On July 18th the worst-case scenario for the public media community became real. Nearly 60 years after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 into law, Congress and the Trump Administration eliminated all previously approved funding for public radio and television stations across the country. With no funding to award, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the independent non-profit organization that was established to distribute annual station operating grants and shield stations from political interference, announced that it was closing its doors at the end of the year.
After signing the Public Broadcasting Act, President Johnson laid out the aspirations of the fledging enterprise saying, "While we work every day to produce new goods and to create new wealth, we want most of all to enrich man's spirit. That is the purpose of this act."
In the decades since the Great Society legislation created the public broadcasting system in the U.S., public radio and television stations have enjoyed significant bipartisan public support. They still do today. In a Harris Poll conducted in July, right before Congress voted to eliminate funding, 66% of Americans said that they support federal funding for public radio. In an age when it’s hard to find political agreement about almost anything, 59% of Republicans and 76% of Democrats agreed that public radio is a good value for taxpayer dollars.
So, where do we go from here?
The loss of all federal funding with little advance notice has rocked the public media ecosystem. Hardest hit are stations serving small, rural communities which reach less wealthy parts of the country and which need to support and maintain expensive infrastructures because their audiences are spread across larger geographic areas – stations just like JPR.
Here at JPR we have some significant challenges ahead of us as we work to develop a new business model built entirely on local support. But, we’re also blessed with one of the most generous public radio audiences in the country when you compare per capita giving levels across the U.S. Our plan is not to cut our service, but to put faith in our listeners to stand with us during this critical time. If we can increase listener support by 25% by the end of the year we’re confident that we’ll be able to maintain our current service levels while balancing this year’s budget and establishing a new sustainable baseline going forward.
We’re off to a very encouraging start. From June 1st through August 15th we’ve been able to raise just over half the federal funding we lost through additional listener support – raising nearly $270,000 over what we raised last year during the same period. During this time, we’ve received some truly generous gifts that have humbled us all. We’ve welcomed hundreds of first-time donors and welcomed back a wave of previous JPR contributors. We’ve witnessed a groundswell of current donors significantly increasing their support. And, we’ve expanded the number of monthly sustaining contributors, which has created a more durable and predictable financial foundation for the coming months. Many of the JPR listeners we’ve been in touch with have left heartfelt comments about how our service touches their lives and enhances the civic and cultural life in our region.
Thank you for investing in our future. We’ve never been clearer about the importance of our mission and the value of our work. Together with NPR and the amazing network of local public radio stations across the country, we’ll continue to bring you rigorous journalism that fights disinformation with facts, local news that keeps us engaged in our communities, courageous storytelling that celebrates our shared humanity, and inspired music that connects us all – every single day.
