What Federal Cuts to Public Media Funding Could Mean for Santa Barbara County

Defunding Corporation for Public Broadcasting Would Cut into Local Public Radio Stations’ Budgets

KCLU General Manager Mary Olson (bottom left) with members of the KCLU team. | Credit: Courtesy KCLU

This article was underwritten in part by the Mickey Flacks Journalism Fund for Social Justice, a proud, innovative supporter of local news. To make a contribution go to sbcan.org/journalism_fund.

In Washington, federal lawmakers have made moves to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). In Santa Barbara County, losing that funding could mean cuts to two of the area’s public radio stations, KCLU and KCBX.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private nonprofit, helps support National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), as well as community radio and member TV stations across the country, through grant money. In December, Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana introduced the No Propaganda Act, which would eliminate funding for the corporation.

KCLU, headquartered in Thousand Oaks, covers much of Santa Barbara County, as well as Ventura County and parts of San Luis Obispo County, bringing local news to the area along with national programming. Mary Olson, KCLU’s general manager, said that local public radio stations are awarded grant money from CPB. For KCLU, that money makes up just shy of $200,000, or about 7 percent of the station’s budget. About 80 percent comes from listener support.

“While it might seem small on the surface — you might say, ‘Oh, it’s quote-unquote only 7 percent of our budget’ — but 7 percent of our budget can absolutely impact our ability to bring you the programming and the journalism that you value,” Olson said.

Olson said that local coverage includes everything from national disaster information, such as fire evacuation zones, to arts and cultural programming.

She said that eliminating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding would limit national news coverage, as well.

KCBX’s management staff. Chris McBride, Assistant General Manager (left), Frank Lanzone, General Manager (center) and Marisa Waddell, Program Director (right). | Courtesy KCBX

“If CPB funding went away, it would create a domino effect across the country for public radio stations,” she said. “And it would make it hard for NPR to be able to produce their news at the quality that we’ve all come to rely on because not only do we individually get grants from CPB, NPR gets grants from CPB.”

For KCBX, which covers much of North County and the Santa Ynez Valley, as well as San Luis Obispo County and parts of Monterey County, a loss of CPB funding would cut into its budget by about $400,000, according to Frank Lanzone, the station’s general manager. Lanzone said that funding cuts could not only impact the kind of local stories the station can do but also affect music copyright funding and the station’s distribution system, or its ability to receive programming from other places. KCBX is considered a rural station in CPB’s formula, he said, and the additional funding helps the station bring news to rural areas on the Central Coast.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting also provides funding for PBS stations. In total, about 15 percent of the system’s budget comes from CPB. Earlier this week, PBS shut down its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) office to comply with the Trump administration’s anti-DEI orders.

KCLU, headquartered in Thousand Oaks, covers much of Santa Barbara County, as well as Ventura County and parts of San Luis Obispo County. | Credit: Wikimedia

Efforts to defund CPB are nothing new — as recently as 2018, the first Trump administration tried to defund the organization, but failed due to bipartisan opposition. But the second iteration of the administration has renewed scrutiny on public broadcasting in general. The administration has ordered investigations into NPR and PBS by the Federal Communications Commission, and Trump called for cutting NPR’s funding last April on his social media platform, Truth Social. Multiple congressional House members have introduced bills to cut NPR funding specifically in the past month.

Project 2025, a policy plan published by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, with contributors including several members of Trump’s cabinet, also calls the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s defunding as a whole.

“The reason is simple: President Lyndon Johnson may have pledged in 1967 that public broadcasting would become ‘a vital public resource to enrich our homes, educate our families and to provide assistance to our classrooms,’ but public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism,” the document said.

As trust in nationwide media outlets has gone down in the past decade, research shows that many Americans still value local news. A 2024 Pew research poll found that 85 percent of Americans rated local news to be at least somewhat important to the health of their communities, with about seven in 10 saying their local journalists were in touch with their communities.

For Olson, local public radio is something to value.

“What’s so beautiful about public radio is it really reflects the communities that it serves. It reflects the people, their challenges, their needs, their dreams, their hopes, their desires,” she said, later adding. “Facts matter, the truth matters, local news matters, and it’s not something to be trifled with.”

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is funded by Congress with a two-year advanced appropriation. Last March, Congress passed the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, allocating funds for CPB through 2026.