Podcast Recommendation (and a Discussion of CPB Funding Implications)

Last week, The Daily did a show about how the then-pending (and now real) rescission package would affect a local NPR affiliate in Alaska, Is Congress About to Kill This Local Radio Station? It is worth a listen to help people understand what these clawbacks really mean, and why it isn’t what the administration and its supporters claim to be the case.

Let’s start with MTG, who said the following.

NPR and PBS have increasingly become radical, left-wing echo chambers for mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives, who generally look down on and judge rural America.

Yet, it turns out, the urban consumers are unlikely to be the ones affected by these cuts. It is far more likely to be places like KFSK in Petersburg, Alaska. It will, of course, shock readers to learn that the town voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

Here’s a back and forth between the station manager, Tom Abbott, and reporter Jessica Cheung.

Tom Abbott

Our service would be drastically altered. The CPB funding that we receive is 30 percent of our budget. As public radio does, we rely on membership donations. And that is our largest single source. Our second largest single source funding is CPB funds.

Jessica Cheung

And without that 30 percent you get from the federal government, what are you contemplating?

Tom Abbott

As far as the expenses go, personnel expenses are 65 percent of our budget.

Jessica Cheung

And how many personnel do you have on staff right now?

Tom Abbott

Five, and there’s two high school kids that help us out when we’re doing live broadcasts in the evenings. And going forward, I foresee KFSK eliminating all staff except for two. And both of those I would like to see it remain two reporters. If you were to go down to one reporter, you’re on an endless cycle of burnout.

The grandest irony of it all is that these budget cuts will likely lead the station to rely more heavily on NPR programming. According to the piece, the station’s annual budget is ~$600,000. Of that, the station pays $7,000/year for NPR programming. With a 30% loss to the operating budget due to the rescission package, the NPR programming becomes even more cost-effective, not less.

Back to Abbott.

This is a nonprofit. What we’re doing with $600,000 annually is amazing. The amount of service we provide is amazing.

So again, they can cut CPB funding to try to hurt NPR. But what they’re really going to do is hurt small-town service. And then here we are in Petersburg, when are you going to hear about the budget discussion that the Petersburg Borough Assembly is discussing? You’re going to hear about it a week after the fact on Thursday when the local newspaper comes out.

And we wouldn’t have our school board meetings, I don’t think we’d be broadcasting. The high school basketball games from out of town or in town. It’s all the stuff, all the stuff.

It seems worth concludung by noting that like so much of the destruction going on here, there is a profound lack of basic understanding from those meting out the pain. Local stations will fold or have diminished service, especially in remote areas. Over-educated news consumers such as myself will still be able to get service.