After years of threatening to cut funding for public broadcasting, Republicans in Congress have finally done it, leaving a gaping hole in the budget of West Marin’s community radio station, KWMR.
The $2 billion clawback will obliterate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, eliminating all its funding for the next two years. The cut will wipe out 26 percent of KWMR’s $620,000 annual budget.
“This is just so crappy,” said Amanda Eischstaedt, the station’s manager and executive director. “I’m looking into different ways to raise money so that I don’t have to lay off staff.”
After some fevered brainstorming and an inspired suggestion from longtime listener Lee Giammona, Ms. Eichstaedt believes she has come up with a plan that will keep KWMR on the air even as dozens of other small, rural public radio stations may be forced to shut down.
Ms. Giammona’s suggestion would require the station’s current donors, both large and small, to dig a little deeper into their wallets—25 percent deeper.
“If everyone upped their donations by 25 percent across the board, including our quarterly and monthly donors and those who donate during our pledge drives, it would raise about $70,000,” Ms. Eichstaedt said.
That would cover nearly half the unexpected deficit and send the station on its way to financial independence. “I’m having conversations with people about what it would mean if we could be completely sustainable,” Ms. Eichstaedt said. “How cool would it be to not depend on the federal government for money?”
Even with the extra donations, Ms. Eichstaedt would still need to cobble together another $80,000 or so through a combination of programming changes and budget cuts. She believes she can do that through a variety of approaches that won’t degrade programming.
For now, the station does not plan to conduct extra on-air fundraising beyond the regularly scheduled twice-yearly campaigns, held each spring and winter. Instead, it will reach out directly to potential donors of means.
“I don’t want to cannibalize our already solid fundraising efforts—the pledge drive and the annual appeal,” Ms. Eichstaedt said. “I will have to reach out to people with the capacity to step up.”
Ordinary listeners will also have to do their part, said Nancy Vayhinger, KWMR’s board president. “Twenty-five percent of our funding is not a small hit,” she said. “We are hoping and wishing that the community, which has expressed such appreciation for all the benefits that the station has given them for 25 years, will be able and willing to step up and be creative and inventive as to how we can move forward. Creative ideas are more than welcome. This funding cut is immediate.”
The station employs the equivalent of three full-time employees, including a program manager, a development director and a transmitting engineer, in addition to Ms. Eichstaedt. The loss in funding means the development director position, which will soon become open, will remain unfilled. Ms. Eichstaedt will take on the additional duties. Alyssa Tanner, who currently performs the job remotely, is planning to move on starting next month.
The loss of funding will also allow KWMR to eliminate the full financial audit required by the C.P.B. every year. That will save around $10,000.
About 60 percent of KWMR’s programming is locally produced, while the rest of it is paid programming, much of it required by the C.P.B. Moving forward, it can eliminate some of those shows. Ms. Eischstaedt plans to continue to air “As It Happens,” the nightly news broadcast produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, but will drop “Day Six,” the C.B.C.’s version of “Saturday Edition,” the NPR weekend show.
“You can assure people that we are not going to drop ‘Sunday Baroque,’” she said, stressing that it is one of the station’s more popular shows. “That would probably get us canceled by our donors. We’re keeping ‘Sunday Baroque,’ so just calm down, everybody!”
In addition to paid programming, the roughly $160,000 the station receives in annual C.P.B. funding covers broadcast transmission fees and music licensing fees.
Ms. Eichstaedt was glued to C-SPAN as the Senate debated the cuts. While she was inspired by pleas from Sen. Adam Schiff and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who sang the praises of public radio, a speech by North Carolina Sen. Tom Tillis infuriated her.
“He’s a jerk,” she said. “He shouldn’t be voting against us. His constituents in western North Carolina had no communication except what they got from public radio after that hurricane went through Asheville.”
Emergency communication is the bedrock of most rural radio stations, including KWMR, which is equipped to give regular updates during storms, fires, earthquakes and other disasters even when the power goes out. “The cuts are tragic for rural radio stations because they are such a key connector to all aspects of rural society,” Ms. Vayhinger said.
In arguing for the funding cut, President Trump and his supporters railed against NPR and public television, arguing that their coverage is biased. But many small public stations, including KWMR, don’t use any NPR programming.
Ms. Eichstaedt discussed the impact of the cuts during a recent on-air interview with Tim Isgitt, a San Rafael resident who runs Public Media Company, a nonprofit that supports community radio and television stations across the nation.
“If a station receives 30 percent or more of its revenue from C.P.B., we consider that station at risk of going dark,” he said. “Just using that simple assumption, we can say that 78 public radio stations and 37 public television stations are in danger of going dark starting in November. That would be a profound loss.”