I’ve received a number of inquiries about the announcement by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that it will be shutting down this fall. The primary question: What does this mean for NHPR?
CPB has been an essential engine of public media for nearly 60 years. It has distributed federal funds to stations like NHPR and independent producers to support journalism and programming, from Morning Edition and All Things Considered to Sesame Street and Frontline. At NHPR, it provided the seed money that launched our award-winning Civics 101 podcast. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has helped build the backbone of public media’s broadcasting and digital communications systems and has supported training for generations of public media journalists and business people.
Now, with the choice by the White House and Congress to end federal funding of public media - at least for the present - the CPB is going out of business.
To the best of my knowledge, this decision does not change NHPR’s course. Rather, it is the inevitable consequence of the President signing into law a bill he proposed that claws back $1.1 billion in already approved funding for public media.
What the shutdown of CPB does, more than anything, is underscore the inflection point we’ve reached in public media.
Public radio (and TV) urgently need to develop new sources of national investment. We need to establish new mechanisms for funding and managing shared services that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting long subsidized: training, music licensing, and the satellite systems and publishing tools that connect stations to one another and NPR. Without CPB, we will need to rely on our own drive and leadership to achieve systemic change on many key strategic fronts, including technology, business-model evolution, and digital media.
Above all, at NHPR and across public media, we need to do our work in a manner that continues to earn the public’s trust and support. Up to now, NHPR has been 94% community supported. Now we’re 100% community supported. It’s as simple as that.
During our Summer Raffle in July, the public stood with NHPR’s journalists, buying more tickets and raising more funds for NHPR than in any raffle before. To all of you who participated – thank you! We’ll be announcing the winners on Mon., Aug. 11. Now, as we launch into our 44th year of community service, that’s a partnership we must sustain. Together, we are NHPR.
One of our board members gave us these simple marching orders the morning after we lost our federal funding. She wrote: “Onward, dammit!”
We’re heeding that command.
If you have questions or suggestions, please be in touch. I’m President@NHPR.org.
