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What defunding public media would mean for the West
Sage Smiley, KYUK's news director, and Morris Alexie visit the proposed site for the climate-driven relocation of Nunapitchuk, a village of about 600 on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Alaska. Alexie is the community's relocation manager. (Photo by Katie Baldwin Basile)
Late last fall, members of Bethel, Alaska's search and rescue team met at the local public radio station, KYUK, for a program called River Watch. Over an hour and a half, they took calls from listeners around the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, comparing notes on the safety of the ice at different points along the Kuskokwim River.
'Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there,' said a caller from the village of Kalskag, his voice muffled over the phone. He said he'd recently flown over the river to the east and observed lots of holes in the ice. He wanted to warn listeners in other towns: 'There is no trail right now. None of the open water is marked. So it's advised not to be traveling back and forth from Aniak.'
KYUK is the only daily news source for this region, which is roughly the size of Oregon, and River Watch is a staple of its programming. In dozens of Southwest Alaska villages — including many Yup'ik, Athabaskan and Cup'ik communities — residents who live far from the U.S. highway system rely on boats and snow machines to get around. 'The Kuskokwim River in this region is like our highway,' said KYUK news director Sage Smiley. During freeze-up and breakup each year, knowing the condition of the ice can be a matter of life and death. And in the Y-K Delta, where Internet access is often limited, public radio plays a crucial role.
But if the Trump administration gets its way, programs like River Watch could soon disappear.
Last month, the president signed an executive order aimed at preventing congressionally approved federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) from going to National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). CPB, NPR, PBS and a host of local stations have all filed lawsuits in response. Meanwhile, in its proposed budget, the administration outlined a plan to eliminate funding for CPB entirely — and this week, Trump asked Congress to take back more than a billion dollars that had already been set aside for public broadcasters. Lawmakers have 45 days to make a decision on the request, with a House vote expected as early as next week.
Defunding public media would hurt stations across the U.S., but for ones like KYUK, which relies on CPB for nearly 70% of its revenue, it would be 'catastrophic,' Smiley said.
The data show that stations serving rural and Indigenous audiences in the West would be the hardest hit. Here's why, by the numbers.
CPB is an independent nonprofit created by Congress nearly 60 years ago to distribute federal funds to noncommercial TV and radio stations across the U.S. Today, it funds more than 1,500 stations, many of which buy NPR and PBS content to distribute locally alongside local news, music shows and other programming.
Collectively, the stations in the public media network give 99% of the U.S. population access to public broadcasting. Nearly half of CPB grantees are rural, and together they employ close to 6,000 people.
As nonprofits, local public media stations rely on a variety of funding sources, including federal funding, state funding, listener donations, grants, and underwriting from local businesses. On average, federal funding accounts for 16% of a local public media station's revenue. But for many stations, that percentage is much higher. Three factors unite the stations most reliant on federal funding: They are located in the West, they are rural, and they are tribal stations.
Among stations in the 50 states, those in the Western U.S. are by far the most dependent on federal funding, according to a recent analysis of station financial reports for fiscal year 2023, carried out by former NPR product manager Alex Curley. (Limited data is available for American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, but according to Curley, the few stations there rely even more heavily on federal funding.)
On average, Curley found, Western stations depend on federal money for just over 20% of their revenue — compared with just under 15% for the next highest region, the Midwest.
The states with the highest average dependency, in order, are West Virginia, Alaska, New Mexico and Montana. In Alaska, the most dependent Western state, public media stations rely on federal funding for an average of 36% of their revenue. If all the stations with a dependence of at least 20% were forced to close, Alaska would lose 15 stations — half of its total, Curley said.
More than 50 stations around the country belong to the Native Public Media network, and they are also particularly vulnerable to funding cuts. All but one of the Native Public Media stations with available data relied on federal funding for at least 20% of their revenue, and the average reliance was more than 50%.
Source: CPB defines rural stations as those whose coverage areas have a population density of 40 or fewer residents per square kilometer. The stations defined as rural on this map come from CPB's FY 2024 list of rural station grantees. The funding percentages come from a list of the most vulnerable public radio stations compiled using CPB data from FY 2023, the most recent available. Tribal stations are defined as stations that are 'tribally owned, managed or staffed by tribal members,' according to this map and station websites. (Map design by Luna Anna Archey/High Country News)
According to CPB data shared with , 79 radio stations in the U.S. relied on CPB for 30% or more of their funding in FY 2023. More than half of those stations (42) are located in the West. Of the vulnerable Western stations, all but two are rural — and 20 are also tribal stations.
Not only would these stations be drastically impacted by losing federal funding, they would also find that money especially hard to replace. Urban stations have large audiences to turn to for help, but rural stations by definition serve sparsely populated areas and often lower-income communities.
According to CPB, 40% of the average non-rural station's revenue comes from listener donations, compared with just 28% of the average rural stations. Meanwhile, the average rural station relies on CPB funding nearly twice as much as a non-rural station does.
This past fiscal year, KYUK raised just under $20,000 from a total of 413 members, comprising 2% of the radio station's revenue.
'We live in a subsistence region,' Smiley said. 'The way people survive and thrive here does not necessarily follow the traditional Western economic model.'
To her, this is part of the beauty of public media: Stations like KYUK allow people to get thoughtful, nuanced coverage of the place they live, whether or not they can afford to pay for it. In Bethel, that includes public safety alerts and emergency coverage on shows like River Watch — but also, local news accessible to everyone in the region. The oldest Indigenous-owned and operated bilingual radio station in the U.S., KYUK broadcasts local news in both English and Yugtun, the Yup'ik language, three times a day. The station also airs several other Yup'ik public affairs and culture shows throughout the week, sharing traditional knowledge and conversations between elders.
Villages in the Y-K Delta — like many rural and Indigenous communities — tend to receive a flattened portrayal in the national media, when they're covered at all. Outside reporters often miss the good news: The Bethel student robotics team bringing Yup'ik dance to an international stage, say, or a Cup'ik artist using traditional carving techniques to tell the evolving story of hunting and fishing in his community. Celebrations of berry picking and high school graduation — the everyday activities and special events that make headlines at a local publication run by the same people who coach youth sports and act in community plays.
These are stories at stake in the fight over federal funding, Smiley said: 'This idea that a region that has been historically underserved by the state and by the country could lose a public media organization that is focused on providing what people here need, which is public safety information and a reflection of a life that is multifaceted and beautiful — that really, really tears my heart out.'
This article first appeared on High Country News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
