Public media stations across the country are using their airwaves to urge listeners and viewers to write to their senators to hold off the impending end to federal funds for the systems. It’s a practical strategy, but a limited and nearsighted one.

It’s correct that if even a handful of Republican senators resist the proposed White House cuts to the system, then the administration’s $9.4 billion budget recissions legislation (with a vote deadline of July 18) could fail, and the $1.2 billion funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting survive. But insistence that the combination of Big Bird and rural broadcasting’s reach will carry the day is not a winning strategy in response to what President Donald Trump has called “taxpayer subsidization of biased media.”

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In the face of deep conservative dislike, especially for NPR, the system must, as Harvard University is doing in its negotiations with the White House over its federal support, offer a deal that acknowledges legitimate concerns and will allow centrist Republicans to vote to preserve CPB funding.

Such a deal must start with some acknowledgements. Notwithstanding the “national” in NPR’s name, the system does not serve a broad cross-section of the country. With the exception of Dallas-Fort Worth, the leading public radio news stations are all found in blue cities in blue states, including New York, Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Chicago.

The Pew Research Center found that NPR is one of four news sources more likely to be followed by “Democrats and those who lean Democratic than by Republicans and GOP leaners.” The others are the New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC.

Even as the system’s federal funding has increased, its audience has declined. Pew reports that the audience for the flagship PBS news program, the NewsHour, peaked at 1.2 million in 2017 and has since fallen to around 900,000. That’s less than a third of its direct competitor, Fox News’s Special Report with Bret Baier.

The NPR audience, moreover, is significantly more affluent than the average American. NPR itself, in a statement urging corporate support as a means to increase “brand awareness,” reported in 2021 that “As a whole, NPR listeners … tend to have spending power — the median household income of NPR listeners is around $100,000.” That’s higher than the current $78,171 U.S. median four inflationary years later. 

Continues NPR: “At work, the listeners are more likely than average to be part of business purchase decisions. And in their personal life, they’re interested in managing their finances. Listeners are 40 percent more likely than the average adult in the U.S. to plan to invest in some way in the next 12 months”. It may sound like an Onion story, but there’s even an NPR Wine Club, offering “wines with a purpose.”

All this suggests that to expand its number of listeners and viewers, and to justify federal support for a nationwide system, public media must acknowledge its role in the political polarization of media and strive to reach new audiences, both geographically and demographically.

In advance of the Senate recission vote, leadership at PBS, NPR, and the CPB should promise a series of changes.

The overall public media system must pledge to reach a wider audience, agree to report annually to Congress about specifics of where viewers and listeners live, and set goals to diversify.

To do so, it should pledge to support change in the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act to redirect funding from NPR and PBS in Washington to local “member stations,” which currently must pay expensive dues and program fees. Local stations can provide a crucial public service through expanded local journalism, especially coverage of local and state governments — but not if they must send significant portions of their “community service grants” (the largest portion of CPB funding) back to Washington, D.C.

More robust public media local journalism, especially in “news deserts,” would help the system reach a broader audience. Both the NewsHour and All Things Considered would have access to locally produced stories about a wider range of issues, coverage produced from the bottom up, rather than being directed from centralized newsrooms. Public media should, with its extensive network of local license holders, be the first to spot important social and economic trends, whether increases (or declines) in drug overdoses or trends in church affiliation among young adults. Reports to Congress should include data about the number of local journalism positions.

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At the national level, both NPR and PBS should report regularly on which foundations provide them with support and what the terms of such support are. It’s currently too easy to conclude that funders are calling the shots as to which stories get covered. Notably, the Rockefeller Foundation, which has divested its investments from fossil fuels, has funded an NPR “climate desk” and a “climate solutions reporter.” The decision about what constitutes news lies at the heart of journalism. If federal funding is being augmented by additional funders with their own agenda, Congress needs to know. 

The makings of a constructive, face-saving public media funding deal can be found. But a stubborn defense of the status quo is likely to fail.

Howard Husock is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He served as a Republican member of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Board of Directors from 2013 to 2017. His films for WGBH-TV, PBS Boston, won national and New England Emmy Awards.