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Some very sad news from Washington today. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced that it was beginning an “orderly wind-down of its operations” following the passage of Trump’s rescissions bill, which stripped away $1.1 billion in previously approved funding for the organization. CPB’s announcement also follows the release of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s FY 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill, which, per a press release, “excludes funding for CPB for the first time in more than five decades.”
CPB was founded nearly six decades ago to “build and sustain a trusted public media system that informs, educates, and serves communities across the country,” the release continued. Now, “despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we… face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison wrote in her own statement on the closure. The majority of CPB staff will lose their jobs at the close of the fiscal year on September 30, 2025, while a small transition team will stay on through January 2026 to “ensure a responsible and orderly closeout of operations,” including things like compliance, final distributions, and “ensuring continuity for music rights and royalties that remain essential to the public media system.”
The release didn’t mince words in its concluding sentence: “CPB will provide regular updates and guidance to stations and producers navigating the profound challenges ahead.”
Public broadcasters across the nation are already feeling the effects of the bill. “These cuts will significantly impact all of our stations, but will be especially devastating to smaller stations and those serving large rural areas. Many of our stations which provide access to free unique local programming and emergency alerts will now be forced to make hard decisions in the weeks and months ahead,” PBS CEO Paula Kerger wrote in a statement after the Senate approved the package in July.
One such station, Pittsburgh’s WQED, made one of those hard decisions this week. The organization, which originally launched the local segment that would become beloved children’s program Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in 1954, announced today that it would be laying off 19 staffers—about 35% of its staff. WQED currently runs both a TV station and a classical music radio channel.
The cuts will mostly be among WQED’s marketing, membership, and production departments, and are coming as a direct result of the eliminated CPB funding, the station said. The organization is facing not just a loss of the $1.8 million it received from CPB annually, but additional expenses such as the aforementioned music rights CPB previously covered. “As I’ve said, ‘WQED is not going anywhere,'” CEO Jason Jedlinski wrote in a statement to public media news site Current. “We will continue broadcasting PBS shows, even though the national schedule will inevitably change. We will continue sharing classical music and celebrating this region’s remarkable cultural scene as southwestern Pennsylvania’s Voice of the Arts. We will continue educating and inspiring learners of all ages with free, trusted, and accessible content.”
“This was a very difficult decision,” he added. “We value the contributions of every departing colleague and thank them for their commitment, creativity, and meaningful service.”
