PBS & NPR Funding Cut Explained, And What Happens Next

Now that Congress has zeroed out federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS, NPR and stations across the country will be scrambling to come up with plans for what to do next.

Paula Kerger, the president and CEO of PBS, has warned that even though the network gets a small share of its funding from federal sources, it still will have to look at scaling back. “We will obviously have to make some hard decisions about what we’re able to continue to do, and how much resources we’ll have,” Kerger told Deadline this week.

But she and other advocates of public media say that the most severe impacts will be felt on local stations, particularly those in medium and smaller markets that depend more heavily on federal dollars.

That’s been one of the ironies of the whole battle over funding, as President Donald Trump and his allies have targeted what they see as bias at PBS and NPR, even as advocates have emphasized public media‘s unique local programming.

The threat to public media is nothing new. Bill Moyers, who died last month, was an instrumental figure in establishing the Public Broadcasting Act in 1967, but knew that it was “always going to be a political football,” according to Frontline director and writer Michael Kirk, who worked with him earlier in his career.

Despite being the home of shows for figures like William F. Buckley and Newt Gingrich, the issue of federal funding did become a “political football,” at times at risk of severe cuts but always coming through in the end. In fact, some detractors of federal funding came to grouse at the ability of advocates to draw parents, along with a few Muppets, to make their case.

This time was different, as Donald Trump made it a priority to target PBS, NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, albeit they are among many media outlets and entities he has tried to undermine. By sending a set of funding rescissions to Congress, Republicans only needed a simply majority, meaning that they did not need Democrats to overcome the Senate’s filibuster rules. Trump also threatened to withhold support and endorsements from lawmakers who voted against the rescissions package, writing in a Truth Social post last week that NPR and PBS were “worse than CNN & MSDNC put together.”

This showdown had been brewing for months, kicking off in January when FCC chairman Brendan Carr launched an investigation of PBS and NPR over their underwriting sponsorship announcements while warning that “Congress is actively considering whether to stop requiring taxpayers to subsidize NPR and PBS programming.”

In March, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) held a DOGE committee hearing where Republicans spent much of the time pressing Kerger and NPR CEO Katherine Maher on alleged bias, bringing up a WNET show Let’s Learn from 2021 that featured a drag queen, even though that show was not distributed or funded by PBS. Also brought up during the hearing were some of Maher’s past tweets criticizing Trump as a “racist,” although those predated her time at NPR. She told the committee that she regretted them.

Greene accused NPR and PBS of becoming “radical left wing echo chambers” and called for “the complete and total defunding and dismantling of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”

“We believe that you all can hate us on your own dime,” Greene told the two CEOs.

When the House initially voted in favor of the rescissions package last month, in a 214-212 vote, what was clear was that past supporters of public media would not come to its defense. America’s Public Television Stations, an advocacy group, honored Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) with its Champion of Public Broadcasting Award in February; he voted for the cuts. The same was also true of Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), who even promoted her honor last year, yet voted to slash funding this week.

On the other side of the aisle, the suspicion is that the move to defund is a way to please Trump by hurting media outlets he disfavors. Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat on the FCC, said that the effort to defund public media “has never been about saving money. It’s about silencing those who report the news accurately, without fear or favor.”

Here’s a look at next steps.

The budget process

While the funding is rescinded, Congress is headed into another period of coming to an agreement on funding the federal government past September 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Appropriations committees are coming up with budgets for various agencies, and while the GOP-controlled Congress is proposing cuts across a broad swath of non-defense agencies, it’s not completely in lock step with the White House in some areas.

That’s why there has been some focus on comments made by Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) last month, after he initially voted against the rescissions package, only to switch to a yes. Later, he told the Nebraska Examiner that he got assurances from leadership that “PBS would receive funding for next year, and it would go to annual funding after that.”

Depending on how the next funding effort proceeds, Republicans may also need Democratic votes to pass a spending package, given the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate. But it would still be unusual for Republicans to strip funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting only to restore it in the fall, with the next fiscal year starting on October 1. As for the idea that there would be some funding in the next budget, “I don’t know what that means, but we obviously will be looking for some help there for our stations,” Kerger said this week.

Programming and staff reductions

Some public media outlets already have been trimming staff and other projects, due not just to the possibility of federal funding reductions but also troubles in the area of corporate sponsorship and underwriting, as well as income from foundations and grants. This week, KQED in San Francisco announced it was slashing 15% of its workforce, citing the uncertainties and an existing $12 million annual deficit.

Kate Riley, the president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, has said that local stations will be the most impacted by the elimination of federal funding, suggesting that could mean less localized content and fewer educational resources, among other things. She has said that the greatest risk will be for stations that rely on federal funding for 30% or more of their budgets. She estimated that about 30 stations, all in rural areas, fall into that category.

At the national level, Kerger said she is not yet saying “what programs might make it or not make it, but obviously we won’t be able to do everything that we’ve done.”

Undoubtedly there will be a push to make up the difference with private donations, but as Kerger and others have pointed out, they are now competing against a host of other nonprofits that are trying to do the same thing with the Trump-era cuts. The public media funding was part of a $9 billion package of rescissions that also included elimination of foreign aid programs.

Other revenue

Could stations start drawing revenue from running ads like commercial broadcasters? Not really. Stations have non-commercial licenses, so those would have to be restructured.

Moreover, Carr already has launched an investigation of PBS and NPR over corporate sponsorship spots, which run at the start of programming for brands such as Viking River Cruises, and are bound by a set of guidelines. The rules were relaxed a bit in 1984 but still restrict announcements that are an “inducement” to buy a product or containing a “call to action,” among other things.

Kerger said that those spots have been developed “in partnership with the FCC.” She said that PBS has delivered “volumes and volumes of material” requested by the FCC, but she has no indication of when an investigation would be completed.

Lawsuits

PBS and NPR have each sued Trump over his executive order to direct federal agencies and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to halt federal funding to them. Each lawsuit cited their protections under the Public Broadcasting Act and the First Amendment, with NPR’s claim calling it “retaliatory, viewpoint-based discrimination.”

Even with the funding rollback, the lawsuits will continue, Kerger said, as some other agencies, like the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities also provided some funding. The Education Department, for instance, terminated a Ready to Learn grant that helped fund PBS Kids content.

Federal scrutiny

Last year, Uri Berliner, the NPR senior business editor, galvanized those on the right with a Free Press essay contending that the network had “lost its way” with a leftward worldview. He later resigned from the network.

This week, he has a new essay in light of the congressional votes, calling the defunding “independence day” for NPR and a “victory for those of any political stripe who believe the government has no business funding the media.”

As great as the funding shortfalls will be, it’s a suggestion that has come up in recent months: Without federal support, the public media outlets will not be a favorite right-wing punching bag.

Vivian Schiller, the former NPR CEO who resigned in 2011 following a previous controversy over alleged bias, recently told Vanity Fair that she thinks independent journalism and government funding are a “toxic mix.” Nevertheless, she contended that the move to defund was really “an assault on the free press.”

Still, public media stations will continue to be regulated by the FCC, and Carr has insisted that he is within his bounds to scrutinize even news programming to see if it is in the public interest. On Thursday, Carr posted excerpts of Berliner’s story on his X page.