CPB to Shutter Sept. 30 Following Funding Lapse; Carr Defends NPR, PBS Probes
CPB said Friday it has begun an “orderly wind-down of its operations,” given enactment of the 2025 Rescissions Act to claw back $1.1 billion of its advance funding for FY 2026 and FY 2027 and the Senate Appropriations Committee’s advancement Thursday of its FY26 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee spending bill, which didn’t allocate money to the public broadcasting entity (see 2507310062). Meanwhile, the FCC didn’t comment on whether the Enforcement Bureau will continue investigating PBS and NPR stations for possible violations of underwriting rules (see 2501300065) after the commission released a set of April letters from Chairman Brendan Carr to House lawmakers indicating that the probe “remains ongoing.”
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
In the newly released letters to Congressional Public Broadcasting Caucus co-Chairman Mark Amodei, R-Nev., House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Doris Matsui of California and 17 other Democrats, Carr defended his decision to seek the Enforcement Bureau investigation. The lawmakers pushed back against the investigation in March (see 2503260063). At the time he launched the probe, Carr said underwriting violations would undermine “any case for continuing to fund NPR and PBS with taxpayer dollars.” In April, he said he had “an obligation to ensure that broadcasters comply with the terms of their federal licenses.”
CPB CEO Patricia Harrison said Friday that “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.”
CPB said it “informed its employees today that the majority of staff positions will conclude with the close of [FY 2025] on Sept. 30. A small transition team will remain through January 2026 to ensure a responsible and orderly closeout of operations. This team will focus on compliance, final distributions, and resolution of long-term financial obligations, including ensuring continuity for music rights and royalties that remain essential to the public media system.”
NPR President Katherine Maher said the “ripple effects of [CPB’s] closure will be felt across every public media organization and … every community across the country.” CPB “upheld the core values of the Public Broadcasting Act, including support for diverse voices, promotion of excellence and creative risk, and advancing service for the unserved and underserved,” Maher said in a statement.
A PBS spokesperson said it's "committed to building on CPB’s legacy and maintaining our service to the American people for years to come.” CPB for “over half a century … partnered with PBS and our member stations to serve communities large and small in every corner of the country.”
America’s Public Television Stations “are deeply troubled by the current situation that has made it necessary for [CPB] to begin winding down its operations,” said CEO Kate Riley in a statement. CPB “provides critical support for stations, [including music licensing and] support for the interconnection system that … is essential for the transmission of emergency alerts.” Local “stations will now have to pay for these costs out of their station budgets, which have taken a dramatic hit” via the defunding, she said.
'Logical' but 'Painful'
It’s still technically possible, albeit unlikely, that Congress could reverse course and fund CPB for FY26, a public media attorney told us. The House Appropriations LHHS Subcommittee hasn’t released its FY26 funding bill, but lobbyists said it’s all but certain the subpanel won’t include CPB money, given that GOP leaders in the chamber tried to defund the entity during the FY 2024 and FY 2025 cycles (see 2307210065 and 2407100060). House LHHS Chairman Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., indicated that direct CPB funding was unlikely (see 2507280050).
CPB’s “very logical [goal] is to develop a wrap-up plan, which is what any business in a situation … where there was no further revenue” would do, said Gray Miller attorney Margaret Miller, who represents public media stations. Still, it’s “exceedingly painful, [and] I am personally grieving because of it,” she said. “I know my clients are, too.” Stations have been planning for a while in case federal funding dropped away, so “the prudent thing for stations to do is to look at their budget and look at ways that they can preserve their ongoing operations, if possible.”
Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., blamed congressional Republicans for supporting “a reckless spending cuts package that slashes funding for CPB and threatens public safety [despite the entity’s] work to educate, inform, and provide emergency communications through public media. ... With just one vote, Congressional Republicans stripped CPB’s ability to provide information that educates, informs, and keeps us safe.”
Free Press co-CEO Craig Aaron said CPB’s impending shutdown “is devastating for this country” and argued that “for too many years the leadership of institutions like CPB, NPR and PBS have tried too hard to placate the politicians who were committed to their destruction. ... But the promise of public media is still worth fighting for, and so are the many journalists, producers, engineers and employees who have committed their careers to these institutions and produced incredible work under trying circumstances.”