Podcast Recommendation (and a Discussion of CPB Funding Implications)
The Daily on how local NPR stations will suffer.
Last week, The Daily did a show about how the then-pending (and now real) rescission package would affect a local NPR affiliate in Alaska, Is Congress About to Kill This Local Radio Station? It is worth a listen to help people understand what these clawbacks really mean, and why it isn’t what the administration and its supporters claim to be the case.
Let’s start with MTG, who said the following.
NPR and PBS have increasingly become radical, left-wing echo chambers for mostly wealthy, white, urban liberals and progressives, who generally look down on and judge rural America.
Yet, it turns out, the urban consumers are unlikely to be the ones affected by these cuts. It is far more likely to be places like KFSK in Petersburg, Alaska. It will, of course, shock readers to learn that the town voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
Here’s a back and forth between the station manager, Tom Abbott, and reporter Jessica Cheung.
Tom Abbott
Our service would be drastically altered. The CPB funding that we receive is 30 percent of our budget. As public radio does, we rely on membership donations. And that is our largest single source. Our second largest single source funding is CPB funds.
Jessica Cheung
And without that 30 percent you get from the federal government, what are you contemplating?
Tom Abbott
As far as the expenses go, personnel expenses are 65 percent of our budget.
Jessica Cheung
And how many personnel do you have on staff right now?
Tom Abbott
Five, and there’s two high school kids that help us out when we’re doing live broadcasts in the evenings. And going forward, I foresee KFSK eliminating all staff except for two. And both of those I would like to see it remain two reporters. If you were to go down to one reporter, you’re on an endless cycle of burnout.
The grandest irony of it all is that these budget cuts will likely lead the station to rely more heavily on NPR programming. According to the piece, the station’s annual budget is ~$600,000. Of that, the station pays $7,000/year for NPR programming. With a 30% loss to the operating budget due to the rescission package, the NPR programming becomes even more cost-effective, not less.
Back to Abbott.
This is a nonprofit. What we’re doing with $600,000 annually is amazing. The amount of service we provide is amazing.
So again, they can cut CPB funding to try to hurt NPR. But what they’re really going to do is hurt small-town service. And then here we are in Petersburg, when are you going to hear about the budget discussion that the Petersburg Borough Assembly is discussing? You’re going to hear about it a week after the fact on Thursday when the local newspaper comes out.
And we wouldn’t have our school board meetings, I don’t think we’d be broadcasting. The high school basketball games from out of town or in town. It’s all the stuff, all the stuff.
It seems worth concludung by noting that like so much of the destruction going on here, there is a profound lack of basic understanding from those meting out the pain. Local stations will fold or have diminished service, especially in remote areas. Over-educated news consumers such as myself will still be able to get service.
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I’m beginning to wonder if that’s true. I mean, I keep reading stories about state legislators in states with vast swaths of low-density population, and those legislators don’t want to pay to provide services in those swaths. To be fair, they are expensive, but the legislators are captives of the “low-taxes” crowd. The services could be provided. They don’t want to.
Meanwhile, like Trump, they speak in “country” dialects and tell corn-pone stories all while stabbing their base in the backs. Josh Hawley is obviously doing that now.
I mean, I think Lisa Murkowski knows what the recissions will do to public radio in Alaska. I have no idea what has her so cowed, because I don’t think it’s a primary threat. I have guesses, of course. It’s clear she has been targeted by anonymous violent threats. Is that all?
I will take that radical ticket of Rick Steves and Elmo over MTG any day of the week. Didn’t this woman just vote to add (minimum) 3Trillion to US Debt?
@Jay L. Gischer: I was thinking about people like MTG who seem to think she is helping damage NPR and urban Democrats, when that isn’t the result.
But your point is well taken.
@Steven L. Taylor: It’s true, the jury is still out on the question of “Is MTG really that stupid?”
The question in the case of Josh Hawley or Lisa Murkowski is clear. No, they aren’t that stupid. But with MTG, I don’t know. Or Tuberville, for that matter.
I mean, though, how do you be a successful college football coach if you are an actual meathead?
I am, in general, fairly suspicious of people “acting stupid” in public. Nobody normal wants people to think they are stupid. I remember telling a friend that I didn’t think Cameron Diaz was all that dumb, had he never heard of the “dumb blonde” routine? He said, “But I’ve seen her on talk shows!!” To which I reply, “And you think she isn’t selling something on those talk shows?”
Maybe not genius level, but no, Cameron Diaz is not stupid.
Though there is the “stupid is as stupid does” metric.
@Jay L. Gischer: Murkowski knows. As does Hawley. Tuberville is dumber than MTG in my opinion.
@Steven L. Taylor:
In the case of Marjorie, I’m pretty sure she feels that by defunding CPB she’s taken care of the Jewish Space Laser threat. Tommy Tuberville? He’s like Ron Johnson to me: I can’t decide if he’s stupid, or if he’s putting on an act.
I wonder for someone like Murkowski if there isn’t a calculation pitting what she can leverage from her own party if she compromises on this deal against the blowback she is likely to get from her own party if she craters this deal when they start leaving her issues for dead because she is not a team player.
@al Ameda:
I have no reason to think it is an act.