Wisconsin public media outlets are bracing for the fallout of a congressional vote to claw back federal funding for public media, a decision likely to endanger stations in rural areas.
On Friday, station operators in Wisconsin said they would work hard to continue to serve their communities.
“I’m going to do everything I can to retain all my staff and keep us afloat,” said Karl Habeck, who manages WOJB, a public radio station on the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation near Hayward.
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The $1.1 billion had been allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, for the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years during Congress’ last budget process. The CPB is the nonprofit that distributes federal funds to public media outlets across the country, with the federal money covering a larger portion of rural stations budgets. President Donald Trump called for ending federal CPB funding in a May executive order.
The Senate passed the funding cut Thursday morning, and the House of Representatives gave its final approval in a 216-213 vote early Friday, sending it to the president’s desk.
In all, the vote clawed back about $9 billion, including cuts to foreign aid programs. For public media organizations, that means federal funding that has already been disbursed will run out in September.
Federal funding cut affects rural stations most heavily
In 2022, almost half of WOJB’s revenue came from CPB grants, according to Habeck.
“The more rural you get, the tougher this is going to be on radio stations,” he told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” Friday.
His station may have to stop buying NPR programming like “Morning Edition,” he said, and may have to limit community events like an upcoming music festival at the Sawyer County Fairgrounds.
Located hours from Wausau, Duluth and the Twin Cities, he said many of WOJB’s listeners don’t have internet and rely on radio for information.
Another Northwoods public radio station, Rhinelander’s WXPR, gets about 25 percent of its funding from the CPB, said CEO Jessie Dick on “Wisconsin Today.”
She said her station scaled down its local news initiative this year to one reporter in anticipation of federal funding cuts. It had previously hired journalists to address what she called a lack of local news coverage in the area.
Dick said compensating for federal cuts through local fundraising is difficult in rural areas.
“There’s not a lot of foundations, there’s not a lot of businesses,” she said.
Both directors said they’re committed to staying on the air.
Urban stations more insulated from federal cuts
Meanwhile in Milwaukee, NPR affiliate WUWM gets about $320,000 per year — about 6 percent of its budget — from the CPB.
“We know these cuts will have an impact, but they will not change who we are, what we do, or our commitment to serving our community,” wrote David Lee, the station’s president, to WPR.
For music-focused Radio Milwaukee, CPB funding accounts for under 10 percent of revenues, WPR previously reported, but helps the station broadcast Milwaukee school board meetings.
At Wisconsin Public Media — the parent organization of PBS Wisconsin and WPR — federal funding constitutes 10.4 percent of revenues.
In a statement, the organization’s interim Executive Director Jordan Siegler and Educational Communications Board Executive Director Marta Bechtol wrote that the rescission will have “a significant effect on public media in Wisconsin.”
“But we do not yet know the scope and specifics of those effects until we learn more about how the funding cuts will be implemented and what the impact will be on the larger public media system,” they wrote.
Milwaukee PBS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WPR. The station received just under $2 million from the CPB in 2024, and over $12 million from other sources.
Federal debate played out along partisan lines
Fifty-one Republican senators voted for the funding cut. All Democrats — plus Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — voted against it, with one Democrat not voting.
In the final House vote early Friday, all but two Republicans voted in favor of the cuts.
Republicans have argued that federal dollars for CPB amount to taxpayers funding media with a liberal bias. GOP calls to defund public media go back decades.
Meanwhile, Democrats have accused Republicans of threatening popular children’s shows and weakening the country’s emergency alert system, which public broadcasters are part of. During floor debates in Congress, Republicans denied a funding cut would have those effects.
More than 70 percent of the CPB’s budget goes to local public media stations. Direct CPB funding is a very small part of NPR and PBS revenues. But about 30 percent of both organizations’ revenues come from local stations buying rights to shows like “All Things Considered” or “NOVA.” That means some federal funding passes through local stations to end up with NPR and PBS. The average local public media outlet gets 16 percent of its revenues from the CPB, with the rest coming from sources like business sponsorships, donations and state funding.
Disclosure: This story was reported by WPR’s Nick Rommel and edited by news editor Deneen Smith. No member of Wisconsin Public Media’s senior leadership reviewed this story before publication.
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