This article was underwritten in part by the Mickey Flacks Journalism Fund for Social Justice, a proud, innovative supporter of local news. To make a contribution go to sbcan.org/journalism_fund.
On June 12, the House voted to defund public media. Specifically, 214 House Republicans voted to pass the Trump administration’s recissions act, which will call back funding already appropriated by Congress, but not yet spent. This would include the $1.1 billion already allocated to public radio and TV nationwide.
“That money was money set to go to radio and television stations across the United States,” said Mary Olson, general manager for KCLU radio in Thousand Oaks. KCLU provides coverage to Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties.
The act is a way to formalize government cuts suggested by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. It would also eliminate $8.3 billion in federal aid.
In the U.S., public media generally comes in the form of NPR member stations and the PBS television channel. These stations and channels receive money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private nonprofit created by Congress in 1967 that distributes funds from the federal government. In turn, public broadcasting provides news, educational programming, and music and entertainment. Santa Barbara County’s public broadcasting comes from KCLU Radio, KCBX Radio, and PBS SoCal.
For KCLU, the rescissions act will cost the station about $300,000. The station is holding their first-ever summer fund drive in anticipation of cuts. Olson said the station is continuing to speak to the public and press, as well as to lawmakers in Washington, about opposing the recissions. More broadly, KCLU gets about 9.5 percent of its budget from the CPB. Olson said the station is not planning on cutting staff if they lose funding, although they may have to depend more on their listener support. Other stations in the wider public media network are likely to face more devastating cuts.
If funding is cut, rural public media stations will fare worse than urban ones. Rural stations provide news, including emergency alert information, to communities that often have fewer local alternatives and in some parts of the country, unreliable internet. The CPB considers KCBX, which broadcasts in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Monterey County, a rural radio station.
“Public radio and televisions are really a connection to the world in many rural areas,” said Chris McBride, KCBX’s assistant general manager.
That includes many different kinds of people living in rural areas. McBride said that a KCBX music host got a message from an incarcerated person this winter in Soledad when one of their transmitters was damaged and needed repairs. The caller said he listened regularly and the station was a “godsend.”
McBride says if the allocated money is taken away, it would be financially challenging for the station. Currently, KCBX receives about $230,000 in federal funds for programming and operations. Another approximately $190,000 goes toward services, music licensing and rights, and the station’s emergency alert system, which is connected to public radios across the country and free to access.
The CPB states that rural stations tend to have a harder time raising money in the form of donations, given they generally have fewer people in their coverage areas. They also often have higher operating costs, as many need to maintain multiple transmitters to reach everyone in their coverage area.
Television stations will also see major cuts. All told, public television is meant to get about 67 percent of the CPB’s budget. PBS SoCal did not respond in time for this story. In a press release dated June 12, the organization said the cuts would hit hard.
“If these cuts are finalized by the Senate, it will have a devastating impact on PBS and local member stations, particularly smaller and rural stations that rely on federal funding for a larger portion of their budgets,” the release said.
The Trump administration has called public media biased and said that taxpayer dollars should not fund it. In an April 2024 post on Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, the then-campaigning president wrote:
“NO MORE FUNDING FOR NPR, A TOTAL SCAM! EDITOR SAID THEY HAVE NO REPUBLICANS, AND IS ONLY USED TO ‘DAMAGE TRUMP.’”
For more than 50 years, some Republican lawmakers have sought to defund public broadcasting, starting with President Nixon. President Trump made attempts to defund public media in 2018, but failed due to opposition from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
Times have changed. In the June 12 vote, all but four Republican House members voted for the rescission bill. All Democrats, along with Republican representatives Mike Turner of Ohio, Mark Amodei of Nevada, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and Nicole Malliotakis of New York, voted against the bill. The vote comes after President Trump issued an executive order to cut funding to public media on May 1. NPR PBS filed a lawsuit against the administration later in May.
The rescissions bill needs a simple majority to pass the Senate. The Senate has until July 18 to vote.
