President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14290 in May 2025 declared that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting needed to cease its NPR and PBS funding, deeming it “outdated and unnecessary” for them to receive government funding. Despite this order being recently reviewed and overturned nearly a year later by U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss due to its contradiction of the First Amendment, its impact on public radio continues to have a ripple effect of unemployment and loss of programming.
Tim Richardson, an adjunct faculty with the Communication Studies department at Saint Mary’s College, teaches broadcast media production and film and video classes. He said that while the recent ruling is a win for freedom of the press, the damage to public broadcasting has already been done. Now, stations must rely more heavily on community contributions to make up some of that difference.
“It doesn’t restore any of the funding that was lost, which was over 1 billion dollars, as they dismantled the main distribution for those funds,” Richardson said. “So, it keeps it from getting worse, but unfortunately, the damage has been done, and so local stations and such have had to rely even more heavily on the local community contributions.”
The effects of the funding cuts are also wide reaching. CBP has existed on a schedule where it receives its funding two years in advance, as television productions take a considerable amount of time to plan and produce. Congress eliminated the two-year funding plan with the cuts, and the CPB dissolved.
Anthony Hunt, station manager at 88.1 WVPE, an independent radio station owned and funded by Elkhart Community Schools, said that the transformation of these systems and the funding losses have led to blind spots in coverage across the country.
“So now there is no way to get funding from the federal government to individual stations at this time, at least in a distribution model, such that public broadcasting is able to exist in 99% of the country,” Hunt explained.
Within Elkhart, Indiana, and its surrounding counties, the impact of this can be seen directly in how the federal and state government policies have affected the budget of WVPE. Hunt said WVPE has experienced major funding cuts of $250,000.
“So, what’s sad about [the situation] is, and that is pertinent to where I’m at is that, in my case, public radio at WVPE, we lost a quarter of a million dollars between what we would have received from the federal government money and what we would have received from the state, which also chose to cut our funding because they were doing a knee-jerk reaction,” Hunt said.
To make up the difference between what has been lost and what is needed to keep stations running, radio stations have had to turn more heavily to their communities for financial support. Stations have now made it their new normal to request donations from listeners in their broadcasts.
For WVPE, 70% of funding was made up of government support. Now, that portion must come from listeners.
“So loss of all the state funding and the federal funding means that now 70% of my budget comes from the people who listen to and then donate to the programming, and then 30% of the pay from businesses. So, really, I’m a 70/30 split, but I’m now 100% community supported,” he said. “If the community loses interest in what we’re doing, we’re sunk. So my goal is to try not to do that.”
The effects of the executive order have not been felt equally across the country either. Not every radio station relied on government funds in equal parts.
In some states, such as parts of Alaska, budgets were majority composed of federal and state funding, while various radio stations in Nevada, Iowa and New Jersey relied less on government support, therefore posing less at risk.
Hunt said this environment has sparked competition between broadcasting stations as they compete for listeners who will support them.
Laurie McFadden, the director of Notre Dame’s student media program, wrote to The Observer that 88.9 FM WSND, the University of Notre Dame’s non-commercial radio station, is independent of federal funding and not affiliated with NPR as a member station. WSND-FM was not severely affected by the cuts that came to many public radio stations.
Individuals and organizations are already taking steps to minimize the damage of the funding losses. The judge’s ruling initially allows public radio stations such as NPR and PBS to continue broadcasting, and the same organizations are able to take steps to support other stations who rely on their coverage.
“Additionally, with the support of the Distribution/Interconnection (D/I) Committee and NPR Board, NPR announced that all PRSS interconnected public radio stations will be granted total relief from interconnection fees for two years,” McFadden wrote.
Some shows have been lost and staff proportions cut, Richardson said, due to the lack of money to keep them going. He mentioned that it will take time for radio stations to recover.
Richardson also highlighted that what is important now is to not take media for granted, as it’s the stories covered at this level that are most relevant to daily life.
“The same way when you look at local news stations, the reason people still tune in to local news is because it’s local, it’s things happening in your own backyard,” he said. “And that’s why those stations are able to thrive, and the same thing with public media, like WNIT, are covering events that are here locally, diving into things happening right in our backyard. Those things get really important, and they get really heavily affected the most when you have cuts made from above.”
Public broadcasting may not exist in the same way it once did, but it continues to impact the communities it is a part of. “Having trusted, curated sources like WNIT ... and local public radio with NPR, having those to be able to vet and research and do the actual journalism that’s involved in getting you accurate news that affects you is important,” he said.
