Threats to Federal Funding

What’s Happening?

The White House is asking Congress to rescind funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—the funding that supports more than 1,500 local public media organizations throughout our country, including WSHU. This funding would include money that is already appropriated and budgeted for fiscal year 2026.

These cuts put at risk the programs, reporting, community outreach and classical music that make WSHU Public Radio a trusted part of our community’s daily life.

This is the strongest threat to public media that we have ever seen. It is quite literally unprecedented.

Read a letter from WSHU General Manager Brad Dancer.

What does this mean for WSHU?

This year, WSHU received over $350,000 in federal funding. That money helped pay for NPR programs like Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! as well as the royalties and rights to play all the music we air on daily classical programs and Sunday Baroque. It also covered the costs of satellite interconnection, emergency alert systems and other aspects of broadcasting.

How can those funds be replaced?

The amount of federal funding we stand to lose is roughly equivalent to 2.5 pledge drives. If we lose our federal funding, we would immediately seek to raise the missing CPB funds from our donors and corporate sponsors. At the same time, we would need to consider difficult decisions across our programming and other investments to ensure the station’s long-term sustainability. While we would work hard to maintain our current level of service, doing so without this essential support would be extremely challenging.

Why does WSHU matter?

Our mission is to serve our community with compelling, informative content across all terrestrial and digital platforms:

• Independent, trustworthy national and international news from NPR, the BBC and American Public Media
• Reporting, podcasts and feature stories by our own journalists who live in our community—their work covers the pillars of Civics, Arts & Culture and the environment
• An oasis of classical music programming that is inspiring, calming and locally-produced
• State and regional emergency alerts to our community in times of need

What can I do to help?

One thing you can do is to tell your elected officials what WSHU Public Radio means to you. Protect My Public Media has made it easy for you to call your lawmakers, share your story and sign a petition. Of course, your support—especially as a Sustainer—is critically important and deeply appreciated. Finally, we invite you to tell us why WSHU is important to you here.

Still have questions? Please reach out to us at membership@wshu.org. And follow us on Facebook and Instagram!