Legislative work group hears SDPB budget overview as committee considers shifting $3.6 million from general fund to other funds

South Dakota Public Broadcasting (SDPB) officials presented an overview of SDPB’s FY2025 budget to a joint legislative budget work group, describing a roughly $10 million operating budget and a proposal to replace about $3.6 million in state general fund support with other-fund expenditure authority.

The proposal, described during the committee’s hearing, would shift a portion of SDPB’s state support to a model that relies more heavily on grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), fundraising by “Friends of SDPB,” tower rent and local grants. Committee members pressed SDPB and Bureau of Information and Telecommunications (BIT) staff on whether SDPB could realistically replace that level of general fund revenue through donors and federal grant matching.

Why it matters: SDPB provides statewide television and radio service, local programming, and live streaming of government proceedings via SD.net. Committee members framed the funding change as a significant policy choice because reductions in state general funds, if not offset by other revenue, could reduce local programming, engineering support, and staffing that sustain broadcast and emergency-alert infrastructure.

SDPB officials told the committee the FY2025 budget is allocated roughly as follows: 44% engineering, 39% local programming, 14% national programming and about 3% administration. SDPB reported roughly $5.5 million from state general funds (about 54% of the operating budget in the presenter’s slide) and the remainder from CPB grants, donations and other sources. Committee members asked for more granular detail on how general funds are used versus what “Friends of SDPB” and CPB dollars cover.

On programming costs, representatives said national programming (PBS and NPR content) is largely funded through donations raised by SDPB’s membership organization, while state general funds are primarily spent on engineering, capital and operational costs, and support for SDPB state FTEs. The presenters explained that SDPB pays membership fees to national program distributors (PBS for television and NPR for radio) and that membership dues depend on station size and fundraising capacity; those dues are not covered by state general funds.

SDPB staff highlighted SDPB’s role in open government streaming through SD.net, which provides live and archived coverage of legislative and other public proceedings. The presenter cited viewership figures shown to the committee: more than 51,000 live online views for Legislative Research Council events, about 41,000 views for certain statewide events and about 8,400 views for boards and commissions. Committee members asked whether SDPB seeks lower bandwidth costs from streaming providers as viewership grows; the presenter said SDPB regularly negotiates capacity and costs with providers.

On emergency services, SDPB officials emphasized the network’s engineering role in the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and the federal Wireless Emergency Alerts (the WARN system), and described SDPB’s infrastructure of 44 broadcast towers, nine full-power TV stations, 12 full-power radio stations and multiple translators. The presenter told the committee SDPB serves as an entry point for federally and state‑coordinated alerts and provides an “always‑on” backup delivery path for wireless emergency alerts to carriers.

Committee members repeatedly requested follow-up materials and indicated SDPB will return to the work group on February 7 for further questioning. Several lawmakers said they had selected SDPB as one of several bodies for deeper review in the current session’s work groups and emphasized they wanted more detail about the ability to replace state funds with non‑state revenue.

Ending: SDPB officials cautioned that if SDPB cannot raise sufficient alternative revenue, the programmatic impacts would likely include reduced local programming and staffing and potential reductions in CPB grant funding tied to state matching and non‑federal support. The work group scheduled additional review of SDPB funding and asked SDPB and its friends organization to return with more detailed financial breakdowns at the next session meeting.