Off the air
Every Republican president from Richard Nixon forward has tried to murder public broadcasting. If Trump can revel in any “Mission Accomplished” moment, in July 2025 he demanded that Congress rescind $1.1 billion in funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for the next two years. And this time he got his wish.
The MAGA-led House put Führer before Vaterland, voting 216-213 to claw back the CPB funding. Likewise, the MAGA-led Senate voted 51-48. To put it all in perspective: six Republicans taking orders from an autocrat and defying their own electorate made a decision that now affects 330 million Americans.
NPR may not fall into the same category as NATO, the International Monetary Fund, the Voice of America, or the United States Agency for International Development. Unlike these outfits, still quite popular with many Liberals but far less so by MAGA Republicans, I’m going to miss NPR when it’s gone. And so will the millions of rural Americans for whom there will now be few (or no) radio and television options.
Prior to the rescission by Congress, CPB had a 2025 budget of $545 million, roughly 70% of which was to have gone to 1,500 local stations. 66.9% of CPB’s funding was allocated to television, 22.3% to radio.
After the CPB ceases to exist many of the affected local stations will simply, quietly disappear. No doubt, at this very moment, some far right media mogul is making deals with Trump’s consiglieres and has begun surveying the hundreds of TV and radio markets that will suddenly fall silent in October when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) turns out the lights after 58 years of constant rightwing attacks.
To hear Trump talk, NPR’s 42 million listeners are all a bunch of effete liberal quiche eaters. And, appearing to make the case for him, NPR’s own figures (no doubt intended to motivate advertisers) indicate its listeners are 71% more likely to work in top management than listeners of other media markets, 32% more likely to be CEOs, and 201% more likely to be published authors. NPR’s marketing department says its listeners are 83% more likely to have attended art galleries, 90% more likely to have visited museums, 61% more likely to read books… than those other markets. NPR listeners are also 168% more likely to be politically engaged, 170% more likely to donate to philanthropy, and 55% more likely to travel. So, you know, all trust fund babies.
Certainly the average Democrat shares a few of these characteristics, including reading. But plenty of rural Americans listen to NPR and watch PBS. Because, quite often, there’s nothing else generating a signal for miles.
According to a FY23 survey of 437 radio and TV stations across the country which received funding from CPB, 18.2% of public television stations and 14.5% of public radio stations relied on CPB to stay on the air. These numbers were slightly lower for PBS and NPR, 16.2% and 8.2% respectively, while 18.9% of unaffiliated public stations relied heavily on CPB for their survival.
As Alex Curley writes in Current.org, “Zooming out, the state with the highest average dependence on federal funding among its public broadcasters was West Virginia, followed closely by Alaska, New Mexico and Montana.” In addition, “five stations most dependent on federal funding as a percentage of their FY23 revenue — Oregon’s KCUW, New Mexico’s KSHI, and KUHB, KDSP and KNSA in Alaska — were all radio stations. Worryingly, these were the only stations in the study with a reliance of 80% or higher, and four had a reliance of over 90%. The most dependent public television stations — Tennessee’s West TN PBS, Texas’ Basin PBS, Illinois’ WQPT PBS, Kansas’ Smoky Hills PBS and California’s KEET — relied on federal funds for 40% or more of their total revenue.”
So say goodbye to all these stations. And be sure to also send a farewell card to the White House while you’re at it.
Like much of the austerity and deprivation Trump is forcing upon the country — at the cost of a $1 trillion war budget and his own private paramilitary force — axing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s budget will wreak disproportionate harm on red states and rural America.
Instead of simply “owning the Libs,” Trump instead is doing a far better job of stabbing his own MAGA supporters in the back.
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