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A consortium of public television and radio stations in Indiana will seek alternative sources of revenue after late changes in the new state budget removed $7.35 million earmarked to support the stations during the next two fiscal years, according to the executive director of Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations Inc.
Mark Newman said his nonprofit, which distributes appropriations from the state’s budget to 17 radio and television stations that are affiliates of PBS and NPR, didn’t expect all of its state funding to be cut in the version of the proposed budget that emerged Wednesday.
“To go from a fully funded request to zero was a surprise,” Newman said. “I think having some sort of reduction in the amount would have made more sense. We would willingly accept a reduction because we feel we’ve been good partners. The relationship we’ve had with the legislature has always been very strong, and it continues to be strong.”
The Indiana Legislature approved a pared-down $46.2 billion state budget bill early Friday morning. Gov. Mike Braun is expected to sign the bill within a few days.
Lawmakers learned last week that an updated revenue forecast projects the state’s income will flatline from 2025 to 2027. For the current fiscal year, the state is expected to bring in $400 million less than anticipated. Overall, lawmakers had $2.4 billion less than they expected when the budget-crafting process began in January.
Newman said the lack of state funding won’t affect all public television and radio stations equally.
At Indianapolis-based WFYI Public Media, which includes television and radio operations and ranks as the largest public station in Indiana, state support in the fiscal year that ends June 30 is $590,000, or nearly 5% of WFYI’s annual operating budget.
According to WFYI’s 2023 public Form 990, a tax document filed with the Internal Revenue Service by Metropolitan Indianapolis Public Media Inc., the station’s total revenue was $15.6 million.
At smaller stations, Newman said, the absence of state support could be considered an existential threat because state support makes up 30% to 40% of annual operating budgets.
The elimination of funding “is not insignificant for any station, but it’s considerably more significant for some,” Newman told the IBJ.
Conservative lawmakers in Washington D.C. have called for the dismantling of the nation’s public radio system, and the New York Times reported last week that the Trump administration planned to ask Congress to rescind the more than $1 billion already allotted for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which passes most of that funding down to NPR, PBS and their member stations.
Earlier this year, Indiana Sen. Jim Banks authored a bill he dubbed the “Defund NPR Act,” which would have prohibited federal funding from being directly or indirectly used to support NPR. “Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to fund NPR’s liberal propaganda,” Banks said in a written statement.
Indiana’s new biennial budget spans July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2027, which means the $7.35 million in support that had survived versions of the spending bill that members of the House and Senate moved forward this spring translated to $3.675 million each fiscal year. The amount was identical to what was included in the 2023-2025 state budget.
Within the new budget of $46.2 billion, the trimmed $7.35 million represents about one-hundredth of 1%.
Newman said stations will turn to fundraising or reduce spending to make up for the elimination of state support.
“We’re not on our heels,” he said. “We’re leaning into this and we’re going to find a solution. It has made it very difficult and some stations are going to feel great pain as a result of this. But we will work together to find our way through.”
IBJ reporter Cate Charron contributed to this report.
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