A large portion of KHNS’s budget is hanging in the balance as Congress considers a Trump Administration request to take back over $1.1 billion of already approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB.
The loss of those funds would be a “dagger in the heart” for the station, said general manager Kyle Clayton on Thursday. Last year 36% of KHNS’s funding came from CPB, according to its website.
“If these cuts happen it’s going to be bare-bones stuff,” Kyle Clayton said. “We’ll probably still have our DJs come in and do live hosted music shows, but in terms of public affairs, news, it’s going to be really impacted.”
In the short term, the station would be able to draw on what Clayton called a “rainy day fund.” But in the long run, Clayton said the station the station would be “completely different,” with major cuts to local programming without federal funding.
CPB is an organization that distributes federal funding to NPR, PBS and local stations. It was established by Congress in 1967, in large part to insulate public media outlets from political influence by acting as an intermediary for funding.
The Trump Administration in recent months has focused criticism of public media on national public broadcasting outlets, accusing NPR and PBS of “fueling left-wing propaganda.” An executive order attempting to cut CPB funding without congressional approval wrote that it was “highly inappropriate for taxpayers to be forced to subsidize biased, partisan content.”
But Clayton emphasized that KHNS is not the same as NPR. While KHNS purchases and rebroadcasts some nationally produced shows, like NPR’s Morning Edition, it is run independently. It also broadcasts in-house programming and non-NPR syndicated content like the BBC World Service.
And though Trump’s criticism has focused on the big outlets, Clayton said the funding cuts would instead hit the little ones, like KHNS.
“(CPB funding) is a very small percentage of NPR’s budget,” Clayton said. “Cut CPB funding and NPR is going to keep going. But it’s really going to hit places like us.”
According to NPR, only about 1% of its annual budget comes directly from the CPB. An additional 30% comes from member stations like KHNS paying for NPR content, which includes some CPB funding. Through those member station payments, Trump’s proposed cuts will reach NPR’s revenue stream, but only after first hitting member stations. Of those member stations, not all will be affected equally.
Stations in large, urban markets are able to draw far more heavily on corporate donations and donations from a large listener base. For instance, CPB funding was just 4% of the budget for WNYC in New York City last year.
Meanwhile, KHNS receives more than one-third of its funding from CPB. That’s exactly in line with the average for other public radio stations in Alaska, with some far more reliant. Two stations, in Unalakleet and the Pribilof Islands, receive almost the entirety of their funding from the CPB – over 90% – according to public financial documents. It’s not just an Alaska problem, either. Other mostly rural states like Montana and West Virginia are in similar situations, with average reliance on CPB funding statewide more than 30%.
Opponents of the cuts argue that those potentially hard-hit rural stations serve essential purposes in their communities. U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski published a guest column last week in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner opposing the cuts, writing that “not only would a large portion of Alaska communities lose their local programming, but warning systems for natural disasters, power outages, boil water advisories, and other alerts would be severely hampered.”
Clayton echoed that sentiment Thursday, saying KHNS provided services that couldn’t be found anywhere else.
“You can go to the internet or a different news outlet,” Clayton said. “But what those other things don’t have are timely emergency broadcasts, community updates, public safety updates.”
KHNS operations manager Angie Pappas described sleeping at the station during the 2020 landslides so that the station would be ready to go on air or answer questions called in by listeners at any time.
“It was a combination of actual civic information – [then mayor] Doug Olerud was live on the air – and also messages like, so-and-so says if you need a ride call him,” Pappas said of programming during the emergency.
As for news bias, Clayton said KHNS is making a concerted effort in its own programming to present balanced perspectives. That includes shows like Lynn Canal Voices and Question Corner, which feature new local voices each week.
“On Lynn Canal Voices, we’ve done everything from free speech to the senior tax exemption question, bringing people on who were for and against it,” Clayton said. “These cuts are going to reduce our staff. You can’t do programs like Lynn Canal voice or public affairs reporting without staff.”