The White House released an executive order, May 1, 2025, titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease funding for National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service.
“I therefore instruct the CPB Board of Directors (CPB Board) and all executive departments and agencies (agencies) to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS,” the order states.
The order further stated government funding of public media is “outdated and unnecessary” and “corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”
Funding for public media remains a contentious issue, yet many outlets depend on that financial support to sustain their operations, including affiliate stations such as WOUB Public Media in Athens, Ohio.
When the cuts were first proposed, Stephen Skidmore, WOUB interim general manager and Chief Technology Officer, said a large campaign was launched involving public media stations nationwide, urging their Congress members to oppose the funding cuts.
“That campaign failed,” Skidmore said,
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting received $1.1 billion in federal funding, which it distributed 70% of to PBS and NPR. However, Skidmore said most of that funding was allocated to affiliate stations.
WOUB utilized these funds to cover programming costs, salaries and the overall operations of its TV and radio stations.
The federal funding has not only diminished, but Ohio has also reduced its financial support for public media organizations.
“Our total loss there is about $1.7 million immediately in October,” Skidmore said.
WOUB has also received funding from Ohio University, but that support is set to decrease following President Lori Stewart Gonzales's announcement in October of a planned 2% expense reduction “across the board,” as reported in a WOUB article published Jan. 9.
“As the University shared in August, WOUB experienced a 30 percent reduction in its annual operating budget as a result of federal cuts to funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and reductions in state funding for public media organizations in Ohio,” Dan Pittman, a university spokesperson, wrote in an email.
There was no reference to the expected decrease in funding that is likely to accompany the university's budget cuts.
Since the cuts are occurring on both a state and federal level, WOUB is not the only station trying to make ends meet. Similar affiliates like WBGU (Bowling Green), WYSU (Youngstown), WOSU (Columbus) and WCET (Cincinnati) have also faced the federal and state cuts.
Although some of these stations do receive a portion of their funding from universities nearby, Skidmore said they cannot rely solely on that and donations to sustain their operations.
“The donations, the alumni support, membership, all of that is a huge portion of our budget,” Skidmore said. “The university gives us another large portion of our budget. No, we cannot solve just on that. We have to have other revenue streams.”
Skidmore said three full-time employees were laid off Jan. 6 due to the cuts. When asked about the possibility of further layoffs, Skidmore said it would only be considered as a last resort.
The team at WOUB has also been in communication with the teams from other affiliate stations to determine the most effective ways to handle the budget cuts.
“We speak on at least a monthly basis,” Skidmore said. “All of us are going through the same hardship, so we're all sharing. The one good thing about public media is we're not competing with one another … We're saying, ‘Hey, this worked for us, that didn't work for us.’ We're all trying to figure out how to come out the other end of this. We're not going to come out unscathed, but we want it to be as minimally evasive as possible.”
Adam Earnheardt serves as the interim director of broadcasting at WYSU and is also a professor in the Department of Strategic Communication and Media at Youngstown State University. He said WYSU has managed to avoid any layoffs due to its budgeting practices and preparation for the necessary cuts. He said WYSU receives some financial support from YSU.
“We have some contingency plans in place,” Earnheardt wrote in an email. “We plan to increase our campaign targets and to look at previously unexplored grant opportunities.”
Skidmore said they are trying to remain positive throughout the funding cuts.
“We believe that everything that we do is important and valuable service to our community,” Skidmore said. “But we're going to have to prioritize those services and make sure that the most critical services continue for our viewing public and listeners and to support the mission that public media exists for.”
