House Budget Panel Advances Bill Without Restoring Public Broadcasting Funds.

There was little expectation that public broadcasting funding cuts would be reversed by House budget writers. And when a House Appropriations subcommittee advanced the portion of the fiscal 2026 budget on Tuesday, that is what happened. It did approve $184.5 billion in spending for labor, health and human services, education and related agencies, which is 7% below the current fiscal year.

Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) lamented the move, calling CPB a “perennial target” of President Trump. “It will hurt local stations and that provide critical services to Americans,” Dean said, adding, “This is not the bill the American people deserve.”

Congress in July approved President Trump’s $9 billion rescission package, which included $1.1 billion in cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years. Efforts by supporters of public media earlier were unsuccessful in adding back funding in the Senate’s appropriations process in July.

CPB, the nonprofit organization that distributes federal funding to PBS, NPR and local public media stations, announced last month that it will begin winding down operations. Most of CPB’s staff will depart by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30. A smaller transition team will remain in place through January 2026 to manage compliance, financial closeout, and essential operational functions, including music licensing and royalty obligations critical to stations nationwide.

Kate Riley, President and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, said public broadcasters are “deeply disappointed” that the House Appropriations subcommittee did not include funding for local public media stations. She says it “misses an opportunity” to extend a desperately needed lifeline to local public media stations that are devastated by the rescissions of public media funding earlier this summer.

“Local public broadcasting stations are facing an existential crisis brought on by the rescission this summer. But Congress can mitigate the devastation being levied on local communities,” Riley said. “Providing funding for local stations would save some of the nation’s last local broadcasters and the essential public safety and education services they provide and the community connections they foster.” She says local stations have already begun cutting essential local programming and services and laying off staff, while some stations are also cutting broadcast hours and looking at other desperate measures to stave off closures, which threaten many stations, especially those serving rural and remote communities.

The move to cut funding to public radio has support from some commercial broadcasters. Salem Media Group CEO David Santrella told the latest Borrell Associates’ Local Marketing Trends podcast that he believes the early support of public radio to ensure rural America was reached somehow wound up backing stations in large cities.

“I'm not sure why they get special treatment that other non-commercial broadcasters don't get,” Santrella says. “You've got a lot of Christian broadcasters that are non-commercial that do it solely for the benefit of the listener. They don't get federal funding. I'm not sure why an organization that clearly seems to have set itself with a particular agenda deserves federal funding when other organizations that maybe have, quite frankly, an agenda that's different than NPR’s, don't get federal funding.”