President Trump made good on an action he has threatened since first taking office: He signed an executive order Thursday night to end the flow of federal money to NPR and PBS stations throughout the country.
If the order withstands potential legal challenges and is enacted, public media stations in Austin could lose millions of dollars in annual funding.
Debbie Hiott, general manager of KUT and KUTX, told KUT News that she and others in public media are still trying to figure out what exactly the executive order means.
"If the intent of the order is to keep local stations from carrying NPR services, I am concerned," she said in a statement. "NPR is a critical part of our mission to serve the community."
"News organization[s] such as ours are guaranteed, under the First Amendment, the right to be free of government interference with the journalism we air," she added. "An executive order that prohibits us from using a particular service such as NPR seems to cross that line."
KLRU, Austin’s PBS affiliate, said it did not have its own statement and instead pointed to a statement from the head of PBS, in which she questioned the legality of Trump’s late-night order.
“The President’s blatantly unlawful Executive Order, issued in the middle of the night, threatens our ability to serve the American public with educational programming, as we have for the past 50-plus years,” Paula Kerger said. “We are currently exploring all options to allow PBS to continue to serve our member stations and all Americans.”
Trump’s order specifically directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop the allocation of federal funds to NPR and PBS. It also instructs the CPB to ensure public radio and television stations do not use federal funds for NPR and PBS content.
The CPB is a private nonprofit that Congress created in the 1960s.
According to information published on KUT and KUTX’s website, the vast majority — about 90% — of the station’s roughly $14 million budget comes from private donations from individuals and businesses.
Another 6% of the station’s budget comes from the federal government, or the CPB, which amounts to $926,796 for this coming fiscal year, Hiott said in a statement to donors Friday.
The station says all of this money is spent on producing and airing local and national programs. That includes NPR shows such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered, which the station pays to air. Funding for these shows also comes from other dollars.
"We are fortunate because Austin has always been generous and supportive to KUT & KUTX," Hiott told KUT News. "If KUT were to lose federal funding, the support of our community would be the only way to avoid service cuts."
In 2023, PBS affiliate KLRU received just over $2 million in CPB funding, according to its latest financial report. That's about 12% of the station's total budget, Luis Patiño, the president and CEO of Austin PBS, told KUT.
Smaller, rural stations threatened
Efforts to cut federal money for public media will likely have the greatest impact on smaller, rural public radio and TV stations.
Those stations — which are sometimes their communities' sole source for local, national and international broadcast news — often operate with significant operating expenses. But without as large a donor base as their urban counterparts, they rely more heavily on federal funding.
Marfa Public Radio, which broadcasts across a wide swath of West Texas including Big Bend and the Permian Basin region, recently posted to Instagram that federal cuts could cause the station to “lose up to $470,000 — almost 1/3rd of our budget.”
“No matter what happens in Washington, D.C., we intend to be here on the air, keeping our communities informed,” the station wrote in a plea for financial support.
Music stations could face licensing challenges
The CPB also plays a unique role in the operation of public radio music stations like KUTX.
In order to legally play copyrighted music, stations need to pay for broadcast licenses. The CPB acts as an umbrella organization for all public media stations, negotiating for their rights to play music.
If the CPB ceases to fill that roll, and individual stations need to negotiate on their own for music rights, it could add significant operating costs.
“We estimate that it could be as much as $100,000 a year [in added expenses] that KUTX could be liable for music licensing,” Matt Reilly, associate general manager for programming KUT and KUTX, said.
Trump vs. public media
The executive order signed Thursday adds to recent attempts by the Trump administration to kneecap public media outlets.
In late January, the head of the Federal Communications Commission announced he would investigate whether NPR and PBS had violated laws regarding what can be included in commercials aired by the outlets and their affiliates.
On Monday, Trump said he would remove several CPB board members. The agency sued the administration in response.
Disclosure: This story was reported and written by KUT’s Audrey McGlinchy and Mose Buchele, and edited by Stephanie Federico. No executive at KUT reviewed this story before it was published.
