What the White House’s Funding Cut Means for WITF and Local Public Media
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Asia Tabb
Aired; May 5th, 2025.
Last Thursday, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to halt federal funding for NPR and PBS. For WITF and hundreds of other public media stations nationwide, that order—and a pending congressional budget vote—could have serious implications. WITF’s Chief Impact Officer Cassie Farrelly and Vice President of Media and Production Fred Vigeant joined The Spark to break down what this all means for local journalism.
Cassie Farrelly explained that CPB “was created in 1967 as part of the Public Broadcasting Act” to manage a single federal grant that Congress could distribute to all public stations. NPR receives just 1 percent of its budget from CPB, while PBS depends on CPB for about 15 percent of its programming distribution costs. Farrelly noted, “Neither of them get a significant amount of money directly—NPR only 1 percent—but that interconnection funding for PBS is critical.”
For WITF, CPB grants currently account for roughly 8–10 percent of its annual budget—about $1.3 million. “If that funding were to go away,” Fred Vigeant cautioned, “that is effectively $1.3 million we’d need to find from other sources,” a challenge for any station, but especially daunting for smaller or rural outlets that lack WITF’s diverse revenue streams.
Beyond this executive order, Congress is negotiating the federal budget for fiscal year 2026, which will fund CPB through 2028. Farrelly warned of a possible “rescission” that could claw back funding already earmarked for CPB’s next two-year cycle. “CPB is privately funded, not a federal agency,” she explained, “and a rescission could jeopardize our funding heading into the next fiscal year.”
Listen to the podcast to hear the entire conversation.
