But funding these national broadcasters is just a small part of the CPB’s mission;\u00a0 70% of its annual budget is allocated to support 1,500 local public radio and television stations nationwide. In 2024, eight Maryland radio and television stations received $6,357,641<\/a> from the CPB in direct grants, according to its website.<\/p>\n “We’ll get through,” said Judy Diaz, general manager of Delmarva Public Media, who will forfeit 15% of her budget for three small radio stations on the Eastern Shore, or roughly $300,000 a year. “But losing the CPB is like [being stabbed with] a dagger. We know how important local independent media is to rural markets like ours. We’re too small to attract major donors. But we are here covering what is important to Delmarva because it is our home, too.”<\/p>\n Maryland Public Television President & CEO Steven J. Schupak wrote in an email to The Sun that station leadership is working to identify which cost-cutting measures will be necessary now that the station is losing about $4 million annually in federal funds.<\/p>\n The vote by Congress, Schupak wrote, “will unfortunately require adjustments to our delivery of educational services, reductions in Maryland-focused TV programs, fewer community engagement activities across the state, and possible impacts to our public safety and emergency communications services.\u201d<\/p>\n Mary Stewart, vice president of external affairs at WETA, said that the impact of the funding loss is even greater at producing stations like hers. WETA mounts several popular shows that air nationwide: “PBS NewsHour,” director Ken Burns’ documentary films (including the upcoming six-part series, “The American Revolution”) and the historical documentaries hosted by Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates.<\/p>\n It’s too early to speculate about which cost-cutting measures WETA will implement, Stewart said, but she worries that programming nationwide inevitably will suffer when cash-strapped stations can no longer afford collaborative ventures that are standard today.<\/p>\n “The loss of the CPB will have a substantial impact on us,” Stewart said. “We’re also trying to figure out the ramifications of taking half of a billion dollars out of a system of public television stations that is so interdependent. Collectively, we were able to do so much more together than we will be able to provide on our own.”<\/p>\n Craig Swagler, president and general manager of Baltimore Public Media, cited a recent Harris poll<\/a> conducted on behalf of NPR which found that two-thirds of Americans support federal funding for public radio, including more than half of Republicans (58%) and three-quarters of Democrats (77%). The poll has a margin of error of 2.5 percent.<\/p>\n Baltimore Public Media is the parent company of NPR affiliate stations WYPR and WTMD.<\/p>\n “There is support for what these community-oriented stations do,” Swagler said. “Unfortunately, there was a mandate from the Trump administration and everyone fell in line. The politics of the moment have overruled the demands of the people.”<\/p>\n Though Swagler’s stations will lose $2.5 million in federal money over the next four years, he said that for now his focus is on raising money to offset the loss rather than cutting programming.<\/p>\n “There was no runway,” he said. “The money just got pulled back overnight.”<\/p>\n He is concerned that the demise of the CPB will add costly new responsibilities to local stations such as negotiating broadcasting rights at the same time the outlets are grappling with millions of dollars of revoked federal income. Not all rural broadcasters, he said, will survive that double whammy. And if enough small public media stations cease operations, that could shift the nation’s airwaves politically to the right.<\/p>\n “Some of these organizations will be affected by the cuts right away and could go under,” he said. “It will be a prime opportunity for religious and conservative broadcasters to snap up those licenses \u2014 as they are already doing around the country.”<\/p>\n But Jesse Walker, a Baltimore-based author and senior editor for Reason magazine, a libertarian publication, thinks that in the long run, independent stations will benefit from being severed however forcibly from the CPB.<\/p>\n “I’ve been saying for years that there should be a divorce between non-commercial broadcasting and the federal government,” he said.<\/p>\n “Federal subsidies create an opportunity for government officials to stick their snouts into the stations’ business. I also don’t think taxpayers should be forced to fund media outlets they don’t agree with.”<\/p>\n He thinks that radio stations will thrive if they return to their pre-CPB roots of operating on shoestring budgets, being staffed by community volunteers and airing points of view from outside the mainstream.<\/p>\n When government checks disappear, “that doesn’t mean you’re doomed,” Walker wrote Thursday<\/a> on the Reason Foundation website.<\/p>\n “If you can cover neglected local news, offer technical training to local kids, and give the region’s bands and DJs a place to showcase their talents, you just might stay afloat.”<\/p>\n Have a news tip? Contact Mary Carole McCauley at\u00a0mmccauley@baltsun.com<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0410-332-6704.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Congress voted to eliminate federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, forcing local stations nationwide to confront steep budget cuts and uncertain futures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":11567590,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-07-19T09:03:09Z","apple_news_api_id":"964cae4e-38b2-4098-9c09-e8cfe47d3b95","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-07-19T15:48:42Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AlkyuTjiyQJicCejP5H07lQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"middle","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"subheadline":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[114,83,84,24758,85,93,113],"tags":[24457],"feature":[],"location":[223],"type-of-work":[],"coauthors":[401],"class_list":["post-11565271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-latest-headlines","category-local-news","category-national-politics","category-news","category-politics","category-things-to-do","tag-social","location-maryland"],"post_status":"","edit_last":0,"edit_lock":0,"highlights":"","original_byline":"","original_canonical":"","original_category":"","original_email":"","original_id":0,"original_pubdate":"","original_source":"","primary_section":"93","primary_tag":0,"print_workflow_body":{"deck_headline":"","print_title":"Public broadcasters in Maryland react to Trump defunding. Will local stations survive?","print_subheadline":"","print_priority":"","print_placement":"cover","print_planned_ready":"","print_pub_date":"1752984000","print_slug":"tbs-l-cpb-death-blow-0718","print_budget_line":"","print_excerpt":"Congress voted to eliminate federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, forcing local stations nationwide to confront steep budget cuts and uncertain futures.","print_notes":"","photo_limits":"Photo limits are: 1 featured image, 5 featured gallery images, 5 embedded gallery images and 5 in-article embedded images. Articles that exceed these limits will not export. Please adjust images to reflect these limits.","print_featured_gallery_richtext":"","print_inline_galleries_richtext":"","print_inline_images_richtext":"","print_content":" Congress gave final approval last week to President Donald Trump's request to rescind $1.1 billion in federal grants previously awarded to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose primary role is to fund local public radio and TV stations.<\/p> Once Trump signs the bill, it will effectively remove all federal support for public broadcasting beginning Oct. 1. The CPB will continue to exist on paper, since it was established by federal statute, but it will be an organization with almost no budget.<\/p> Congress' action leaves local stations, particularly smaller outlets in rural areas, scrambling to figure out how to replace money that currently finances such functions as the national Emergency Alert System, regional news and educational programming.<\/p> \"Without federal funding, many local public radio and television stations will be forced to shut down. Parents will have fewer high quality learning resources available for their children. Millions of Americans will have less trustworthy information about their communities, states, country, and world with which to make decisions about the quality of their lives,\" Patricia Harrison, President and CEO of CPB said in a statement. \"Cutting federal funding could also put Americans at risk of losing national and local emergency alerts that serve as a lifeline to many Americans in times of severe need.\"<\/p> In contrast to the media executives who decried the action by Congress, some taxpayer advocates praised the defunding as long overdue.<\/p> \"This is a great first step, but there needs to be more cuts to the budget down the road,\" said David Williams, president of the Washington D.C.-based Taxpayers Protection Alliance.<\/p> \"The media landscape has changed greatly in the past 10, 15 and 20 years. People have a lot more access to a variety of resources. Taxpayers should not be paying to provide the news whether it comes from the right wing or the left wing. That is the job of the private sector.\"<\/p> National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting service \u2014 each best known by their acronyms of NPR and PBS \u2014 will feel the cuts much less than their local affiliates. PBS receives about 15% of its budget<\/a> from the federal government, while for NPR the financial loss is much smaller, about 1%<\/a>.<\/p> But funding these national broadcasters is just a small part of the CPB's mission;\u00a0 70% of its annual budget is allocated to support 1,500 local public radio and television stations nationwide. In 2024, eight Maryland radio and television stations received $6,357,641<\/a> from the CPB in direct grants, according to its website.<\/p> \"We'll get through,\" said Judy Diaz, general manager of Delmarva Public Media, who will forfeit 15% of her budget for three small radio stations on the Eastern Shore, or roughly $300,000 a year. \"But losing the CPB is like [being stabbed with] a dagger. We know how important local independent media is to rural markets like ours. We're too small to attract major donors. But we are here covering what is important to Delmarva because it is our home, too.\"<\/p> Maryland Public Television President & CEO Steven J. Schupak wrote in an email to The Sun that station leadership is working to identify which cost-cutting measures will be necessary now that the station is losing about $4 million annually in federal funds.<\/p> The vote by Congress, Schupak wrote, \"will unfortunately require adjustments to our delivery of educational services, reductions in Maryland-focused TV programs, fewer community engagement activities across the state, and possible impacts to our public safety and emergency communications services.\u201d<\/p> Mary Stewart, vice president of external affairs at WETA, said that the impact of the funding loss is even greater at producing stations like hers. WETA mounts several popular shows that air nationwide: \"PBS NewsHour,\" director Ken Burns' documentary films (including the upcoming six-part series, \"The American Revolution\") and the historical documentaries hosted by Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates.<\/p> It's too early to speculate about which cost-cutting measures WETA will implement, Stewart said, but she worries that programming nationwide inevitably will suffer when cash-strapped stations can no longer afford collaborative ventures that are standard today.<\/p> \"The loss of the CPB will have a substantial impact on us,\" Stewart said. \"We're also trying to figure out the ramifications of taking half of a billion dollars out of a system of public television stations that is so interdependent. Collectively, we were able to do so much more together than we will be able to provide on our own.\"<\/p> Craig Swagler, president and general manager of Baltimore Public Media, cited a recent Harris poll<\/a> conducted on behalf of NPR which found that two-thirds of Americans support federal funding for public radio, including more than half of Republicans (58%) and three-quarters of Democrats (77%). The poll has a margin of error of 2.5 percent.<\/p> Baltimore Public Media is the parent company of NPR affiliate stations WYPR and WTMD.<\/p> \"There is support for what these community-oriented stations do,\" Swagler said. \"Unfortunately, there was a mandate from the Trump administration and everyone fell in line. The politics of the moment have overruled the demands of the people.\"<\/p> Though Swagler's stations will lose $2.5 million in federal money over the next four years, he said that for now his focus is on raising money to offset the loss rather than cutting programming.<\/p> \"There was no runway,\" he said. \"The money just got pulled back overnight.\"<\/p> He is concerned that the demise of the CPB will add costly new responsibilities to local stations such as negotiating broadcasting rights at the same time the outlets are grappling with millions of dollars of revoked federal income. Not all rural broadcasters, he said, will survive that double whammy. And if enough small public media stations cease operations, that could shift the nation's airwaves politically to the right.<\/p> \"Some of these organizations will be affected by the cuts right away and could go under,\" he said. \"It will be a prime opportunity for religious and conservative broadcasters to snap up those licenses \u2014 as they are already doing around the country.\"<\/p> But Jesse Walker, a Baltimore-based author and senior editor for Reason magazine, a libertarian publication, thinks that in the long run, independent stations will benefit from being severed however forcibly from the CPB.<\/p> \"I've been saying for years that there should be a divorce between non-commercial broadcasting and the federal government,\" he said.<\/p> \"Federal subsidies create an opportunity for government officials to stick their snouts into the stations' business. I also don't think taxpayers should be forced to fund media outlets they don't agree with.\"<\/p> He thinks that radio stations will thrive if they return to their pre-CPB roots of operating on shoestring budgets, being staffed by community volunteers and airing points of view from outside the mainstream.<\/p> When government checks disappear, \"that doesn't mean you're doomed,\" Walker wrote Thursday<\/a> on the Reason Foundation website.<\/p> \"If you can cover neglected local news, offer technical training to local kids, and give the region's bands and DJs a place to showcase their talents, you just might stay afloat.\"<\/p>
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