The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a cornerstone of American culture for three generations, announced Friday it would take steps toward its own closure after being defunded by Congress — marking the end of a nearly six-decade era in which it fueled the production of renowned educational programming, cultural content and even emergency alerts.
The demise of the corporation, known as CPB, is a direct result of President Donald Trump’s targeting of public media, which he has repeatedly said is spreading political and cultural views antithetical to those the United States should be espousing. The closure is expected to have a profound impact on the journalistic and cultural landscape — in particular, public radio and TV stations in small communities across the United States. CPB helps fund both PBS and NPR.
The corporation also has deep ties to much of the nation’s most familiar programming, from NPR’s “All Things Considered” to, historically, “Sesame Street,” “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and the documentaries of Ken Burns.
The corporation said its end, 58 years after being signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, would come in an “orderly wind-down.” In a statement, it said the decision came after the passage of a package that included defunding and the decision Thursday by the Senate Appropriations Committee to exclude funding for the corporation for the first time in over 50 years. The corporation had hoped that the new budget might restore its funding, but that did not happen.
“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” said Patricia Harrison, the corporation’s president and CEO.
The closure will come in phases
CPB said it informed employees Friday that most staff positions will end with the fiscal year on Sept. 30. It said a small transition team will stay in place until January to finish any remaining work — including, it said, “ensuring continuity for music rights and royalties that remain essential to the public media system.:
“Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,” Harrison said. “We are deeply grateful to our partners across the system for their resilience, leadership, and unwavering dedication to serving the American people.”
NPR stations use millions of dollars in federal money to pay music licensing fees. Now, many will have to renegotiate these deals. That could impact, in particular, outlets that build their programming around music discovery. NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher estimated recently, for example, that some 96% of all classical music broadcast in the United States is on public radio stations.
Federal money for public radio and television has traditionally been appropriated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes it to NPR and PBS. Roughly 70% of the money goes directly to the 330 PBS and 246 NPR stations across the country, although that’s only a shorthand way to describe its potential impact.
Trump, who has called the CPB a “monstrosity,” has long said that public broadcasting displays an extreme liberal bias, helped create the momentum in recent months for an anti-public broadcasting groundswell among his supporters in Congress and around the country. It is part of a larger initiative in which he has targeted institutions — particularly cultural ones — that produce content or espouse attitudes that he considers “un-American.” The CPB’s demise represents a political victory for those efforts.
His impact on the media landscape has been profound. He has also gone after U.S. government media that had independence charters, including the venerable Voice of America, ending that media outlet’s operations after many decades.
Trump also fired three members of the corporation’s board of directors in April. In legal action at the time, the fired directors said their dismissal was governmental overreach targeting an entity whose charter guarantees it independence.
