The nonprofit charged by Congress with allocating funds to NPR, PBS and other US public radio and television stations announced is dissolving after massive federal funding cuts under Donald Trump.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced on Monday that its board of directors had voted to dissolve the organization after nearly 60 years in operation.
Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of CPB, said in a statement Monday that the organization’s board of directors voted to dissolve the organization as it “faced a profound responsibility”.
She added: “CPB’s final act would be to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attack.”
The organization was created by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which built the organization to support NPR and PBS, along with 1,500 locally owned and operated public media stations. The organization was tasked with distributing $500m worth of funding annually to NPR, PBS and its network of local broadcast stations.
Trump and his conservative allies have long criticized PBS and NPR. Plans to cut funding for public broadcasters were outlined in Project 2025, the rightwing manifesto for a second Trump administration, and by May of last year, Trump had sent a memo to Congress demanding it take action to cut the CPB’s funding.
“For years taxpayers have been on the hook for subsidizing [NPR and PBS], which spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news’,” the memo said. In July, Trump wrote on social media that any Republican who voted against funding cuts “to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or endorsement”.
The Republican-controlled Congress would go on to cut $1.1bn in funding from CPB, forcing the organization to shut down operations in August.
Local public broadcasting stations have been essential for news deserts in parts of the country where traditional media, especially newspapers, have shut down in recent decades. Over half of the 544 public radio and TV stations that received CPB funding were considered rural, giving 99% of Americans access to public media.
The cuts to federal funding have inspired donors from across the country to go on a “rage-giving” spree, sending $70m in donations to public broadcasters over the last year. But it’s unclear how long the broadcasters can survive on donations alone: one analysis estimates that 15% of local stations are at risk of closing in three years because of the cuts.
In a statement, Ruby Calvert, chair of the CPB’s board of directors, said that she is “convinced that public media will survive, and that a new Congress will address public media’s role in our country because it is critical to our children’s education, our history, culture and democracy to do so.”
