The Corp. for Public Broadcasting said Friday it was shutting down, a week after President Trump signed legislation stripping its funding.
The move startled some public radio and television station managers throughout the country. Many had only begun to absorb the shock of losing federal support and were quickly figuring out ways to keep their stations vibrant.
The Corp. for Public Broadcasting administers funds for PBS TV affiliates and NPR radio stations — more than 1,500 local television and radio stations nationwide.
In a statement, the group said it would “begin an orderly wind-down of its operations.” A majority of staff positions will be cut Sept. 30, when the group’s fiscal year ends and “a small transition team will remain through January,” it said.
“This reflects the devastating impacts on public broadcasting,” said Andrew Russell, PBS SoCal chief executive. “CPB provides funding to local stations, it provides funding to national programming, and it has played a leadership role in public broadcasting since its inception. These are all real losses.”
Since returning to office, Trump has made a priority of yanking federal funding from public broadcasters as part of a wider campaign against media outlets that he dislikes. The president derided PBS and NPR as government-funded “left-wing propaganda.” Congress fell into line.
Conservatives have long wanted to strip funding from public media because of what they perceive to be liberal bias.
Lawmakers passed a “rescission” measure in mid-July, largely along party lines, that canceled $1.1 billion previously allocated for public broadcasting for two years.
“There was no offramp,” said Ken Siebert, general manager of Yellowstone Public Radio in Billings, Mont. “That money had already been appropriated. It wasn’t like they came and said: ‘OK, you’ve got two more years to figure out how you’re going to prepare for this revenue shortfall and these additional expenses.’ It was just, ‘Nope.’”
Separately, lawmakers introduced a Senate appropriations bill for 2026 that excludes funding for the Corp. for Public Broadcasting for the first time in more than 50 years.
The actions left the public broadcasting group without a steady source of operating money — and little hope that more would be on the way.
“That appears to have been the last straw,” said Kliff Kuehl, chief executive of Kansas City PBS. His station is losing $1.8 million, or about 13% of its television budget and 9% of its financing for its radio operation. “It’s tough.”
Corp. for Public Broadcasting Chief Executive Patricia Harrison said in a statement: “Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations.”
The organization dates back nearly 60 years and has helped nurture such notable programs as “Sesame Street,” “PBS NewsHour,” “Nova,” numerous Ken Burns documentaries and “Antiques Roadshow.” It also supported “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” distributing educational children’s programming that has long helped fill an important gap in the market. It has fortified such NPR programs as “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.”
Through its partnerships with local stations and producers, the nonprofit made a mission of supporting educational and cultural programming, local journalism and emergency communications.
The move could cripple smaller public stations, including those in rural areas that struggle to mount high-dollar local membership campaigns.
“Often, the only local media in some of these really small markets is public broadcasting,” said Kuehl, who has worked in public broadcasting for two decades and seen previous funding cut threats come and go.
“I would always tell our our members of Congress: ‘Hey, if you do this, you’re not going to get rid of L.A. or New York, Chicago, Dallas or Kansas City. You’re going to get rid of Smoky Hills, Kansas, and Redding, California,’” Kuehl said.
Yellowstone Public Radio is losing more than 13% of its budget, or about $350,000 a year — money that helped provide a small newsroom for its far-flung listener base, an enormous swath of northern Wyoming and Montana stretching to the Canadian border.
“People tend to think about this as just NPR, and PBS, but the heart of it is about the member stations, the people who live and work in the communities,” Siebert said. “We tailor our programming for the specific arts and culture and educational needs of our listeners — old-school programming … news and information, classical music, jazz, bluegrass, blues.”
PBS SoCal, which operates member stations KOCE and KCET in Orange and Los Angeles counties, respectively, was set to lose more than $4 million in federal funding, Russell, president and chief executive of the stations, previously told The Times.
“We’ve had some of our viewers and funders starting to step up [with donations], but it won’t completely replace that [CPB] funding,” Russell said. “PBS SoCal will continue and public broadcasting will endure, but the system that we’ve known will be different going forward.”
NPR has two large affiliates serving Los Angeles: KCRW-FM (89.9) and LAist/KPCC-FM (89.3).
LAist, based in Pasadena, will lose about 4% of its annual budget — $1.7 million. Alejandra Santamaria, the station’s chief executive, told The Times last month that funding helped pay for 13 journalist positions in its newsroom.
KCRW in Santa Monica had been expecting $1.3 million from the Corp. for Public Broadcasting.
The stations have asked listeners to donate to compensate for the shortfall. But the station managers said they worried that listener and viewer pledge drives may not be enough to sustain stations and their small newsrooms over the long haul without the funding.
“Even if you make some of these things dormant, there’s permanent damage,” Kuehl, the Kansas City broadcaster, said. “Some of these stations will get sold, others will shut down. How do you put back together a system that serves 99% of the country again? It’s a real shame.”
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