President’s attack on public broadcasting, which covers 95% of rural Wyoming, also weighs on state’s PBS television station in Riverton.
By Angus M. Thuermer Jr., WyoFile
President Donald Trump’s May 1 order to halt federal funding of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service jeopardizes news and other programming broadcast by Wyoming’s affiliate stations that serve about 95% of the state’s rural population.
The executive order ensures that “Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage,” Trump wrote about the attack against the two national news nonprofits and their parent Corporation for Public Broadcasting. NPR distributes audio content to Wyoming Public Media, based in Laramie and PBS distributes video content to Wyoming Public Broadcasting, based in Riverton.
Trump’s order threatens radio programs broadcast in Wyoming from news shows like Morning Edition to niche broadcasts like Fiona Ritchie’s The Thistle & Shamrock. NPR programs account for about 9 hours of Wyoming Public Media fare enjoyed by listeners between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., General Manager Christina Kuzmych said.
“We don’t see that much of a dislike for public broadcasting in Wyoming.”
Christina Kuzmych
The attack against the media by Trump and other Beltway critics “has us rattled,” Kuzmych said in a recent interview. “We don’t see that much of a dislike for public broadcasting in Wyoming,” she said.
Trump’s order also threatens to upend programming at Wyoming Public Broadcasting in Riverton, which airs PBS News Hour and other PBS shows like Antiques Roadshow and Nature. Paula Kerger, the CEO of the nationwide PBS television service, told News Hour that defunding CPB would create “an existential crisis” for stations across the country. Only 10% of national PBS programming is news, she said.
At Wyoming Public Broadcasting in Riverton, CEO Joanna Kail said the station has not yet lost any funding. But, “we can’t send our dues to [national] PBS” because of Trump’s order.
Public broadcasting plays an outsized role in rural Wyoming, which Broadbandnow ranks 48th in the country for internet coverage, speed and availability. Wyoming’s public radio and television stations reach internet-poor communities and operate with considerable public and foundation support, as well as federal and state money.
There’s more (or less)
Trump’s order directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation created by Congress, and all federal agencies to “cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS.” The order applies to direct and indirect payments.
The CPB has a FY’25 budget of $545 million, all of which is federal money or interest on it. In addition to supporting the two national broadcasting stations, CPB makes grants to individual stations around the country.
Wyoming Public Media gets 13% of its $3.4 million budget from the CPB, Kuzmych said in an email. All told, 32% of all airtime on Wyoming Public Media is dedicated to NPR programming, which the local station pays for, she said.
Trump’s order also states that “CPB shall cease indirect funding to NPR and PBS,” a clause that keeps Wyoming Public Broadcasting, and presumably Wyoming Public Media, from purchasing and broadcasting an NPR or PBS programs.
Wyoming Public Broadcasting gets about 33% of its approximately $5 million budget from the CPB. Fully 66% of its programming comes from national PBS sources, the television station said Wednesday. It just received a $2.2 million grant to upgrade emergency alerts to the Next Generation Warning System.
The nonprofit KHOL radio station in Jackson gets 20% of its budget from the CPB, which only gives money to stations that can show $275,000 in local support. All three nonprofits also produce local news stories and reports on cultural events and other topics.
CPB also supports NPR’s backbone infrastructure called the Public Radio Satellite System that distributes programming to Wyoming Public Media and more than 1,200 public radio stations across the country.
In addition to Trump’s order, public broadcasting faces financial uncertainty as Congress, members of which are hostile to the news organizations, sorts through a federal budget.
A suit against the suits
Trump’s attack against CPB began April 28 when Trent Morse, a deputy director of “presidential personnel,” emailed three of the five sitting CPB board members, on behalf of Trump, saying their positions were “terminated effective immediately.”
CPB is a private corporation and it sued Trump the next day, saying he didn’t have the authority to fire Laura Ross, Thomas Rothman and Diane Kaplan. The suit seeks a temporary restraining order halting the firings, a motion that remains on the table.
Two days after CPB filed the suit, Trump signed the order cutting funding. Government funding “is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” Trump wrote.
CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison rejected Trump’s attacks. “Congress expressly forbade ‘any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control’” over CPB and its affiliates, she said in a statement.
In an emergency hearing before federal District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington, D.C., a CPB attorney said replacing the board members could lead to DOGE “physically and forcefully” invading private CPB offices the way it did at the U.S. Institute for Peace. Consequently, Moss said if Trump wants to replace any CPB board member, he must inform the court two days in advance so the broadcasters have a chance to challenge the move.
On Tuesday, the government filed court papers saying that because Trump appoints the CPB board members, he can also fire them. The board includes Chair Ruby Calvert of Wyoming Public Broadcasting.
At the public television station in Riverton, CEO Kail said she believes dissatisfaction with national PBS grew when the newsroom stopped listening to complaints about perceived bias. “We were trying to make PBS understand our concerns,” she said.
“It’s just not addressed,” she said of worries that came from Wyoming and southern and midwestern states. Beltway broadcasters have forgotten the tenet that “we don’t know more than our viewers.”
On the public radio front, NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher said NPR “will vigorously defend our right to provide essential news, information and life-saving services to the American public … using all means available.”
About 65% of Wyoming Public Media’s fundraising pledges are made when Morning Edition and All Things Considered are on the air, Kuzmych said. “Removing these two NPR programs impacts WPM’s fundraising ability and begs the question: Replace them with what? CBC? BBC?”
Public service is an essential part of the public broadcasting sphere, broadcasters say. At KHOL, CPB support “has enabled our coverage of women’s health, the Teton Pass landslide, immigration and so much more,” the station said in a newsletter.Funding cuts could endanger not just news but off-beat shows that have cult followings. Public radio nerds might phrase the conflict in their own patois. Will Trump or Congress extract Darrell Brogdon — broadcaster of space age bachelor pad music, tiki tunes, private eye jazz and more — from his Retro Cocktail Hour underground martini bunker?
WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
