Small public television stations in Southern Oregon and Northern California are struggling to fill budget gaps left after federal funding was eliminated.
KIXE PBS in Redding lost 41% of its funding, laid off one part-time employee and left four vacant positions unfilled.
General Manager Rob Keenan said viewers have increased donations this summer, but he’s still preparing for the long haul.
"I think some media outlets are overdoing it. There's almost a panic, but I've been really trying to come across as we’re actually still here," he said. "We're trying to get a sense of normalcy. We're still doing programming, we're still doing outreach."
KIXE also lost nearly $800,000 in grants due to changes at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They had planned to use that money to upgrade aging equipment.
Keenan said KIXE will apply to the recently created Public Media Bridge Fund to offset some of its losses.
Southern Oregon PBS lost about $1 million a year, about 37% of its budget.
The station has made minor cuts to staffing, as well as other changes, such as not renewing its Zoom subscription and encouraging donors to use electronic bank transfers instead of credit cards.
CEO Phil Meyer said it’s tricky to plan for the future when there’s so much uncertainty.
"You could use a juggling analogy. You've got all these balls in the air, and there might be a gust of wind, there might be somebody distracting you. There could be a dog chewing on your pant leg," he said. "It's very difficult to plan in this environment because everything's up in the air, and it's subject to rapid change."
He said last fiscal year, membership was just over half of the station’s revenue. This fiscal year, he estimates it’ll be up to 75 or 80%.
"When we would build budgets, when CPB existed, that was always the first line of the revenue side of the budget because it was stable," Meyer said. "Building the fiscal '27 budget, it will probably start with membership revenue being the first line."
That’s good news for the short term, but he said economic factors and other changes make membership unstable for long-term funding.
"We have to kind of mentally regroup, restart and think of things differently. There's the emergency stuff that we've dealt with, that we've been successful. Great, we covered the gap in the first year," he said. "But I'm starting to think in year three, year five, year 10."
Meanwhile, KEET TV in Eureka lost 50% of its funding and about 30% of its staff through layoffs, retirements and departures.
Board president Johan Pluyter said it's time for the station to step back and reassess.
"As we talk through these things, we've been doing things the same way, quite a few things, for decades. You think, are there alternatives? Can we do this differently, smarter, cheaper?" he said. "Then the final question is, can we afford it?"
The station will consolidate its broadcasting operations down to a single channel starting Oct. 1, although Pluyter said they will all continue to be broadcast online.
This shift will save the station money and help address some of the technical difficulties it has experienced.
KEET TV will also start a new fundraising campaign soon.
