Public radio stations across Alaska — including KBBI AM 890 and KDLL 91.9 FM on the Kenai Peninsula — are bracing for potentially devastating impacts in the face of proposed federal funding cuts to public broadcasting as well as cancellation of previously appropriated funding.

The issue comes in two parts: an executive order issued May 1 by President Donald Trump that seeks to halt all federal funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, and a memo from the Trump administration that asks Congress to rescind about $1.1 billion in funds that have already been approved by Congress for about the next two years for the nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

According to KBBI General Manager Josh Krohn, the executive order was brought to a federal judge for a hearing on May 14; no ruling or statement has yet been issued on the case. A decision from the federal court is anticipated to be delivered sometime before the CPB board of directors’ next meeting on June 10.

The rescissions package, which in total includes 22 rescissions totalling $9.4 billion, was sent to Congress by the White House on Tuesday. Congress now has 45 days to act on the request; whether the rescission is enacted or not only requires a regular majority vote — 51%.

“What that’s created is a lot of unknowns, at this point,” Krohn said.

Board members under fire

According to a statement provided to Alaska Public Media by Kate Riley, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, Trump also ordered the termination of three members of the CPB board of directors — Tom Rothman, Laura Ross and Diane Kaplan, who formerly served as the president and CEO of the Rasmuson Foundation in Alaska. The CPB “immediately” filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for the move, citing the fact that the CPB is not a government entity and its board members are not government officers, therefore the administration “does not have the authority to fire board members.”

The executive order, titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” instructs the CPB board of directors and all executive departments and agencies to cease federal funding for NPR and PBS. If the order should go into effect, the CPB board would be required to “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding.”

The board would also be required to cease indirect funding to NPR and PBS by ensuring that licensees and permittees of public radio and television stations, as well as any other recipients of CPB funds — like KBBI and KDLL — do not use federal funds for NPR and PBS.

Trump’s executive order cites the CPB’s governing statute, that it may not “contribute to or otherwise support any political party,” as the basis for its directives.

“The CPB fails to abide by these principles to the extent it subsidizes NPR and PBS,” the order states. “Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”

The order also states that “no media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies” and “the government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize.”

“So the CPB is a Congressionally authorized private corporation,” Krohn told Homer News during an interview last Friday, May 30. “It was not set up as an administrative organization, which means the president should not have authority by executive order to determine uses of funding, or … firing three board members.”

The president does have the authority to nominate CPB board members, who are then confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The president is also authorized to nominate board members to fill vacancies.

According to Article II, Section 11 of the By-Laws of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, “No Director may be removed from the Board by any person or authority, including the President of the United States, without a two-thirds vote of the other Directors confirming such removal. In the event the Corporation’s President appoints one or more members of the Designated Body, such members may not be removed from the Designated Body by any person or authority, including the President of the United States, without a two-thirds vote of the other Directors and serving members of the Designated Body confirming such removal.”

As of press time, the CPB has continued operating normally under the above impression as they await the court’s decision on the executive order and the board members’ terminations.

“(The court) may decide that (the CPB is) right and they should just continue doing business, or they may decide that they need to invalidate everything that’s happened since the executive order went down, which complicates things greatly,” Krohn said.

Safeguarding operations

Since the executive order was issued, he further explained, the CPB has taken actions to try to insulate itself from further intrusion from the administration, including spinning off the satellite system that runs under NPR — which is also the main distribution system for national content for all public radio stations — into its own entity, so that in the event NPR is defunded or shut down, the satellite distribution system can continue to operate independently.

“That’s important because NPR only makes up a portion of the content that we get through our national distribution system,” Krohn said. “There’s a bunch of other national distributors, there are regional and independent distributors that all use that satellite system. The whole public broadcasting network does.

“So there’s a lot of content there — regardless of whether NPR stays on that system at all, it would be a huge loss if we lost that ability to get that material.”

Krohn highlighted other actions the board has taken to “insulate the whole system,” including making special requests to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fund the Next Generation Warning System, which is part of the Emergency Alert System, a national public warning system used by state and local authorities to deliver emergency information.

“The Emergency Alert System’s primary carrier across the country is public broadcasting,” he said. “The other thing is that public broadcasting tends to cover a larger geographical area … so without the public broadcasting portion of that, the geographical coverage goes down considerably.”

He noted particularly in Alaska, there are seven “sole service” public stations that are the only broadcasting available in their geographical areas.

Funding at risk

Further regarding the executive order, Krohn said that both NPR and PBS receive a small portion of their funding directly from the CPB, but that funds they receive indirectly from CPB go first through member stations — like KBBI and KDLL — before going back to NPR and PBS as program subscriptions or payments for services including the distribution satellite system and digital services like the radio stations’ websites.

“There is a designated portion of the federal grant we get — that’s called the Community Service Grant — that is meant to be spent on acquisition and delivery of national programming,” he said. “The executive order instructs stations not to pay NPR or PBS for that programming, which is a violation of our grant instructions.”

Krohn clarified that said grant instructions don’t stipulate that grant recipients must spend their funding on NPR or PBS programming; however, there aren’t a lot of other relevant options for national programming. He listed the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and American Public Media as alternatives.

“There are a few other sources, but nothing of the quality or quantity that NPR produces,” he said.

KBBI, he said, could look into commercial news sources for national content, but because they are commercial enterprises, it would mean additional cost or further strain on grant funding for the station.

The rescission request transmitted on Tuesday includes two proposals, R25-21 and R25-22, to rescind funds for the CPB — the first would take back $535 million, “the full amount appropriated in advance” in FY24 for FY26, and the second another $535 million, the full amount appropriated in FY25 in advance for FY27.

“These funds would be used to subsidize a public media system that is politically biased and an unnecessary expense to the taxpayer,” the proposals both read. “Enacting the rescission would eliminate Federal funding for CPB.”

Krohn confirmed that federal funding for fiscal years 2025 and 2026 was already approved and allocated to the CPB. Grant funds distributed by the CPB to public stations for FY25, which ends in September, have already been disbursed. Grant funding for FY26, unless rescinded, would be paid out starting in October. Funding for FY27, Krohn said, is currently included in a resolution passed in March that provides continuing appropriations for federal agencies and extends various expiring programs and authorities; this “earmarked” funding would be superseded by the real budget passed by Congress in September.

“Clearly, the administration does not want any more federal funding going to public broadcasting, so even if our FY26 and FY27 grants end up not being affected, what is the likelihood of funding for the CPB — which is how we get our grants — in FY28 and going forward?” said KDLL General Manager Jenny Neyman in an interview Monday.

KBBI received $173,623 in grant funds for FY25, and anticipated between $175,000 and $185,000 for FY26. KDLL received $162,115 for FY25.

Krohn said that about $40,000 of the CPB grant funds go to the acquisition and delivery of national programming. Overall, federal funding provides 40% of both KBBI’s and KDLL’s annual operating budgets.

Without federal funding, public stations in Alaska would have to rely more heavily on local funding through memberships and underwriting, and donations such as those recently raised by KBBI’s and KDLL’s Spring Membership Drives.

“We get a handful of other grants, but nothing even comes close to the level of the federal grant,” Krohn said.

However, this is not necessarily a sustainable model. Particularly with the lack of state support — Gov. Mike Dunleavy has vetoed state funding for public broadcasting every year since 2019 — the loss of federal funding would very likely mean reduction in services and staff for stations like KBBI and KDLL. For other, smaller stations across Alaska, it may mean total closure.

“Particularly for those in rural areas like most of Alaska, where the cost of operation is expensive and the population is low, it will make them unsustainable and will lead to their closures within months,” Krohn wrote in an April 28 email to KBBI listeners.

A similar letter sent to KDLL listeners on May 1 from Neyman said that federal cuts of this magnitude “would simply be devastating to our ability to provide the quality of service our community deserves.”

All options would have to be on the table following such cuts, Neyman wrote, including canceling syndicated programming subscriptions, reducing staffing — which would in turn reduce news coverage and other local content — and possibly losing the ability to air music shows. Currently, the CPB negotiates music licensing rights on behalf of both KDLL and KBBI, and both stations’ websites operate on a platform managed by NPR.

“There’s just so much connected to that federal funding that is beyond just the actual grant amount itself,” Neyman said Monday. “To not even be able to plan for what the true and final and full impacts of loss of federal support would be — it’s pretty tough to try and figure out what your future is going to look like in that scenario.”

Going commercial

It is possible, Krohn agreed when Homer News raised the question, for stations like KBBI or KDLL to switch from a nonprofit to a commercial enterprise.

“The switch from nonprofit to for-profit as a corporation is not that difficult,” he said. “It’s something we would handle with the state.”

But whether the stations would want to move into a commercial, for-profit enterprise is a different question.

“A lot of people listen to public radio specifically because it’s public broadcasting and noncommercial,” Krohn said. “The whole Public Broadcasting Act was set up as a counterpoint to commercial broadcasting, which only provided certain kinds of content because that’s what was profitable.

“Even established with the best of intentions, eventually (commercial broadcasting) would have some influence over what we can do.”

Krohn noted the widespread support that KBBI has seen from its community members on the peninsula.

“Membership has continued to step up and continued to provide more,” he said. “But is that sustainable? The pool is only so deep, we can only withdraw so much, and there’s a lot of other organizations, especially with budget reductions, that are going to be hurting.”

Local public broadcasting stations are urging Alaska residents to contact their U.S. Congress representatives to express support for public media. The public is also invited to check out the nationwide campaign, “Protect My Public Media,” to preserve federal funding for public broadcasting.

“Ordinarily, funding coming up again — there’s always some concern, but we’ve never felt a threat like this before,” Neyman said. “Even support from areas that we have always historically had feels a little more uncertain this go-around.”

Find the May 1 executive order in full online at www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/ending-taxpayer-subsidization-of-biased-media/.

Learn more about Protect My Public Media at protectmypublicmedia.org/.