The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will start winding down operations, purging most of its staff by Sept. 30, according to a press release, after nearly 60 years in operation delivering public media in the United States. The news comes after Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, stripped the non-profit company of its funding over claims of bias against conservatives.
CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison says that a small transition team will be in place through Jan. 2026 to make sure the closing of operations is orderly and to make sure things like music rights and royalties or long-term financial agreements are addressed. But after losing almost $500 million in federal funding for public media, money clawed back by Congress during a vote on a rescissions package on July 17, the institution can’t survive.
“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,” Harrison said in a statement published online. “CPB remains committed to fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities and supporting our partners through this transition with transparency and care.”
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created by Congress in 1967 to oversee the federal government’s contributions to public media. There were concerns in the mid-1960s about the way that commercial media was creating perverse incentives, especially for children, when it came to using the public airwaves. Another goal in creating public media was to help underserved communities, including rural areas where it doesn’t make much economic sense for media companies to have a presence or devote resources to local journalism.
Public broadcasting in the U.S. is supported by a mix of federal dollars, local money, sponsorships from private foundations and commercial advertisers, as well as financial contributions from viewers. Which is to say that your local public TV or radio station may still exist in the future, just in a diminished form. The most rural stations are the most dependent on funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, according to NPR.
Trump and his army of dipshits have argued that NPR and PBS have a liberal bias, despite concerted efforts by public TV and radio stations in recent years to make conservatives happy. But nothing would ever be enough, as the fight against public media has always been more of an ideological project than a desire for political “balance.” The MAGA movement simply believes there is no such thing as the public good and virtually everything needs to be financed by for-profit entities. Attacking and defunding public media was all laid out in Project 2025.
“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.”
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