How is npr financed

How many public media stations are there? When does a program air? How can I get a program on the air? How can I support public media? What kind of programming does CPB fund? How can I request grants or funding for programming? Can I request grants or funding for a radio station? Can I request grants or funding for a television station? CPB is the steward of the federal government's investment in public media and supports the operations of nearly 1, locally owned and operated public television and radio stations.

Learn more here. CPB is a private nonprofit corporation created and funded by the federal government and is the steward of federal funding for public media. CPB does not produce or distribute programs, nor does it own, control or operate any broadcast stations.

PBS is a private, nonprofit media enterprise owned by its member public television stations. PBS distributes programming to approximately locally controlled and operated public television stations across the country and is funded principally by these member stations, distribution and underwriting.

NPR is an independent nonprofit membership organization of separately licensed and operated public radio stations across the United States.

NPR produces and distributes news, information, and cultural programming across broadcast and digital platforms. NPR has more than member stations that, as independent entities, own and operate about 1, stations nationwide. NPR is principally funded by member stations, distribution services, underwriting and institutional grants and individual contributions. CPB is a private nonprofit corporation that is fully funded by the federal government. Ninety-five percent of CPB's appropriation goes directly to local public media stations, content development, community services, and other local station and system needs.

Less than five percent is allocated to administrative costs — an exceptionally low overhead rate compared with other nonprofits.

CPB receives a two-year advance appropriation, which means that Congress makes the decision on the amount of federal support for public broadcasting two years ahead of the fiscal year in which the funding is allocated.

This is done in order to insulate content from political pressure, to allow for advance planning and to help stations leverage funds from other sources. For more information on our appropriation please see: Federal Appropriation. While CPB does receive donations from time to time, every public media station relies on audience support to fund its programs and operations.

We invite you to consider supporting your local public media station. You can find station information here: cpb-station-finder. Federal funding is essential to the funding mix that supports public broadcasting. Supreme Court has also refused to recognize any right to a taxpayer-funded education.

Over time, support grew for publicly funded education if left to the individual states under the 10 th Amendment. In the mid th century, the concept of federal funding for education carried into classrooms by broadcasters had not yet been embraced, however. However the early embrace of public affairs and the diminution of the educational component courted immediate opposition.

Its purpose was to encourage local and private initiatives in educational programming and experimental program development. In its present form, NPR is just that, a journalistic medium, and one in which liberal voices dominate. As for PBS, little remains of the dreams Johnson harbored of outstanding teachers being brought to classrooms like his at Cotulla through the miracle of television.

This is not to say that there is no educational programming, but parsing what separates it from public affairs is not easy. LearningMedia is the portal through which teachers and parents can register and access digital resources, videos, interactive material, lesson plans and images. That would only, however, raise questions for conservatives about whether educational programming is being used as surreptitious political indoctrination of the young.

They have their own network. We are talking about political documentaries which come as close to being an editorial page as an institution such as broadcasting has. There is also an inherent contradiction in government funding media, when the media is supposed to keep government in check. When taxpayers believe their taxes are being misused, they demand accountability and pressure their elected officials, who then turn that pressure on the public broadcaster.

This is why government and the press must exist separately if the latter is to be an independent check on the former. Changing the funding from annual appropriations to the BBC-style excise tax on television sets and radios that was proposed in the s would not fundamentally change the equation; such a tax would still be imposed by government, and it would also be increasingly impractical in the age of the Internet.

All taxpayer funds are raised coercively, which is why the government must act prudently when deciding what to do with the extracted funds. The courts have held that Congress has the right to appropriate funds for ends that not all citizens agree on — say, a war — as long as those ends contribute to the public good and general safety.

However in the area of expression, the courts have emphasized the need for balance. In Wisconsin v. Southworth in , the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of mandatory university student activity fees used to support student groups that engaged in expressive activity.

As Justice Samuel Alito explained when he wrote the opinion in the Harris v. Quinn case:. Public universities have a compelling interest in promoting student expression in a manner that is viewpoint neutral … This may be done by providing funding for a broad array of student groups. If the groups funded are truly diverse, many students are likely to disagree with things that are said by some groups [emphasis mine]. Thus, the issue of bias makes its entry. In insisting on objectivity and balance and banning editorializing, the drafters of the Broadcasting Act seem to have had a good sense of the Constitution.

When they let their guard down, NPR, PBS and their parent organization, the CPB, admit that their workforce is overwhelmingly progressive[] but reject that such lack of intellectual diversity has an impact on their output. For that to be true, however, one would have to believe that liberals are fully conversant with conservative perspectives and ideas. More importantly, it would also have to be true that practically every Republican and Democratic leader since has been fundamentally wrong concerning their own political interests, the former in criticizing public broadcasting and the latter the opposite.

The argument that populating a newsroom with liberals will nonetheless produce objective reporting was well articulated on Sept. Bob Garfield : You and I both know that if you were to somehow poll the political orientation of everybody in the NPR news organization and at all of the member stations, you would find a progressive, liberal crowd, not uniformly, but overwhelmingly.

Ira Glass : Journalism, in general, reporters tend to be Democrats and tend to be more liberal than the public as a whole, sure. That journalists are more liberal than the public has been proven by countless studies. Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple did a good job of compiling many of those studies in a Jan. Its very existence is a rebuke to a profit-driven society. He asked questions that would never have even occurred to the other moderators.

The conservative commentator Arnold Steinberg, who in his youth in the s worked for Fred Friendly, raised the same point. Of course it is, and everyone knows it.

The free-market economist Milton Friedman also had a documentary series in the s. Buckley and Friedman, however, spoke of feeling like outsiders at PBS. Audiences have never been in any doubt. They competed mercilessly inside this environment, but at the end of the day they had million Americans to divvy up. This oligopoly, moreover, relied on a finite spectrum, giving the industry the look of highly regulated utilities. The presidents of ABC, CBS and NBC supported the creation of public broadcasting in Congressional hearings, arguing that commercial TV was incapable of producing the educational and cultural content that Johnson and the Carnegie Commission wanted because such programming did not appeal to mass audiences.

The belief that broadcasters interested in profit were too crass to deliver education and culture permeated the creation of the CPB. You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons.

And endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. The same reason was given for broadcasting to low-density rural communities with underserved audiences that only government-subsidized broadcasting could serve. The commercial networks, in other words, were after advertising dollars, and the drafters of the bill promised that the CPB would not compete for those.

Today, Leonard H. Cable, satellite and the internet have transformed this world, and what purpose the CPB serves that could not be served by others is hard to imagine. Will has a point. Any public-spirited person looking for information on radio or television that would help make her a better-informed citizen can find everything she needs on the commercial dial.

In terms of the in-classroom help that the former teacher at the little schoolhouse in Cotulla wanted, what we have today is if anything too much choice. I am always excited to learn about new technology, but overwhelmed at how much there is out there. It is hard to find time to research it all, especially all the new education apps. The rapid growth in critically acclaimed commercial U.

Technology, in fact, has made public broadcasting redundant. The removal of that overhead would relieve the taxpayer of his burden. As it is right now, public broadcasting gets about 35 percent of its revenues from taxpayers, a figure that includes The numbers are better for public radio, which is less than half as reliant on CPB appropriations as public television.

Finally, public broadcasters have an unfair advantage over their commercial competitors: Their reliance on taxpayer support helps them avoid automatic dial turning when an upcoming commercial break is announced. Everyone in the radio business knows that when we go to a commercial break, radio listeners around the city are changing the channel. Some come back a few minutes later. That reality obviously drives our ratings in a downward direction.

NPR never hits that wall. Their ratings in the D. Liberal area, to be sure. Public broadcasting walked away from the promised emphasis on education and cultural promotion when it embraced public affairs, which conservatives have come to view as political indoctrination on the public dime.

Public broadcasting figures such as Ira Glass say they want the bias measured, but attempts by Brookhiser, Tomlinson and Mann to do just that have been shut down after cries of censorship. Anything done on the public dime comes with accountability. The only solution is defunding. In an Oct. Doing so is not practicable and may not even be possible.

How can public affairs be separated from education and culture in a Ken Burns documentary or a NOVA program that constantly hammers home climate change? It would require the constant monitoring that liberals have decried for decades.

It would solve nothing. The solution is to allow the whole package to go off public support and over to charitable foundations, corporations and individuals.

For radio, a different division of responsibilities was established. CPB created National Public Radio NPR in as a news-gathering, production, and program-distribution company governed by its member public radio stations. Unlike its public television counterpart, NPR is authorized to produce radio programs for its members as well as to provide, acquire, and distribute radio programming through its satellite program distribution system. NPR Inc.

These include reviewing and updating of policies and training with respect to the role of NPR journalists appearing on other media outlets, reviewing and defining their roles including those of news analysts in a changing news environment, and encouraging a broad range of viewpoints to reflect the diversity of NPR's national audiences.

At the same time these recommendations were announced, Ellen Weiss, vice president of news for NPR, resigned; it was also announced that Vivian Schiller, then president and chief executive at NPR, would not receive a bonus for On March 9, , Ms.

Schiller resigned, over continued scrutiny and criticism over NPR's handling of an incident regarding Ronald Schiller no relation in a taped interview. These incidents brought intense scrutiny to NPR from public policymakers. Approximately 42 million people listen to NPR stations weekly; 3. For funding levels, see Table 1. From the last year of available information, the U. The remaining The largest single income source Federal appropriations which go through CPB to the individual public radio and television stations generally are designated as unrestricted federal funds.

However, member stations also pay NPR fees for content and programming; some contend that federal grant money is supporting part of the revenue streams back to NPR Inc. A history of CPB appropriations is presented in Table 1. Table 1. CPB Federal Appropriations. Allowance not included in House bill because of lack of authorizing legislation. Transition Quarter funding, during which federal budget year changed from July to September.

Includes funds appropriated for the Satellite Replacement Fund. Similarly, the President's budget request did not provide separate funding for digital or, where applicable, interconnection replacement, but would have permitted CPB to use a portion of its general appropriation to fund both. Reduced 5. There was significant legislative interest and activity regarding federal funding for CPB from the end of the th Congress through the th Congress.

During the "lame duck" period of the th Congress in November , Representative Lamborn sought to have his bill considered for floor action in the House, but this action was defeated by a vote of In response, Representative Earl Blumenauer OR defended public broadcasting by stating that "National Public Radio is one of the few areas where the American public can actually get balanced information.

On January 5, , Representative Lamborn introduced H. The first bill, like its predecessor H. The second bill would have prohibited federal funding to organizations incorporated for specified purposes related to 1 broadcasting, transmitting, and programming over noncommercial educational radio broadcast stations, networks, and systems; 2 cooperating with foreign broadcasting systems and networks in international radio programming and broadcasting; 3 assisting and supporting such noncommercial educational radio broadcasting pursuant to the Public Broadcasting Act of ; or 4 acquiring radio programs from such organizations.

In effect, it would have prohibited any individual public radio station from using federal funding to engage in transactions with NPR Inc. Both bills were referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Furthermore, restrictions on the authority of CPB—a Congressionally chartered, independent, nonprofit organization—to make competitive grants to NPR, or any other public broadcasting entity, is misguided.

Other legislation was introduced addressing federal support for public broadcasting. On March 15, , Representative Lamborn introduced H. The House Rules Committee passed H. No further action was taken on this bill. Other proposals in the th Congress addressed federal funding for public broadcasting.