What Proposal To Eliminate Federal Funding Means For KRCU

Woods: Well the proposal in the president's budget will eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB funds public radio and television stations all across the country. There is a very small part of that money that goes to NPR and to PBS. It's one percent maybe of NPR's budget. I mean it's very minuscule. The impact of this will be on stations all around the country who use money they receive from the CPB in the form of grants. We get a community service grant here at KRCU. and those moneys are what we use to pay dues to pay programming fees to NPR. So it's not targeting NPR directly. It's sort of in a roundabout way will get them, because local stations then wouldn't have the money they need to pay their bills to the networks.

“There is no viable substitute for federal funding that ensures Americans have universal access to public media’s educational and informational programming and services. The elimination of federal funding to CPB would initially devastate and ultimately destroy public media’s role in early childhood education, public safety, connecting citizens to our history, and promoting civil discussions – for Americans in both rural and urban communities.

Woods: You know some stations that have a larger part of their budget from the CPB could go dark. In our case, I don't think that we would go dark necessarily, but the number of programs and the services that we have would be dramatically impacted--dramatically reduced, because we just wouldn't have the funds to be able to pay for all of the different things that we broadcast now. For us for this year it's 22 percent of our budget. It's about $134,000. So that's a big chunk out of our budget--22 percent. So, I think the station would still be on the air, but you wouldn't have all the great programs that you have now. It'd be a much more reduced amount.

Woods: Well once you start thinking about the local support: listener contributions, local businesses, it's in the upper thirties percentage wise. So it's more than the federal funding, but to lose any piece of the budget that we have will have an impact, because we don't typically run with a bunch of extra cash on hand. We really run tight on our budget. And so, any sort of change in that budget will have a ripple effect through the station and the things that we could do and the things that we can offer.

Woods: We've said this for years and years during public radio fundraisers that listeners are our most reliable source of income and it's very very true, because sometimes state funding can change, federal funding can change. But for those who listen to a public radio station in our case here in southeast Missouri that like KRCU, their funding and their support that they provide to this station are just a bedrock for us that we rely on each and every year. And so, folks who listen, who enjoy it when we say we really need your support now more than ever that is the case, because we can weather a lot of changes in federal or state funding when we know that we have a strong pool of supporters, of listeners and local businesses who appreciate and value the service that KRCU provides.