Rescission Bill Blues at Public TV & Radio, NOLA Mayor Fundraising

Hy and Christopher discuss fundraising in the Mayor’s race and the rising danger of inflation later in the program, but our main issue are the cuts in the PBS budget.

WWOZ management called in all of its senior staff and stakeholders for strategy session to deal with the danger of the recession bill on Wednesday, July 17, when it became clear that Donald Trump’s $9 Billion cut in the foreign aid public media budgets would pass the US Senate in the coming hours.

The “Guardians of the Groove” at 90.7 FM realized the devastating impact of the loss that their portion of the $1.1 billion public TV and radio funding soon to be chopped away by the Republican Congress at the behest of President Trump. The monies underwrote a considerable portion of the funds necessary to keep broadcast signals on the air. Like so many critical resources for many public stations around the country, from ice warnings in Alaska to farm reports in the Midwest, the Crescent City’s radio archive of culture may have been dealt a catastrophic cut.

In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich and the GOP Revolutionaries declared their jihad against PBS with a joke. “Whenever two or more socialists are gathered together, national public radio is with them.” It took 30 years, but Republican campaign to defund the public broadcasting system of federal monies succeeded with a 51 to 48 party-line vote in the US Senate on July 17, 2025, with only Maine's Susan Collins and Alaska's Lisa Murkowski fully opposed in the GOP caucus. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting stands to lose $1.1 billion meant to fund it through the next two years, while the bill also cuts $7.9 billion in other programs. CPB acts as a conduit for federal money to NPR, PBS, and their TV and radio member stations.

The irony is that the news operations of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Systems receive less than one percent of their funding from the federal government. By corollary, the Republican campaign to defund liberal media sources will likely fail, as large urban public news radio stations should be able to make up the gap in funding. Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and PBS News Hour will likely endure. High-quality children's programming, such as Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood as well as cultural programs on history, music, and underserved communities might not.

In particular, specialty music stations like WWOZ as well as rural and small market television stations which received 8 to 15 percent of their funding from the federal treasury find themselves in mortal danger. Federal grants for unique, cultural programming make up the line share of their budgets. Local news, including emergency alerts, could be hit worst of all as small market stations face going dark.

In one of the late proposed amendments, Murkowski sought to restore CPB funding while barring any federal money from going to NPR. She mentioned a 7.3 magnitude earthquake that struck the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island on Wednesday. The Senator had received her alert from a public radio station KUCB in Unalaska, in the Aleutian Islands. “I'm looking at a text that I received from the station manager there," she declared in the Senate floor. The text said the local community was instructed to listen to the local public radio station, she added.

“I have an amendment that protects public media, their independence, their ability to provide local news, weather reports and, yes, emergency alerts," Murkowski continued. "We're reminded today this stuff matters, so I would hope my colleagues would recognize what is at stake and vote for my amendment." The GOP majority voted ‘nay’ in reply.

South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds on Tuesday announced that he had struck a deal for the White House to divert Green New Deal money to funding 28 stations serving Native American listeners in nine states, yet the agreement does little to serve the nearly 1000 more rural stations facing catastrophic cuts. A Harris Poll conducted last week on behalf of NPR found that overall 66 percent of Americans support federal funding for public radio, with an equal proportion agreeing that such funding stands as a good value for taxpayers. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans and more than seventy-seven percent Democrats said they support public radio funding. The online poll served 2,089 U.S. adults, with a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.