The heads of Colorado’s public media stations are racing to fill a funding and infrastructure void created by a Congressional rescission vote last week.
Congress approved a request to claw back funding previously authorized for public broadcasting and foreign aid, which includes funds that would have gone to Colorado Public Radio. No one outside the newsroom at Colorado Public Radio reviewed this story before it was published or had editorial influence over this story.
The money amounts to significant fiscal shortfalls for stations across the country and in Colorado. For some, like Alamosa’s KRZA, the cut takes away nearly half of the station’s annual budget.
“I'm really scared is the way I feel, because at first I wasn't as worried. I didn't think that this would ever come to pass, but looking at it now, yeah, it's pretty scary right now. I've been here at the station 15 years and I feel like this is a big part of my life, so it would really throw me for a loop, basically,” General Manager Gerald Rodriquez said. “I'd have to start really thinking down the line a little bit better.”
Some stations, including KSUT in the Four Corners region of Colorado, may be eligible for some federal funds intended to backfill the losses from the funding cuts. That’s as a result of a deal struck by US Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, who worked out an arrangement to have money reallocated from the Department of Interior to support Tribal Stations.
KSUT General Manager Tami Graham says her station would be eligible for the funds, but she’s dubious that the money will come through.
“I would describe it as cold comfort,” Graham said. “While I appreciate that this may be an opportunity for us to receive level funding, it just feels like a band-aid to the entire system that was made in a backroom deal with the White House to get a vote from Sen. Rounds from South Dakota. So we do have word from one of our senator's offices that directly reached out to Sen. Round's team, and we do understand that KSUT is on their list as a tribal station, and at the same time, we're not confident that those funds are going to come through.”
Graham said federal funding, administered through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, accounts for about a fifth of their total budget, around $330,000. But that flat number is not the only loss from the cuts. The CPB supports back-end services shared by public media organizations. Additionally, the CPB was working to help KSUT get funds they were due via a Federal Grant aimed at disaster preparedness.
“We have a $537,000 grant from the Next Generation Warning System via FEMA that was approved in the FY 22 infrastructure bill. That grant, in the last four months or so, has been frozen and unfrozen three times. So we still do not have the ability to move forward on that grant to improve our critical infrastructure at our nine tower sites around the region so that we can better serve our region,(our) very remote region in times of emergencies,” Graham said.
Amanda Mountain, president and CEO of Rocky Mountain PBS, said the Corporation for Public Broadcasting coordinated and funded infrastructure that makes broadcasting in rural areas possible. Additionally, they made music services on public television and radio possible.
“All public radio stations,” Mountain said, count “on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, paying for our music rights and negotiating them together in a way that makes them very, very, very inexpensive. To the extent that we would be very unlikely to get that low rate alone.”
At Colorado Public Radio, the federal funds amounted to around 6 percent of the station’s annual budget, according to President and CEO Stewart Vanderwilt. Station leaders around Colorado say they’re hoping to fill some of the gap with fundraising, but that will be increasingly difficult for smaller stations.
Vanderwilt said it’s important for the spirit of public broadcasting to ensure that the smaller stations in rural Colorado aren’t left to fend for themselves.
“I absolutely feel that this is a time for radical collaboration,” Vanderwilt said. “And when I say radical, it's sort of beyond the ‘let's provide sort of marginal help to each other.’ It may be that some organizations will have to decide to more narrowly focus what they do and accept resources from elsewhere. And so I think that triage that I talked about is going to be necessary, community by community, and there's potentially the opportunity to sort of remake the whole system.”
Public media leaders in Colorado said they could see public funding returning under a different political climate, noting the history of bipartisan public support for the spending.
“I see a scenario, absolutely, where federal funding will return. Will it be a completely different mix of what that funding looks like? Could it be completely restructured? Yes, and maybe that's not a bad thing, but yes, I have faith in the American people to demand the return of federal funding for public media,” Graham said.
Another issue that remains unclear is how the cut to CPB funding could impact a lawsuit filed by NPR, KSUT, Roaring Fork Public Radio of Aspen, and CPR. That suit argues a First Amendment violation on account of a Trump Administration order that sought to restrict funds from being used to acquire programming from NPR or PBS. Vanderwilt said it is unclear if the rescission could render the lawsuit irrelevant, since there are no funds left to restrict.
“On the principle of it, we're certainly going to continue to stand in (but) the legal process may say, this is now moot,” Vanderwilt said.
