Every two years, public media across the United States gets its funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But in 2025, public media outlets across the country are left scrambling after massive federal funding cuts on July 18 in the “Rescission Act” congress voted into law.
For Pittsburghers, the affected outlets are 90.5 WESA, WYEP, and WQED. “We’d been allocated over a million dollars, then the government went back and took it,” Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting Corporation CEO Terry O’Reilly explained.
WESA is the largest radio station in Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia. As is the case with many other publicly funded networks, for many people outside urban centers WESA is the largest media outlet they have access to.
“We know that the impact of this is going to be mostly felt in small markets where public media is often the only local media to be had. I was speaking to a woman in Alaska recently, and when that tsunami occurred a couple of weeks ago, they were the only ones around to pass the word,” O’Reilly said. “What [Republicans] are really doing is hurting the people in America who need this stuff the most. For those of us who are fortunate enough to work in this industry, we do it because we love it and think it’s really important.”
The United States has had public (or “non-commercial”) media since the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. When that administration signed the Public Broadcasting Act in 1967, it ushered in an era of new media entities that didn’t have to rely on advertising to survive.
“By definition, there’s some things commercial entities won’t or can’t support because they need to make money,” O’Reilly said. “The Johnson administration recognized that there needed to be non-commercial radio, with firewalls in it so the system never became a political tool.”
The governing body for non-commercial media is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which will shutter operations by September 30. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting allocates funding two years in advance. So, the funds that non-commercial media were supposed to receive for 2027 are the ones the Rescission Act cut. O’Reilly estimates that WESA is about “three quarters of a million dollars” in the hole, in total.
How Did These Cuts Happen?
Maybe you’ve vaguely heard about President Trump’s cuts to public radio. What happened on a granular level is that congress invoked “rescission,” which allows the government to change its mind about money previously budgeted and approved at an earlier time.
“It is very, very rarely used. In this case, on the one hand, it was a real shock. But on the other hand, I’m not sure that we were really surprised,” O’Reilly said. “The Trump administration and the Heritage Foundation made it very clear that they were going to defund public media. This is the mechanism they found to do it.”
The Rescission Act was not just about public media but also foreign aid, with the overarching goal of cutting down “wasteful” government spending. This also isn’t the first time congress has invoked rescission with a real human cost. The 1946 Rescission Act, also meant to curb government spending, gutted benefits for Filipino veterans of World War II. Since the Philippines was an American occupied territory rather than a state, Filipino veterans who served in the U.S. Armed Forces did not have access to the GI Bill—despite that fact that the American government owned their country and mandated the military service of veterans.
In a moment of cruel irony, many Americans likely learned about this historical anecdote for the first time on through oral history interviews on PBS.
“What congress didn’t count on was the fact that people who love public media and support public media would come out the way they have in support of it,” O’Reilly said. “One family that gives us $50 called us up and gave us $10,000. We had someone who hasn’t given to us in more than 15 years make a 6-figure gift. We had close to a thousand donations from people who were brand new to us that clearly listen but had never felt like they are ready to give.” The day after congress cut funding, WESA had its largest day of fundraising ever.
But the battle is still uphill. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting paid for things the layperson might not even think of. A particularly expensive example is music licensing fees. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting paid for music licensing for every public program in the country.
“There are licensing agencies that we are required to pay for. There are six licensing agencies, but then there are 1700 radio stations, plus NPR, plus PBS, plus other national organizations. As a practical matter of negotiating 1700 individual licenses, I don’t know how that would ever get done,” O’Reilly said. “The federal funding for those deals will go away, paid through the end of the calendar year. We don’t know how much those will cost in the future. My guess for WESA is that it will be hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
The other complicating factor is that the costs of running Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting and its subdivisions is yearly. A six figure gift is wonderful, but the search for support will present itself every single year. “Every year going forward, we’re going to have to look at how to save that money,” O’Reilly asid. “In the public media world, the thing we spend more money on than anything else is people. If you’re looking at a 3/4 million hole every year, you have to look at the people cost. But we looked at it differently. The value we provide every day is a function of the people we have every day. Cutting jobs is my lowest priority.”
Instead, O’Reilly plans to focus on increasing fundraising capacity and hiring people with a strong vision for the future of local journalism. Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting will always be independent and by and for Pittsburghers. “My thought was: let’s not think about how we get smaller,” O’Reilly said. “Let’s think instead about how we get smarter.”
Story by Emma Riva
Photo by Koen Sweers
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