SARANAC LAKE — A rescissions bill taking back more than $1 billion in previously approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been passed by Congress. It will leave a $650,000 hole in North Country Public Radio’s budget and a $1.9 million hole in Mountain Lake PBS’ budget for the next two years, according to station leaders.

NCPR Station Manager Mitch Teich said this accounts for around 12% to 15% of their approximately $2.5 million annual budget.

Mountain Lake PBS President and CEO Bill McColgan said this will cut around 35% from their annual budget.

He said the impact of this will be “immediate and dramatic.” They’re not going to go dark, he said, but they have no substitute for this funding.

“We face some extremely difficult decisions ahead, and there is no question that every part of our operations will be affected by this cut,” McColgan said in a statement.

For NCPR, downsizing is a last resort, Teich said. First, they’ll turn to their funders to ask for more financial support. If the clawed-back funding catches up to them, they might need to remove some national shows from their lineup. The station pays for the right to air these programs. He also said they may need to do more reruns to get more bang for their buck. He worries about maintenance on their 34 transmitters being put off.

Their budgets have always varied depending on donors, corporate underwriters and foundation grants. Losing all their federal funding makes their local financial support even more critical, they said.

McColgan said their message is, “if public broadcasting is important to you, support us.”

Mountain Lake PBS is “small and efficient,” he said. They’ve been preparing for the money they were promised to be taken back, but were hoping they wouldn’t need to. He said they’ll need to address this “tremendous shortfall” quickly.

Teich said NCPR will need to be extra-fiscally conservative in the coming months and years.

As they build for sustainability, he said their funding will no longer be subject to the whims of politicians, a silver lining on what he feels in a very dark cloud.

The House passed the rescissions package overnight, 214-212. This marks the first time in decades a presidential-requested rescissions package has passed Congress. North Country Rep. Elise Stefanik voted for it, following on a promise she made to defund NPR.

“Today I voted to save the American taxpayer $9 billion of unobligated bloated spending,” she said in a statement Friday. “NPR and NCPR-affiliated reporters continually publish false and defamatory stories.”

The bill still needs to be signed by President Donald Trump to pass. Stefanik said when he signs it, he will be “fulfilling his mandate to rein in reckless spending and cut waste, fraud and abuse.”

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Rural impact

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Teich and McColgan said the cuts will impact rural stations more, which they said provide information to people in remote places. Teich said rural stations also have fewer people in their coverage range, which makes it more difficult to raise money after cuts like these.

It is not profitable to serve tiny towns like North Creek, Bloomingdale or Dickinson Center, he said.

“You think about what it would take to serve those if your only goal was to make a profit,” Teich said. “No stations would be able to make a go there. … We’re not required to make a profit to do it.”

McColgan said last year, it cost around $1.60 per American for universal access to educational and cultural programming in 99% of homes. He previously worked in private broadcasting and feels public broadcasting has a different mission. It is not focused on ratings, appealing to advertisers or targeting certain demographics like private broadcasting is.

When public broadcasting was created in 1967, Teich said they were given a mandate to provide a basic level of service to everyone, regardless of their income level, beliefs or other demographics.

McColgan said they provide public information and storytelling no one else is doing, distribute classroom resources for schools and hold community forums.

He called PBS “the nation’s pre-school.” It provides educational children’s programming in areas where there are no pre-Kindergarten programs.

NCPR broadcasts all around northern New York, parts of western Vermont and in southern Ontario and Quebec. Mountain Lake PBS broadcasts in northern New York and southern Quebec.

It is hard to tell Mountain Lake PBS’ audience reach, McColgan said. The station does not subscribe to Nielsen Media Research, since it is expensive.

CPB’s fiscal year runs through the end of September. The stations’ fiscal years started July 1.

Teich still has a lot of questions about what CPB cuts will mean for local stations like NCPR. It does a lot for them outside of funding, he said. He said CPB audits their books to make sure the tax dollars they are funded by are spent appropriately and provides seed money for the development of new programming. He said they jump through hoops to get CPB money. Without that money, he’s not sure if they’ll still have to jump.

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Perceptions

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Stefanik said that NCPR falsely reported that she contributed to the attack against U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul in 2022, linking to a Breitbart article about tweets from NCPR’s staff discussing Stefanik’s blasting of Pelosi in public statements.

Stefanik also pointed out that national NPR issued a correction on a book review of Hunter Biden’s memoir.

“A previous version of this story said U.S. intelligence had discredited the laptop story,” the correction reads. “U.S. intelligence officials have not made a statement to that effect.”

Stefanik also referenced that in 2021, former NCPR News and Public Affairs Director Martha Foley used a “taxpayer-funded email account” to campaign for Democrats. Stefanik called this “a violation of journalist integrity NPR claims to hold.”

Teich said Stefanik mischaracterized their coverage, made incorrect statements and lied.

“A taxpayer-funded audit, or investigation, of that issue proved that her claim was without merit and we don’t have taxpayer-funded e-mail accounts at NCPR and never have,” Teich said. “The only thing that cost taxpayers any money was the investigation.”

“Here are the facts: Martha Foley used a public radio NCPR email to actively campaign for Democrat candidates,” Stefanik Executive Director Alex Degrasse said in response. “It was a massive local and national controversy due to the illegal bias of the local public radio station.”

Teich said he was disheartened that anyone would celebrate potential job losses in the North Country and the hardships it could put on families, calling it “unseemly.”

“Hardworking North Country taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay for stenographers for the Democrat Party hiding behind the guise of public media,” Degrasse said in a statement.

McColgan said while the effort to “defund” CPB is often centered on a perception about national programming, the lion’s share of CPB funding goes to local stations, which he said are community-oriented and independent.

Teich feels they “bend over backwards” to be fair in their reporting.

McColgan said they are not unprepared for this. Public broadcasting funding has been debated for decades. He said bipartisan support has always kept them funded. He feels public media serves all people. But he feels perception has changed, and he hopes to build back bipartisan support by remaining a vital information resource.

Whether federal funding of broadcast media is appropriate is still an open question for a lot of people McColgan said. His goal is to convince them that it is good.

Earlier this year, Pew Research Center found that 43% of adults supported continued funding for NPR and PBS, 24% supported removing the federal funding and 33% were not sure. Democratic-leaning respondents heavily supported continued federal funding, with 69% wanting to continue it, 5% wanting to remove it and 26% not sure. More Republican-leaning respondents supported removing federal funding, with 44% wanting to remove the funding, 19% wanting to continue it and 37% not sure.

NCPR is also mentioned in a lawsuit CPB filed requesting the Federal Emergency Management Agency release money from a Next Generation Warning System grant it awarded NCPR for upgrades to its emergency notification system. This money is in limbo currently. The station got a $110,000 grant and had spent and been reimbursed or around $52,000 when they received a stop work order in February. To read more about this, go to tinyurl.com/bdmn5ax7.