On July 18, Congress approved a request to claw back funding previously authorized for public broadcasting and foreign aid, which includes funds that would have gone to KSUT.
The station will lose $330,000 in previously allocated funds.
Recently, KSUT Director Tami Graham talked to Morning Edition host Jim Belcher to update listeners on where things stand for the station post-rescission. She also talked about the pending lawsuit against the federal government that the station has with other public media outlets in Colorado, and about a potential "carve-out" for stations that serve Native and Indigenous communities.
Interview transcript
Jim Belcher, KSUT Morning Edition Host: Maybe start with what's happened with our fiscal outlook with the passing of this rescission package and the clawing back of already approved funds.
KSUT Executive Director Tami Graham: Well, first I just want to say a huge thank you to all of our listeners and supporters over the past several months. We know we've asked a lot of you, your advocacy and writing of representatives, making calls, emails. It really did make a difference. And as I think everyone probably knows, the rescission package that the White House sent to Congress did pass a week ago, wee hours of the morning, last Thursday evening or maybe Friday morning. And so what that means for public media in general and for KSUT specifically as Jim mentioned, is the climb back of already congressionally approved funding, which has been in place actually public support, bipartisan support for public media funding has been in existence in past, over the last probably 48 years. And so this year things are different. We know this is a very different time, a challenging time for many of us and for KSUT, the current year we're in, which ends October 1st, we received $330,000 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is a nonprofit organization set up by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 to sort of take the funds that Congress appropriates for public media and distribute it throughout the public TV and public radio network.
And so I was reflecting yesterday, Jim, when I knew we were going to be doing this over the regional news 10 minutes, that this really is, this is of course, national news, but this is important regional news because in Colorado alone, there's 19 grantees of public funding for public media. 17 of those are community and public stations like KSUT and two are public television stations in CD three alone, which we all know is Representative Herd's district. That's huge. 10 of those 19 grantees. So 10 stations totaling 1.6 million in CD three are losing their funding. That was already appropriated. We were already counting on for the next two years. Now, of course, the future Congress could change that, but in the meantime, our fiscal year is October one. So we are looking at a 330,000 deficit starting October 1st. So that's significant. It's 20% of our budget and it's serious and we very much, of course, hope this wouldn't be the outcome, but here we are.
And so I just wanted to come on air and talk to our listeners a little bit about, well, what does that mean for KSUT? What does it mean for the region right now? Thanks to so many of you we're having just hardly, without really making a direct ask, we've received probably 125 donations from all over the country actually, and a lot right here in our region. Those of you listening right now have increased your sustaining membership. I was talking to Jonathan Hunt, our business manager, and he told me he can't count the number of sustainers that have increased from significantly from 10 or $15 a month to $75 a month to do. People are doing whatever they can. And so it all makes a huge difference. We've raised over $30,000 in the last week without hardly asking. And so again, a huge thank you to all of you. That's a 10% of the way there. So we're looking at cost cutting. We're looking at ways we can be more efficient in our own operations, but we're also looking at fundraising, and that's just the reality of where we are
Belcher: And some of the ways that this can affect our listenership on a regular basis. If you do tune in and get some great regional news here on KSUT, as Tammy was saying, it's not just us, it's all the stations in Colorado, which are, which used to get federal funding. And I reach out every weekday morning to the Rocky Mountain Community Radio Coalition, Mount West News Bureau, Colorado Capital News Association. All of those news gatherers are going to be negatively impacted by these cuts, and it's a shame, but I'm sure they, as we are, are going to be tightening the belt and doing what we can to keep this great and timely news coming to you on a regular basis.
Graham: Yeah, absolutely. Well, speaking of capital news coverage, there's a regional, very recent, in the last six months, CPB, not only do they fund individual stations with support, they also fund amazing collaborations and initiatives, including what's called regional newsrooms just formed in Colorado, a regional newsroom in the Western states, I should say the Mountain West News Bureau that we are an affiliate of. We pay for that programming. It was greatly underwritten and supported by the CPB and that money's going to go away. So this has a direct impact. There's a lot of rhetoric about, oh, cut funding to NPR. Well, this is hurting rural stations the most actually. And the reason for that is rural stations, we receive a little bit bigger portion of funding from CPB because we're rural and because what is considered minority serving with our tribal radio signal. And so not only do we have a bigger hit than a lot of the urban stations percentage wise, but typically rural areas don't have the kind of individual philanthropic level of support that major markets do.
I mean, there's just a bigger population. People probably make more money in general. So anyway, it's a difficult position to be in. We wanted to share directly with our listeners where we're at. Your support means everything right now. It's really the next two years minimally that we're looking at. We have a goal of raising $600,000 over the next two years that will backfill the loss of federal funding. And we'll do that through grants. We'll do that through individual support. We'll do that through cutting costs of our own. Some people have asked, I want to touch on real quick, Jim, and I know we only have a couple minutes about this carve out for tribal stations that South Dakota Senator Sanders supposedly arranged a backroom deal with the White House so that they could get his yes vote and they need advance to come in Vice President Vance to make this happen.
It was that close. I'm not confident we're going to see any of the funding for the carve out for tribal stations. We might we're on that quote list that's been confirmed to me by Senator Hickenlooper's office in direct contact with Senator Sanders office. But I, it's money that's already allocated to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, office of Indigenous Connectivity and Technology at a total of $9.4 million collectively that the 56 or so tribal stations receive for over the two year period total. It's already appropriated money that just like this clawback, I think it's going to be extremely difficult administratively to access those funds. So I'm not extremely confident we'll see that. I really quick want to touch on the status of the lawsuit against the Trump administration, that KSUT, along with two other Colorado stations were co-plaintiffs with NPR that we filed back late May. It's moving through the machinations, the gears of the legal world. The plaintiffs filed a motion for summary judgment and the administration also filed co-ed a motion for summary judgment. Basically meaning we're asking the judge to make a determination on the information that's been provided in the complaint and in the executive order itself. So we're waiting for that. We should hear in the next few weeks what's going to happen on that.
