LANSING — Federal plans to rescind public broadcast funding are worrying Northern Michigan stations, who say the funds are crucial to their operations.
Congressional Republicans have advanced the bill to claw back more than a billion dollars for public broadcasting.
“We assume that if rescission happens today, that funding for federal funding for public broadcasting may never come back,” said Wendy Turner, executive director of Michigan Public, NPR’s statewide station.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, is the recipient of the funds.
They’re the private nonprofit that funds more than 1,500 NPR and PBS stations across the country. Most of those stations are nonprofit and all of them operate independently from the CPB.
Patrick Lakenen, general manager of WNMU in the Upper Peninsula, says the station receives around a third of its annual funding from the CPB. That’s over $1 million of a $3 million dollar budget.
“Federal funding is irreplaceable, and something we rely on, being a public media station,” he said.
The proposal wouldn’t just cut funding from the CPB — it would rescind money that had already been approved by Congress in a previously passed budget.
Lakenen says that the station had already approved future budgets based on the funding that was previously signed into law.
“We’re monitoring it closely, but it’s — it’s pretty devastating hit to WNMU,” he said. “If this passes, we’ll have to have some devastating cuts as result of it.”
This would be the first rescission from Congress in more than 25 years — and Michigan stations say the impact would be immediate.
“There are some stations in the country, if not the state, that may go dark if this funding is not available,” said Rick Westover, general manager of WCMU in Mt. Pleasant.
He says the station receives about a fifth of its annual budget from the CPB.
“Roughly $1.6 million for FY-27 money, already appropriated by Congress and sitting in the Treasury, waiting to be dispersed through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — that’s what’s attempted to be clawed back here through the rescission process,” he said.
Advocates say that public broadcasting provides communities essential coverage that may not otherwise be profitable.
“I think of the flooding in Midland about five years back, or the tornado in Gaylord about three years ago, even the ice storms that impacted Northern Michigan this past spring — all kind of areas where kind of life was on the line, and we were able to pass along important information,” he said.
Lakenen says that his station also serves as a community hub for information and educational programming.
“We feel all of those services are something that’s essential, and the federal funding is irreplaceable,” he said.