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Senator warns cuts to public broadcasting could close Alaska tribal and rural stations
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Summary
A senator told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs that recent federal rescissions and uncertainty around a proposed CPB funding fix risk forcing some Alaska public radio stations to close and left at least one community reliant on a single station for tsunami alerts.
A senator told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs that proposed funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is urgently needed to prevent closures of small, rural and tribally affiliated stations in Alaska and to preserve local emergency alerting.
The senator said she voted to move the Labor-HHS bill out of committee despite “deep concerns about where we are right now with funding for public broadcasting,” and asked for clarity on how any new support would be structured, where the money would come from, whether it would be one-time or multi-year, and the eligibility criteria for stations.
She described an 8.8 earthquake off the Russian coast that prompted tsunami watches along Alaska’s coast and said KCAW in Sitka was “the first and only to report on this in Sitka.” According to her remarks, KCAW did not receive any notification from NOAA via the Emergency Alert System (EAS), and reporters there learned of the warning by contacting colleagues in the Aleutians. “When you’re in really remote places and scary things are coming your way, you wanna figure out every means that you possibly have to communicate,” she said, arguing that local stations play a unique public-safety role.
Citing outreach her office conducted, the senator said some Alaska stations could be forced to close this year and others can “weather the storm for maybe a year or so” only by drawing on reserves. She said station budgets in Alaska are heavily dependent on CPB funding: “The budgets of almost half of the radio stations in Alaska depend 50% or more on CPB funding,” and “20 of the 26 stations depend at least 30% on the funds.”
The senator said she and staff are working with the administration and Alaska Public Media to identify eligible stations and ensure tribal and rural outlets can access any assistance. She acknowledged work by Senator Rounds on commitments following the rescissions vote and thanked Senator Baldwin for efforts to coordinate support.
She said she will spend the August recess visiting public radio and TV stations across her state to gather feedback and bring that information back to her colleagues. The senator closed by thanking the committee and yielding to Senator Coates; no formal vote or motion on CPB funding was recorded during these remarks.
