Congress is slashing previously approved funding for public media.
Both the House and Senate approved cutting over $1 billion to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as nearly $8 billion in other programs, mostly aimed at foreign aid.
Julie Overgaard is SDPB’s executive director, and Ryan Howlett is CEO of Friends of SDPB. They spoke with SDPB Director of Journalism Content Cara Hetland about the impact of this move on local public broadcasting stations like SDPB.
You can hear the interview by clicking on the broadcast player above. Below is a transcript of the conversation.
Cara Hetland
Okay, so let's just start and explain the difference between CPB and NPR and PBS, because I think that the three have been used interchangeably.
Julie Overgaard
So CPB stands for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it was created in 1967 along with the Public Broadcasting Act to act basically as the grant administrator for all the local public television and public radio stations around the country. So, they receive the dollars appropriated by Congress, and then based on a statutory formula, they distribute all of that funding out to stations. So about 70 plus percent of the money they get annually goes to local stations like South Dakota Public Broadcasting, Minnesota Public Radio, Iowa Public tv, et cetera. NPR — National Public Radio — is a programming and content creator and manager aggregator for public radio stations around the country to be a member of and purchase programming purchase content from them. But they only receive about 1% of their budget comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as direct support. Mostly all of their revenue is earned revenue through underwriting or grant revenue or membership revenue that stations pay to have access to things like Morning Edition and all Things Considered. PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, similar to NPR — a little differently in terms of how the programming is paid for, but same situation in that PBS aggregates programming from other major producing stations, other content providers, people like Ken Burns, aggregates them on behalf of the entire system. And then we pay a membership fee here in South Dakota to have access to all of their content. But again, very nominal, the amount of money that goes to PBS directly from CPB is very, very nominal, less than 10% of their budget. Most of the money that CPB brings in is dispersed to stations like ours,
Cara Hetland
And percentage of our budget from CPB is…
Julie Overgaard
About 23% annually. So we get two primary grants from CPB. One is a grant to operate our television network. The other is a grant to operate our radio network. We cannot use radio money on TV expenses or vice versa. So largely what our grants from CPB do on the radio side is pay for our local news, pays for the local radio stories we tell, helps support things like In the Moment with Lori Walsh or Jazz Nightly, or the equipment or needs to do those shows. On the TV side, it pays for high school activities and legislative coverage on TV and things like South Dakota Focus, some of the people associated with them, and then the direct expenses to make those local shows.
Cara Hetland
And I'm going to ask Ryan Howlett to step in here too. And without that income, that annual income from CPB, what does that mean? Because I've heard your donors will just step in, but is that realistic?
Ryan Howlett
In this case, SDPB and Friends has seen an increase in donor support, but a $2.3 or $2.2 million hole, we can't realistically fill on three months' notice. It's just too short of a timeframe and too big of a hole to make that gap up with just donor support.
Cara Hetland
So I have to ask, what is next? What is next for the future of SDPB?
Julie Overgaard
Well, I think people need to understand — just basic with rescission — rescission is money that was already appropriated. In March, Congress approved funding that would have given SDPB about $2.2 million in grants from CPB in this year's fiscal budget. So, we plan for that money to be here in our FY26 budget. And to Ryan's point, the state government budget starts on July 1. The federal government is in October, so we only have three months before what we were anticipating being our first grant payment coming in, not showing up. So, we don't have a lot of time to make up for that soon to be voted or the voted on loss here, the rescission. We will have to look at all of our local content. We will have to look at staff across the board. And I am planning multiple scenarios that we will discuss with our state governance board next week, Friday when they meet. I believe Ryan has set up a meeting with his executive board at Friends so we can get their input and their thoughts before we make any major decisions, but would be to put a plan together of cuts and layoffs to try to get us to $2.2 million or whatever lesser amount there might be, because we think whatever fundraising might be able to offset in that
Cara Hetland
You've spent your whole career at SDPB. This hurts.
Julie Overgaard
Yes, this hurts very, very badly. I grew up on public broadcasting. I was one of the first generations to get Sesame Street in a poor rural household. I know how important what we do is to kids in small towns, to people who live in rural areas who don't have access to other services or don't live in a household where you can afford them. And I just never in a million years thought that this would be where we would be today. Because I don't think this is about bias in media. I think this is about trying to shudder and change people's access to information, to public safety, to education, to things that make a big, big difference. And I just feel like our senators did not hear the message or didn't get it because this is going to have real, long-lasting damaging impacts on our state.
Cara Hetland
And not something that's easily brought back if the money appears.
Julie Overgaard
No. In my communications to both Sens. Thune and Rounds, these decisions, it's not like you can come back a year from now and say, "whoopsy dipsy, we made a mistake. Let's go put the money back." Because decisions will have been made here and all across the country that aren't going to be easily and done. SDPB — This is terrible for us — but there are smaller community licensed radio stations and community licensed public television stations serving real, real rural parts of America who will not and cannot exist without this federal money. And I know Sen. Rounds has said he's got promises to work and save tribal radio, but just as important as critical information is in a tribal reservation area in an emergency. It's equally important in rural areas in an emergency. And so rural, tribal, we're all in the same boat here of trying to survive and trying to have access to at least some of the minimal things that people in larger cities or more affluent areas have. This is going to negatively impact rural South Dakota and rural America is going to get hit hardest, ironically enough, by all of this.
Cara Hetland
Anything else you want to add?
Julie Overgaard
I would like to thank all of our supporters and members, listeners and viewers who made phone calls, who did their best to help. It hasn't gone unnoticed by us, and I think there's still opportunities for resolution and for path forward if we can work and find common ground and compromise. And I hope that our politicians and our state leaders, our legislators, can see the value that we bring to the people of the state and recognize it and continue to support the good work that SDPB has done and should continue to do.
Cara Hetland
Thank you.
Julie Overgaard
Thank you.