https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/business/media/corporation-for-public-broadcasting-shut-down.html
The company is among the first casualties of a vote to strip roughly $500 million in federal funding from NPR, PBS and local stations across the country.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting said Friday that it would shut down next year, effectively ending its half-century role as a backer of NPR, PBS, and local radio and TV stations across the United States.
The organization will continue to support public broadcasters through a transition period that will end in January, said Patricia Harrison, its president and chief executive, in a statement.
“Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,” Ms. Harrison said. “We are deeply grateful to our partners across the system for their resilience, leadership, and unwavering dedication to serving the American people.”
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been in the cross hairs of Republicans for decades. Conservative policy advocates, legislators and presidents argued persistently that the public shouldn’t be responsible for financing media they perceived as having a liberal bias. But repeated attempts to defund public broadcasters failed, until this year.
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Corporation for Public Broadcasting Will Shut Down
The company is among the first casualties of a vote to strip roughly $500 million in federal funding from NPR, PBS and local stations across the country.
Aug. 1, 2025
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting said Friday that it would shut down next year, effectively ending its half-century role as a backer of NPR, PBS, and local radio and TV stations across the United States.
The organization will continue to support public broadcasters through a transition period that will end in January, said Patricia Harrison, its president and chief executive, in a statement.
“Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,” Ms. Harrison said. “We are deeply grateful to our partners across the system for their resilience, leadership, and unwavering dedication to serving the American people.”
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been in the cross hairs of Republicans for decades. Conservative policy advocates, legislators and presidents argued persistently that the public shouldn’t be responsible for financing media they perceived as having a liberal bias. But repeated attempts to defund public broadcasters failed, until this year.
Congress voted last month to claw back more than $500 million of the organization’s annual funding in a narrow vote that played out along party lines. That forced the corporation into a cash crunch.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is among the first casualties of the claw back, which puts public radio and TV stations across the United States at risk of going dark. Scores of stations rely on government financing to fund their operations, especially those in rural areas. That has prompted public media advocates to raise concerns that listeners and viewers in those areas will be without access to news, cultural programming and potentially lifesaving emergency alerts.
PBS, NPR and some of the most popular programs associated with public broadcasting, such as “Sesame Street” and “All Things Considered,” will survive without the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. NPR and PBS get a relatively small portion of their annual budget from the corporation, and children's TV programs like “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” are produced independently of those organizations.
Still, the cutbacks could affect the availability of those shows, particularly in pockets of the country without widespread access to broadband internet and mobile data. In some cases, the budgets of the shows have also been reduced; earlier this year, the Department of Education ended a $23 million grant that funded children’s educational programs and games.
Both PBS and NPR lamented the end of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In its statement, PBS said it was committed to “maintaining our service to the American people for years to come.” Katherine Maher, the chief executive of NPR, said in a statement that the corporation’s closure “represents the loss of a major institution and decades of knowledge and expertise.”
The company said it had informed employees that it will eliminate the bulk of staff positions at the end of September. After that, a small contingent of employees will stay on through January to wind it down.
Those employees will focus on making the corporation’s last distributions, resolving its financial obligations and sorting out the long-term fate of rights and royalties for music played on public media stations across the United States.
Ms. Harrison said in a statement that the corporation was being shut down despite the “extraordinary efforts” of millions of Americans who “called, wrote and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding” for the company.
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