With the Trump instigated $9 billion cuts to US public broadcasting and foreign aid many public radio stations are in peril due to the loss of budget from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). On Wednesday September 24, while global leaders were in town for the UN General Assembly, New York Public Radio (NYPR) announced it will provide its nationally distributed programs for free to stations affected by the cuts in a Station To Station Programming Project. Even non-commercial stations that don’t receive CPB funds are potentially able to air the programs for free.
Programs include Radiolab, On the Media, Terrestrials, The New Yorker Radio Hour and Carnegie Hall Live, Freakonomics Radio, Science Friday, Today, Explained and more.
LaFontaine Oliver, New York Public Radio’s president and CEO and executive chair told publication Current:
“Hopefully this will give station leaders a bit of financial breathing room to be able to think about sustainability, whatever that means at a local level for them, to think about whether they can reinvest this in local reporting or just other areas of their vital local service.
The plan was to make it simple and easy for the most impacted stations in the system to receive fee relief.
We’re really happy that we have distribution partners like the folks at Freakonomics Radio and Science Friday and Today, Explained that really saw the importance of stepping up in this moment of just really existential change in the system to support the stations and support us.”
Oliver suggests that about two-thirds of public radio stations would be eligible for the free programming, saving each a few million dollars. The program begins October 1 and will run for one year with Oliver hopeful money can be raised to continue it beyond then.
Image: A poster on the door to a library of CD’s and vinyl records at WFUV radio station at Fordham University in the Bronx. The station is losing $500,000 a year, or 7% of its budget, after the Republican led Congress voted to strip the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Reuters, licenced to Radioinfo.