The Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s board of directors voted to dissolve the organization, officials announced Monday, ending the 58-year-old agency that distributed federal funds to NPR, PBS and more than 1,500 local public radio and television stations.
The move formalizes the shutdown that began this summer after Republicans in Congress rescinded $1.1 billion in funding at President Donald Trump’s behest. At the heart of the campaign was a long-standing conservative critique that public media outfits produce news that is liberal, biased and should not be funded by taxpayer dollars.
CPB leaders said they chose dissolution over maintaining a dormant organization that could become manipulated by new stewards acting without public media’s best interest at heart.
“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 attacks,” said Patricia Harrison, CPB’s president and chief executive.
Ruby Calvert, chair of CPB’s board, called the defunding “devastating” but expressed hope 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.”
Created by Congress through the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, CPB served as a middleman between taxpayers and public media, distributing most of its appropriations directly to local stations. The funding was particularly crucial for small and rural stations, which relied on federal dollars for a significant share of their budgets. The organization also negotiated music rights and procured technical infrastructure on behalf of stations — functions that now have no clear successor.
CPB said it would complete distribution of its remaining funds and support the American Archive of Public Broadcasting in digitizing and preserving historical content. The organization’s own archives, dating to its 1967 founding, will be maintained in partnership with the University of Maryland.
The organization’s closure caps months of turmoil for the public media system. In April, CPB sued the Trump administration after the president attempted to fire three of its board members, arguing it was not a government agency subject to presidential authority. In May, Trump signed an executive order instructing CPB to halt all funding to NPR and PBS, calling them “biased media.” NPR and PBS sued, arguing the order amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
In September, after Congress passed its rescission bill, CPB announced it would redirect $57.9 million in satellite funding away from NPR to Public Media Infrastructure, a newly formed nonprofit backed by other public radio organizations, including PRX and American Public Media.
In response, NPR sued its longtime ally CPB, arguing the move improperly allocated funds meant for NPR and violated the Public Broadcasting Act and was made under pressure from the Trump White House — a claim CPB disputed. The parties settled in November, with NPR receiving nearly $36 million for its satellite system. NPR also said it would waive fees derived from public radio stations for accessing its satellite services for the next two years.
PBS has had staff cuts and NPR has reportedly made budget cuts. But for local stations that relied on CPB for a large share of their budgets, the federal funding cuts have been devastating.
Major foundations, including Knight, MacArthur and Ford, have pledged tens of millions of dollars in emergency funding to keep the most vulnerable stations afloat, but some are already considering dropping national programming or shutting down entirely.
NJ PBS, New Jersey’s public television network, announced in September that it may close next year, while Arkansas Public Television dropped its PBS affiliation — just as several public radio stations have dropped their NPR affiliation — showing that federal defunding has destabilized a system scrambling for answers.
NPR, PBS and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
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