Editor's Note:

This story has been updated to reflect the full scope of KYUK’s fundraising.

Annie Rosenthal and Chad Bradley
High Country News

Late last fall, members of Bethel, Alaska’s search and rescue team met at the local public radio station, KYUK, for a program called River Watch. Over an hour and a half, they took calls from listeners around the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, comparing notes on the safety of the ice at different points along the Kuskokwim River.

“Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there,” said a caller from the village of Kalskag, his voice muffled over the phone. He said he’d recently flown over the river to the east and observed lots of holes in the ice.

He wanted to warn listeners in other towns: “There is no trail right now. None of the open water is marked. So it’s advised not to be traveling back and forth from Aniak.”

KYUK is the only daily news source for the region, which is roughly the size of Oregon, and River Watch is a staple of its programming. In dozens of Southwest Alaska villages — including many Yup’ik, Athabaskan and Cup’ik communities — residents who live far from the U.S. highway system rely on boats and snow machines to get around.

“The Kuskokwim River in this region is like our highway,” said KYUK news director Sage Smiley.

During freeze-up and breakup each year, knowing the condition of the ice can be a matter of life and death. And in the Y-K Delta, where Internet access is often limited, public radio plays a crucial role.

But if the Trump administration gets its way, programs like River Watch could soon disappear.

Last month, the president signed an executive order aimed at preventing congressionally approved federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from going to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. CPB, NPR, PBS and a host of local stations have filed lawsuits in response. (CPB filed a separate suit over Trump’s effort to fire members of its board.)

Meanwhile, in its proposed budget, the administration outlined a plan to eliminate funding for CPB entirely — and in early June, President Donald Trump asked Congress to take back more than $1 billion that had already been set aside for public broadcasters. Lawmakers have 45 days to make a decision on the request, with a House vote expected soon.

Defunding public media would hurt stations across the U.S., but for ones like KYUK, which relies on CPB for nearly 70 percent of its revenue, it would be “catastrophic,” Smiley said.

The data show that stations serving rural and Indigenous audiences in the West would be the hardest hit. Here’s why, by the numbers.

Credit: Chart design by Luna Anna Archey/High Country News.

CPB is an independent nonprofit created by Congress nearly 60 years ago to distribute federal funds to noncommercial TV and radio stations across the U.S. Today, it funds more than 1,500 stations, many of which buy NPR and PBS content to distribute locally alongside local news, music shows and other programming.

Collectively, the stations in the public media network give 99 percent of the U.S. population access to public broadcasting. Nearly half of CPB grantees are rural, and together they employ close to 6,000 people.

As nonprofits, local public media stations rely on a variety of funding sources, including federal funding, state funding, listener donations, grants, and underwriting from local businesses. On average, federal funding accounts for 16 percent of a local public media station’s revenue.

But for many stations, that percentage is much higher. Three factors unite the stations most reliant on federal funding: They are located in the West, they are rural, and they are tribal stations.

Among stations in the 50 states, those in the Western U.S. are by far the most dependent on federal funding, according to a recent analysis of station financial reports for fiscal year 2023, carried out by former NPR product manager Alex Curley. (Limited data is available for American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, but according to Curley, the few stations there rely even more heavily on federal funding.)

On average, Curley found, Western stations depend on federal money for just over 20 percent of their revenue — compared with just under 15 percent for the next highest region, the Midwest.

The states with the highest average dependency, in order, are West Virginia, Alaska, New Mexico and Montana. In Alaska, the most dependent Western state, public media stations rely on federal funding for an average of 36 percent of their revenue. If all the stations with a dependence of at least 20 percent were forced to close, Alaska would lose 15 stations — half of its total, Curley said.

Source: The list of most vulnerable stations and their percentage reliance on federal funding comes from this analysis by former NPR product manager Alex Curley. Stations designated as in the West are located within that U.S. census region. CPB defines rural stations as those whose coverage areas have a population density of 40 or fewer residents per square kilometer; the stations above are on CPB’s most updated list of rural station grantees. Tribal stations are defined as stations that are “tribally owned, managed or staffed by tribal members.” Credit: Chart design by Luna Anna Archey/High Country News

More than 50 stations around the country belong to the Native Public Media network, and they are also particularly vulnerable to funding cuts. All but one of the Native Public Media stations with available data relied on federal funding for at least 20 percent of their revenue, and the average reliance was more than 50 percent.

According to CPB data shared with High Country News, 79 radio stations in the U.S. relied on CPB for 30 percent or more of their funding in FY 2023. More than half of those stations (42) are located in the West. Of the vulnerable Western stations, all but two are rural — and 20 are also tribal stations.

Not only would these stations be drastically impacted by losing federal funding, they would also find that money especially hard to replace. Urban stations have large audiences to turn to for help, but rural stations by definition serve sparsely populated areas and often lower-income communities.

According to CPB, 40 percent of the average non-rural station’s revenue comes from listener donations, compared with just 28 percent of the average rural stations. Meanwhile, the average rural station relies on CPB funding nearly twice as much as a non-rural station does.

This past fiscal year, KYUK raised just under $40,000 from a few hundred members, comprising less than 2% of the station’s revenue.

“We live in a subsistence region,” Smiley said. “The way people survive and thrive here does not necessarily follow the traditional Western economic model.”

To her, this is part of the beauty of public media: Stations like KYUK allow people to get thoughtful, nuanced coverage of the place they live, whether or not they can afford to pay for it.

In Bethel, that includes public safety alerts and emergency coverage on shows like River Watch — but also, local news accessible to everyone in the region. The oldest Indigenous-owned and operated bilingual radio station in the U.S., KYUK broadcasts local news in both English and Yugtun, the Yup’ik language, three times a day. The station also airs several other Yup’ik public affairs and culture shows throughout the week, sharing traditional knowledge and conversations between elders.

Villages in the Y-K Delta — like many rural and Indigenous communities — tend to receive a flattened portrayal in the national media, when they’re covered at all. Outside reporters often miss the good news: The Bethel student robotics team bringing Yup’ik dance to an international stage, say, or a Cup’ik artist using traditional carving techniques to tell the evolving story of hunting and fishing in his community. Celebrations of berry picking and high school graduation — the everyday activities and special events that make headlines at a local publication run by the same people who coach youth sports and act in community plays.

These are stories at stake in the fight over federal funding, Smiley said.

“This idea that a region that has been historically underserved by the state and by the country could lose a public media organization that is focused on providing what people here need,” Smiley said, “which is public safety information and a reflection of a life that is multifaceted and beautiful — that really, really tears my heart out.”

Annie Rosenthal is the Virginia Spencer Davis fellow at High Country News, reporting on rural communities, agriculture, migration and life in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Email her at annie.rosenthal@hcn.org.Chad Bradley is the Indigenous Affairs fellow at High Country News. They write from the Southwest and are a member of the Navajo Nation.

This story was originally published by High Country News and is republished here by permission.