January 16, 2025
From Rachel Smolkin, OPB president and CEO:
Since joining OPB in September, I’ve been able to meet many wonderful people in communities we serve, and I look forward to making more connections across the region. Our conversations have confirmed my initial impression: OPB is a special organization serving a very special place.
I started here during a very busy election cycle. With the generous support of OPB members, we built the most extensive politics and government coverage we’ve ever had, giving our audiences information they needed to make informed decisions about candidates and elections across the region at every level of the ballot.
I was proud of the leadership role we played at such an important civic moment. We provided facts, explainers, and analysis. We offered an ambitious lineup of events and forums to inform voters and facilitate discussion. I was excited by the response to those gatherings, and I want to make bringing people together a hallmark of OPB so we can build stronger and better-informed communities.
The outcome of the election at the federal level may lead you to wonder about the funding outlook for public media organizations like OPB. Our work is primarily funded by members, foundations and sponsors based here in Oregon and southwest Washington. This tremendous community support is very special, and it’s a key reason why I felt drawn to lead OPB, an independent and growing nonprofit organization.
Federal support represents a relatively small portion of OPB’s operating budget at nine percent. Yet it’s vital in helping provide universal access to factual information across America — and critical to serving often overlooked rural communities. Those funds help us serve a vast region that extends from Astoria to Ontario, from The Dalles to Lakeview, as well as southwest Washington.
Here’s a quick overview of how federal funding for public media works, and the service it provides:
Federal funding largely supports local organizations. Congress appropriates funds to an organization called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, which distributes the funds. Rather than going directly to PBS and NPR, the vast majority of the funds go to hundreds of public media organizations across the country. These organizations are based in local communities and decide how best to use the funds to serve the public interest.
Cuts to CPB funding would hurt smaller, rural communities the most. CPB’s federal appropriation is modest: roughly one one-hundredth of a percent (0.01%) of the federal budget. Reducing or eliminating this support would hobble beloved community institutions across the country. By statute, CPB prioritizes funding for public media organizations serving rural and remote communities. For some of our smaller colleague organizations, this support accounts for 30 percent (or more) of revenue — meaning cuts would be particularly damaging in these communities.
Public media plays a vital emergency response role. Like many other public media organizations, OPB serves as the “Primary Entry Point” (PEP) station for the Emergency Alert System. In the event of an emergency, such as wildfires, floods, earthquakes, or tsunamis, OPB initiates messages to other broadcasters, helping inform people in real time. And as the region’s largest and most accessible source of news, OPB also fulfills an important journalistic role during emergencies, keeping people apprised of conditions and connecting them to assistance.
In an age of increasingly paywalled news, public media is a bastion for factual, reliable information — available to everyone. Given the troubled state of the journalism ecosystem today, federal cuts would accelerate the growth of news deserts. Across the country, including in Oregon, many local news outlets have been decimated by cuts or have disappeared entirely. Others have survived through subscription models that limit information to only those who can afford it.
Luckily, federal funding continues to have vocal champions on both sides of the aisle. We’re fortunate to have strong advocates for OPB and public media in Oregon and Washington’s federal legislative delegations. We encourage you to visit www.protectmypublicmedia.org to sign up for updates and alerts.
We are committed to improving service to communities across the Pacific Northwest. Central to our future vision is that you and your neighbors can find OPB everywhere – on your radios, televisions, laptops, phones, tablets, and at gatherings where we can come together in person.
Partnership is an important piece of this vision, as it helps us create and share high-impact regional journalism. For example, OPB’s April Ehrlich and Tony Schick collaborated with ProPublica to create a wide-ranging investigative piece on timber harvests in Bureau of Land Management forests that published in November. This story tracked the Biden administration’s management of a critical public resource, and demonstrates our commitment to accountability reporting, regardless of which party controls the executive branch. You can find all of OPB’s reporting any time at www.opb.org or via our mobile app.