to survive. And he can't imagine how he will be able to continue hosting things like big public events. 'Those are the kinds of things that really make our community a fun place to live,' Roof says. 'And so I just don't see that coming back.' Roof is already planning one major change due to the cuts: he expects to have to shut down KSDP's far-reaching but costly AM signal by the end of the year. While AM listenership may be declining nationwide, it still plays an essential role here: AM signals reach much farther than FM, penetrate terrain, and carry extraordinarily far – sometimes hundreds of miles – over water, making it easy to be heard on distant islands or on ships. Roof is planning to shutter the AM signal rather than sell it, as he does not expect to have any interested buyers. The tower, he assumes, will be torn down and sold for scrap. For now, Roof plans to keep operating KSDP on a handful of very small, localized FM signals located in four villages across the Aleutians, and online via web stream, since many people in this region have internet connection for the first time thanks to new fiber optic lines and satellite systems such as Starlink. But not everyone lives in the villages with FM coverage, and the web is not always reliable, says Greenly. A ship's anchor once ripped apart the fiber cable bringing internet to the Aleutian Islands. Ultimately, says Greenly, cuts to public radio will have an impact on residents regardless of how they tune in. 'The word 'radio' is kind of a misnomer in a way,' he says. He tells me that people always ask him if people can't just get this information online. 'Yes,' he tells them, 'because we, the radio station, did the work, investigated it, and put it on the internet.' Without the newsrooms and stations supported by CPB, he says, 'they can't get that information.' Greenly says he doesn't know what will happen to his position. His role as the shared reporter for KSDP and two other local stations is funded by a grant from CPB. But his livelihood, he says, is the least of his concerns. 'I'm more saddened for the nation than for myself. I'm worried about the community. I'm worried about Sand Point,' he says. As for him, the intrepid local reporter braving the elements to cover stories from fishing to fracking? He says: 'I mean, I go back to bartending.'
The Guardian
a day ago
- General
- The Guardian
‘Rural America costs a lot of money': Trump cuts are decimating a radio station at the edge of the world
In Sand Point, Alaska, the radio dial is mostly empty. For a commercial broadcaster, running a station in this Aleutian Island fishing town of about 600 people just is not worth the cost of doing business. But KSDP, the local public radio station for Sand Point, is a community anchor, bringing listeners music, emergency alerts, live color commentary of high school sports, state and local news. Without a newspaper specifically serving the town, the station is residents' resource for all things local. On 1 August, for example, KSDP hosted an interview with local fish biologist Matthew Keyes. Asking the questions was Austin Roof, general manager of the station. Over fuzzy microphones, the two volleyed stats back and forth about the escapement rates of 'pinks' and 'kings' (colloquialisms for two of the most fished species of salmon). Roof served as a stand-in for the laborers listening at home or aboard their ships, asking about the noticeably low catches early that summer; Keyes told listeners that while June was among the lowest harvests on record, July had been much better. He then announced the fishing schedule for early August: there would be no fishing allowed for 60 hours straight as officials monitored fish populations, after that, anglers could tune to the radio daily for specific opening and closing times. In a region where livelihoods are tied to this turbulent and highly regulated industry, this information gave residents a chance to plan their summer of labor. In just the past few summer months KSDP has brought listeners not only crucial information about local fisheries, but also delivered updates and orders to get to high ground in the wake of two tsunamis. All the while, legislators 4,000 miles away in Washington DC were solidifying a decision that will fundamentally alter the media available to millions of Americans, especially in rural areas: on 17 July, Congress voted to rescind all funding for public broadcasting. Within hours of Roof's fishery interview, the hammer dropped: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), through which federal funding is disbursed to public radio and television stations, announced it will close down at the end of September. The average public radio station in the US gets less than 13% of its budget from the federal government. For many coastal and big-city stations, it is an even smaller portion. But at smalltown and rural stations, where donor bases are less robust, that number can climb above 50%. KSDP, which operates a far-reaching AM signal, a web stream, and four small FM repeater signals placed in villages across a several hundred mile stretch of islands, gets 70% of its operating budget from CPB – among the highest shares of federal support for any station in the country. 'The rural communities are definitely gonna be hit the hardest,' Roof says. 'How do you prepare for the end of the world? The loss of federal funding is truly that seismic for us.' Chairs in KSDP's broadcasting studio and office are stacked high with jackets. Shoes overflow from a cardboard box in the small meeting room, and haphazardly folded garments fill any unused tables or shelf space. Crammed in Sand Point's city hall, the station doubles as a donation center and hosts clothing swaps a few times a year. If you attend a community barbecue in town, a public back-to-school party, or holiday celebration, there's a good chance the radio station put it on. Power tools are a permanent fixture in the studio, and there is always a neighbor ready to do the simple fixes for free or cheap. Roof has personally ascended the station's 200ft AM tower in climbing gear many times to save money on repairs. Until a few years ago, KSDP and the Sand Point area did not have a reporter dedicated to their stretch of the Aleutian Islands: a remote archipelago extending south and west from mainland Alaska, and home to roughly a dozen communities ranging in size from about 20 to a few thousand residents. For years, KSDP relied on coverage from the radio station KUCB in the larger Aleutian town of Unalaska, nearly 400 miles (644km) south-west, as well as statewide and national programs. Now the station finally has its own reporter: Theo Greenly, who splits his time between KSDP and two other radio stations, KUCB and KUHB, each hundreds of miles apart across the Pribilof and Aleutian Islands. Together with his colleagues Sofia Stuart-Rasi and Maggie Nelson at KUCB in the larger 4,400-person town of Unalaska, Greenly is one of just three journalists covering the 1,000-mile archipelago, and the only one assigned to cover Sand Point. Greenly's reporting regularly brings him to isolated communities for weeks at a time, as ferries between towns in his coverage area sometimes run only monthly, and flights are often delayed or cancelled. 'There are many, many places to get news from Washington or New York,' says Greenly. 'But there are zero alternatives for news from this region.' Greenly has covered dangerous sea algae blooms, Indigenous language revitalization efforts, and a cargo ship carrying lithium batteries that caught on fire in a local port. He was on the ground when the Aleutian town of King Cove's main employer, the Peter Pan fishing cannery, closed down, leaving many residents without jobs and many anglers unpaid for the hauls they had already delivered. In July, a resident of the 400-person town St Paul, located about 400 miles north-west of Sand Point, informed Greenly that the town was running out of food; the sole grocery store, owned by the local tribal government, had been waiting over a month to receive a large shipment of stock that it had paid for, but was stuck at the Anchorage airport. Ace Air Cargo had not flown to St Paul in all that time, citing weather issues. Not long after Greenly reported the story, the company got its cargo planes in the air, delivering more than 10,000lbs of food and two tons of mail to St Paul. It costs money to report these stories but there is not a lot of money to be made in sharing them – especially in the far-flung, sparsely populated Aleutian Islands. Commercial radio stations are exceedingly rare here; there's simply not enough of listeners. Public media, by design, fills the market gap. 'Rural America costs a lot of money,' says Roof. Alaska is one of the most heavily federally subsidized states in the US in terms of public services such as education, internet connection and media. Nevertheless, Nick Begich, Alaska's sole congressperson, voted with all but two of his fellow Republicans to take back federal funds that had been allocated for broadcasting. Greenly followed debate on the cuts closely. 'I mean, there is nobody covering this stuff,' he says, noting that he and his two colleagues in the Aleutians essentially double as the region's only newspaper reporters, as the paper serving the archipelago runs print versions of the public radio pieces alongside stories reported out of Anchorage or by national newsrooms. And he says it is not just locals who will suffer if public journalism in Alaska takes a hit, mentioning that his colleagues were key in covering the 2023 story of the possible Chinese surveillance balloons over Alaska. 'When Shell was doing exploratory drilling in the Arctic, this was their home port. When Chinese and Russian military ships cross into the Exclusive Economic Zone, we are the closest reporters,' he says. 'If you don't have reporters here, the nation is missing out on vital information.' General Manager Roof says KSDP has enough to 'keep the lights on for a while'. And while he doesn't have imminent plans to close, he knows that losing more than two-thirds of the station's operating budget will fundamentally change what they can do. He says they will have to rely increasingly on volunteers rather than paid staff if they want to survive. And he can't imagine how he will be able to continue hosting things like big public events. 'Those are the kinds of things that really make our community a fun place to live,' Roof says. 'And so I just don't see that coming back.' Roof is already planning one major change due to the cuts: he expects to have to shut down KSDP's far-reaching but costly AM signal by the end of the year. While AM listenership may be declining nationwide, it still plays an essential role here: AM signals reach much farther than FM, penetrate terrain, and carry extraordinarily far – sometimes hundreds of miles – over water, making it easy to be heard on distant islands or on ships. Roof is planning to shutter the AM signal rather than sell it, as he does not expect anyone to have any interested buyers. The tower, he assumes, will be torn down and sold for scrap. For now, Roof plans to keep operating KSDP on a handful of very small, localized FM signals located in four villages across the Aleutians, and online via web stream, since many people in this region have internet connection for the first time thanks to new fiber optic lines and satellite systems such as Starlink. But not everyone lives in the villages with FM coverage, and the web is not always reliable, says Greenly. A ship's anchor once ripped apart the fiber cable bringing internet to the Aleutian Islands. Ultimately, says Greenly, cuts to public radio will have an impact on residents regardless of how they tune in. 'The word 'radio' is kind of a misnomer in a way,' he says. He tells me that people always ask him if people can't just get this information online. 'Yes,' he tells them, 'because we, the radio station, did the work, investigated it, and put it on the internet.' Without the newsrooms and stations supported by CPB, he says, 'they can't get that information.' Greenly says he doesn't know what will happen to his position. His role as the shared reporter for KSDP and two other local stations is funded by a grant from CPB. But his livelihood, he says, is the least of his concerns. 'I'm more saddened for the nation than for myself. I'm worried about the community. I'm worried about Sand Point,' he says. As for him, the intrepid local reporter braving the elements to cover stories from fishing to fracking? He says: 'I mean, I go back to bartending.'
CBS News
21-07-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Fordham's WFUV is among hundreds of radio and TV stations to feel the pinch of federal funding cuts
Public radio and television stations across the country are bracing for major cuts after Republicans in Congress passed legislation that will strip more than $1 billion in federal funding. CBS News New York went to a station in the Bronx on Monday to see how the cuts will be felt there. Alisa Ali has been hosting a radio show at WFUV on the campus of Fordham University for 20 years, playing classics and shining a light on up-and-comers. "We're going to give artists who may not be heard on other outlets a chance to gain an audience," Ali said. The National Public Radio-member station also helps train the next generation of journalists, like student Lainey Nguyen. "It's incredibly valuable to be here and learn how to pitch stories, learn how to edit audio on industry-standard equipment," Nguyen said. The dual missions of music discovery and education are at risk at around 1,500 local public radio and TV stations. WFUV, for one, will lose more than $500,000 a year in federal funding. General manager Chuck Singleton said that will mean, "less public service, less music discovery, fewer live studio sessions with artists." President Trump called for the cuts, saying public media's news programming was biased against him and fellow Republicans. In a statement, the White House's Office of Management and Budget said, "The federal government will no longer subsidize this trash." Stations like WFUV are turning to listeners to try and make up for those cuts. "Hopefully our community will step up and realize that this is important and it is worth saving," Ali said. From the boroughs to back roads, public radio is not ready to go silent just yet.
Times of Oman
27-05-2025
- Business
- Times of Oman
NPR sues Trump over executive order to end funding
Washington, DC: National Public Radio (NPR) announced on Tuesday it is suing President Donald Trump over his executive order to cut federal funding for the nonprofit network of broadcasters. NPR and three public radio stations wrote in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, DC, that Trump's order on May 1 violated the First Amendment's protections of speech and the press and steps on Congressional authority to determine how the US government spends its funds. The broadcasting company and the Colorado Public Radio, Aspen Public Radio and KSUT Public Radio member stations want Trump's order blocked and declared unconstitutional. The executive order asserted that government funding of the news is "not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.' According to the legal complaint, which was filed against Trump, a number of other top officials and federal agencies, added that the order "threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information." It "expressly aims to punish and control Plaintiffs' news coverage and other speech the Administration deems 'biased,'" attorneys for the news outlets wrote. "It cannot stand." How is NPR funded? NPR employs hundreds of journalists whose work is broadcast by more than 1,000 local member stations. Most of its initial funding was allocated by Congress and delivered through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, but that changed in the 1980s when the Reagan Administration reduced public media funding. Only 1% of NPR's revenue now comes directly from the federal government, according to the organization. The largest share of its funding, 36%, comes from corporate sponsorships, NPR said. The lawsuit argues that Congress has long recognized that the speech it supports with public funding "remains private — and thus fully protected from censorship, retaliation or other forms of governmental interference." "The Order is textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment," the lawsuit alleges.
CBS News
27-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
NPR sues Trump over executive order slashing federal funding
Washington — NPR on Tuesday sued President Trump and administration officials over an executive order signed earlier this month that seeks to cut federal funding to the news organization and PBS. Filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., the suit was brought by NPR and three Colorado-based public radio stations. It argues that Mr. Trump's executive order violates the First Amendment and provisions of the Public Broadcasting Act, which was passed by Congress in 1967. The plaintiffs also assert that Mr. Trump did not have the authority to stop federal funding for NPR and PBS. The order, NPR and the three stations said in their complaint, is "textbook retaliation" and discriminates based on viewpoint, which is a violation of the First Amendment. "The order's objectives could not be clearer: the order aims to punish NPR for the content of news and other programming the president dislikes and chill the free exercise of First Amendment rights by NPR and individual public radio stations across the country," the lawsuit states. This is a developing story and will be updated
