Federal funding cuts to public radio and television stations, which threaten the existence of some small broadcasters on the continent, are expected to have a muted immediate impact on Hawaiʻi broadcasters and their listeners, viewers and staffs, despite dealing the stations financial blows.

Perhaps the hardest hit from the cuts is Kauaʻi’s KKCR, which will lose $83,000, or 20% of its budget, according to Anni Caporuscio, the station’s executive director. 

But KKCR listeners won’t see any changes for now.

“It does put us in a precarious situation,” Caporuscio said. But she’s not planning to cut back employees, programming of Hawaiian music or any of the transmitters the station uses to reach all of the island.

“We’re going to do what we do, and more, as long as we can,” she said. 

Larger public broadcasters — Hawaiʻi Public Radio and PBS Hawaiʻi — have more resources to weather the immediate revenue cuts, although executives with both organizations said the cuts do pose challenges.

“We can’t just say, ‘Oh, we’re fine. We’re just going to sit here and pull from reserves,’ and then do some fundraising campaigns,” said Meredith Artley, president and chief executive of Hawaiʻi Public Radio, which is launching a two-day fundraising effort starting today. 

The goal: to eliminate HPR’s need for federal money.

“There’s no plans to cut programming,” Artley said. “There’s no plan to cut jobs. There’s no plan, frankly, to do anything except to grow fully into being a 100% community-backed organization.”

HPR’s drive for self-reliance follows Congress’s move on Friday to let President Donald Trump rescind approximately $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes money to locally operated public television and radio stations, including HPR, PBS Hawaiʻi and KKCR. 

The local stations in turn pay for access to programs produced or distributed by other entities funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, including National Public Radio, PBS and their affiliates.

Congressional supporters of public broadcasting argued that broadcasters provide essential and, at times, life-saving information to the public. Opponents argued that public radio and television news programs have a liberal bias that taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to support.

Regardless, the ax came down on Friday, and it could be devastating for some public radio and television stations, especially in remote areas. U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda called the House vote a blow for isolated communities.

“Public broadcasting serves as a lifeline for rural and underserved communities, providing essential educational content and emergency alerts in times of crisis,” she said in a news release. “We cannot afford to weaken this vital public good, especially as access to trusted information is more important than ever to support children, inform families, and keep communities safe.” 

Alex Curley, a former NPR executive who has gathered data on stations likely to be hardest hit, found vulnerable radio stations include Oregon’s KCUW, New Mexico’s KSHI, and Alaska’s KUHB, KDSP and KNSA.

Generally stations with small donor bases, including Native American stations, are the most at risk, Curley reported. He’s created an “adopt-a-station” tool to help people identify and donate to stations that have lost 50% or more of their funding. Based on 2023 data, he found Oregon’s KCUW lost 99% of its revenue.

Hawaiʻi Broadcasters Can Weather Change For Now

Stations in Hawaiʻi haven’t suffered nearly as much. For Hawaiʻi Public Radio, which serves the entire state through a series of stations and transmitters, Artley said the cut carved away 6% of its revenue, or $525,000. It has cash reserves to cover that, but the reserve funds are limited, said Artley, who’s been at the helm for about a year.

“We have some rainy day funds. We have prepared,” she said. “This is thanks to the community that supported us for decades, thanks to the staff that is here now and who have been here for years, thanks to my predecessors who have led HPR to be in a position to be able to weather these big hits, so we’ll be OK.”

The same goes for PBS Hawaiʻi, said Ron Mizutani, the organization’s president and chief executive officer. In fact, Mizutani said, PBS Hawaiʻi also has been preparing for the loss of federal money for years.

“Knowing the history of the challenges in the past, of public media funding in the Republican Party, we were being proactive in anticipation of what could happen if there was a change in administration,” he said.

The result has been about $500,000 in savings from scaling back some local content production, he said. That helps offset what had been between $1.2 million and $1.6 million annually from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in recent years, or 18-22% of PBS Hawaiʻi’s revenue, Mizutani said.

To tighten the belt, he said, instead of producing 12 episodes of the monthly show Home Is Here, PBS Hawaiʻi is cutting back to seven. Likewise, he said, for the next fiscal year, PBS Hawaiʻi will produce 34 episodes of its INSIGHTS program instead of the 42 it produced last year.

PBS Hawaiʻi has begun generating revenue from its YouTube channel.

Meanwhile, Mizutani said, the station has generated revenue from social media platforms such as YouTube. One video, a short with housing activist Sterling Higa, has drawn 7.1 million views. Another on protecting Native Hawaiian burial sites has been viewed 5.1 million times.

Revenue from YouTube may be relatively small, but it is revenue the station didn’t have before,  passive income from content that costs little to produce.

Finally, Mizutani said, PBS Hawaiʻi has shuffled some existing staff to enhance its fundraising.

“We just got creative with our staff, and thankfully there was buy in,” he said. “It’s already reaping rewards in what we were able to accomplish.”

Questions Surround Cost Of National Programming

A big question is what will happen to the national programs that run on Hawaiʻi stations, some of which are produced by other large local public radio and television stations that are also losing federal funding. Among them are television shows such as “Masterpiece” and “NOVA” produced by WGBH in Boston; and radio programs such as “Fresh Air,” produced by WHYY in Philadelphia and “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me,” co-produced by NPR and WBEZ in Chicago. 

HPR’s Artley said the organization constantly evaluates its national programming to determine what resonates with listeners and “and frankly, what could we shift, move or lose so we can make room for even more distinctive, unique local content.”

So are costs for national programming going to go up for the survivors if other member stations that were paying for that programming no longer exist? It’s a complicated question with many factors that remain unknown just days after the funding cuts, Artley said. 

“But we do know that it’s really likely that in addition to not having money that came from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, other costs could go up for us, and that includes programming costs,” she said. “We are so fortunate to not be one of the stations that is at risk of shutting down as a result of this, but the fact that we are going to continue to exist means we may have to pay more.”

“There’s content out there that people love. It’s just a matter of how we’re going to end up paying for that.”

Ron Mizutani, PBS Hawaiʻi

PBS Hawaiʻi faces some of the same unknowns. Mizutani said all of the grant money it received from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had to be spent on national programming, some of which was produced by other stations.

Now, he said, local stations will have to use their own money – not grant money – to  buy the programs directly from the national Public Broadcasting System or from member stations that produce the programs. 

One solution may be to  join a consortium or hui of smaller stations that buy the programs directly from the producer stations, which could reduce costs by cutting out the middleman, Mizutani said. 

“There’s content out there that people love, that we can get access to,” Mizutani said. “It’s just a matter of how we’re going to end up paying for that. It’s going take a bit to unfold.”

In the meantime, he said, “Nothing will go away overnight.”

Hawaiʻi Public Radio Moves For 100% Local Funding

How each station addresses this added cost varies. 

At PBS Hawaiʻi, Mizutani is assessing options and what additional money the station might need to cover the loss of its federal grants and buy content. 

“It’s definitely not an emergency situation,” he said. “If it is, you know, we’ll launch the Big Bird campaign… But it’s not, we’re not at that point.”

At Kauaʻi’s KKCR, Caporuscio said the plan is to double down on the fundraiser already planned for September. 

In the meantime, she said, “I’m just going to double down on our values” of serving the island by providing Hawaiian music and local content.

She’s made the conscious decision not to launch a fundraiser now.

“I’m not a believer in crisis fundraising,” she said. “If the crisis goes away then we look like liars.”

For its part, HPR is taking the opportunity to make sure it has the money it needs from Hawaiʻi rather than continuing to count on federal funding.

“The bigger risk would be in us acting like everything was normal, and in not asking the community to stand with us at this moment,” Artley said. “I think the bigger risk would be us saying, ‘Let’s do everything the way that we’ve always done it.’”