Do federal funding cuts spell the end for Big Bird and Cookie Monster?
After funding was cut by President Trump and Congressional Republicans, NPR, PBS and the local stations they support face an existential threat that will impact local communities across the country.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the federal nonprofit that funds National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service and hundreds of public TV and radio stations across the U.S., is off the air.
After congressional Republicans, at the urging of President Donald Trump, stripped away $1.1 billion in funding in 2025, the organization’s board of directors announced this week that they are dissolving the CPB. The decision leaves the fate of NPR, PBS and their more than 1,000 local affiliates up in the air, as stations begin scrambling to determine what the future looks like.
Will people still be able to listen to their favorite public radio stations? Will Big Bird go the way of the dodo?
The answers are still unclear, but for Mike Beaudet, an investigative reporter at Boston’s WCVB television station and a professor of the practice at Northeastern University, the future of public media, and the public, is “scary.”
“I don’t think you can underestimate the impact of it because … local news is so important,” Beaudet said. “To lose that, not to sound too dramatic, you’re impacting the future of democracy because if people aren’t informed about their communities and don’t know what’s going on around them, then they can’t make informed decisions when they go to the ballot box.”
Created by Congress in 1967, the CPB was responsible for dispersing public funds to NPR, PBS, and local public TV and radio stations. These local sources of reporting and educational content are part of the daily news diet for millions of Americans.
According to NPR, 23.2 million people listen to the organization’s more than 1,000 stations every week. About 36 million people watch their local PBS stations every month, according to PBS. On average, about 58% of all television viewing households in the U.S. watch PBS stations, which also reach more young children than any other children’s TV network with shows like “Sesame Street.”
The CPB’s dissolution will likely take several months to hit many stations, since many still have some residual public funding to operate with, Beaudet said. While the average amount of CPB funding that stations receive is quite low –– it accounts for 18% of PBS stations’ budget and 15% of NPR stations’ budget on average, according to public media database Semipublic–– it can vary widely based on location.
Stations in larger media markets with more robust fundraising efforts and other funding sources will likely live on into the future because the majority of their funding is not dependent on the CPB. A radio station like Boston’s GBH was able to launch a three-year $225 million fundraising campaign the day the CPB lost its funding.
“Since the loss of federal funding for public media in October, GBH has been working to innovate and evolve to continue to meet the needs of our audiences in the most impactful and sustainable ways possible,” said Nicole Boudreau, a GBH spokesperson.
For smaller stations, the situation is more dire. Stations like KUHB in Pendleton, Oregon, and WVLS in Monterey, Virginia, received more than 90% of their funding from CPB grants, according to Sempublic.
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For local communities, especially in rural areas that aren’t part of large media markets, public radio and TV have filled the void left by a severely diminished media landscape in the U.S. Over the last three years, more than 1 in 10 editors and reporters, nearly 10,000 journalists, have been laid off nationwide, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Public media in many places around the country has allowed communities to get at least some modicum of professionally produced, verified, fact-checked news,” John Wihbey, an associate professor of media innovation at Northeastern.
In the absence of the CPB or alternative funding sources, stations will start to feel a tight squeeze on their budgets over the next year, Wihbey explained. That will eventually trickle down to listeners and viewers nationwide in terms of what stations they have access to and what content airs on the stations that remain.
Some, like New Jersey’s public television network, NJ PBS, announced they might have to close before the end of the year. Others have opted to sever ties with PBS or NPR to stay on the air. In December, Arkansas PBS became the first television station to drop its PBS affiliation, meaning tens of thousands of viewers will lose access to TV standards like “Antiques Roadshow.”
Cost-cutting has quickly become the priority for many stations. That includes foregoing the often hefty fees paid to NPR or PBS but also making difficult decisions around scheduling and which nationally distributed programs to run. KUAC-TV/FM in Fairbanks, Alaska, is forgoing overnight programming entirely.
“Those stations that have a strong history of local fundraising will fare better certainly in the short term, but there is probably a need for a very large philanthropic effort to try to replace what has now been gutted and what’s now being shut down formally,” Wihbey said.
Some major players have already stepped up. The Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and Ford Foundation, names familiar to most public radio listeners, announced nearly $37 million in funding to save the most at-risk public media stations.
However, amid all the chaos, as PBS, NPR and local stations find new funding sources, adapt or shut down entirely, Americans will pay the price in ways that are both obvious and more subtle, Beaudet warned.
“Journalists are supposed to play a watchdog role in these communities, but if there’s no one playing that role, not only are consumers not informed but there’s also the potential for people to do bad things and get away with it,” Beaudet said.
