In June, on the eve of a House vote to strip $500 million in federal funding from public radio and TV stations, a group of philanthropists gathered in Philadelphia to brace for the worst.
They listened as Tim Isgitt, the head of a public media consulting firm, laid out the potential for what he called a doom loop — a catastrophic situation caused by the sudden elimination of federal funding. The closure of roughly 115 local radio and TV stations, he said, could result in fewer dollars in the public media system to pay for programming. And that, in turn, could eventually cause other local stations to close.
Now, some of those philanthropists are banding together in hopes of staving off that worst-case scenario by providing an emergency $26.5 million cash injection to stabilize the stations most at risk. The group is aiming to raise additional money for the fund and hopes to reach $50 million this year.
“We believe it’s crucial to have a concerted, coordinated effort to make sure that the stations that most critically need these funds right now have a pathway to get them,” said Maribel Pérez Wadsworth, the president and chief executive of the Knight Foundation, which is among the major backers of the fund.
The money is not aimed at PBS and NPR, well-funded national organizations that will survive without government support. Instead, the Knight Foundation and others are focused on the scores of public radio and TV stations that have historically received more than 30 percent of their support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a taxpayer-backed company that announced it would shut down because of the funding cuts. Many of those stations are in rural areas, like remote regions of Alaska and Kansas, where residents don’t have access to alternate sources of news and information.
The Knight Foundation is committing $10 million to the fund, which aims to disburse the money before the end of the year. Together with Knight, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation, Pivotal Ventures and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have already committed nearly $27 million for the effort, called the Public Media Bridge Fund.
The MacArthur Foundation is also making a $10 million contribution unrelated to the fund to support public media.
Public media executives and advocates quietly drew up contingency plans to salvage public media as the threat of funding cuts edged closer to reality. After President Trump was elected in November, Mr. Isgitt worked with Erik Langner, the chief executive of a nonprofit called the Information Equity Initiative, to work on a strategy. Over the next seven months, Mr. Isgitt, whose firm is called Public Media Company, briefed the chief executive of PBS, Paula Kerger, and the chief executive of NPR, Katherine Maher, about the plan and began coordinating with foundations.
Time is critical for TV and radio stations, many of which have already begun to lay off staff in anticipation of the funding cuts.
Ms. Wadsworth, a former publisher of USA Today, has urged foundations to act with urgency — to “move philanthropy at the speed of news,” she said. On July 20, Ms. Wadsworth called Mr. Isgitt to discuss the fund and how philanthropy might work together to help stations. She has since held virtual meetings to bring other philanthropists around to the idea.
“I wanted them to understand what was at stake,” she said.
The fund will be administered by Public Media Company, which will solicit applications from stations. Eligibility guidelines are still being worked out, but the fund would prioritize stations that received a large proportion of their budgets from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and those that are among the only sources of information in their communities. Mr. Langner will be the executive director of the fund.
Ms. Wadsworth anticipates that many applicants will come from rural areas, where numerous stations have long relied on government funding to operate. One of the stations, KUCB in Unalaska, Alaska, relayed a tsunami warning to listeners even as the Senate was debating federal funding cuts last month, said Mollie Kabler, the chief executive of CoastAlaska, a nonprofit company that provides services to a consortium of Alaskan public radio stations.
Ms. Kabler, who has already had to lay off an employee from her shoestring staff, is also trying to raise a $15 million emergency fund to help stations in Alaska survive the next year.
She likened the funding cuts to a wildfire. “The big trees are going to survive the fire,” Ms. Kabler said. “It’s the little trees that are going to be devastated and have to start over.”
The smaller stations are already beginning to get some help from PBS and NPR, which are offering members a discount on dues payments. Ms. Kerger and Ms. Maher have already begun to brief members on the bridge fund.
Ms. Wadsworth said philanthropy could not provide a substitute for the federal funding in the long term. A broad overhaul of the public radio system is needed, Mr. Isgitt said, and many stations will need to merge or pool their resources to save costs.
Mr. Isgitt said roughly $100 million would be needed over the next two years to avoid widespread closures. He predicted that if those stations did close, other buyers could swoop in to acquire the stations’ valuable broadcast spectrum and eliminate local news and emergency services.
“We’ll do the best we can with the resources available to us to secure as much local service as possible,” Mr. Isgitt said. “But if we aren’t able to raise the money, we can’t fill all the gaps.”