It finally happened: After decades of putting on a show of threatening to pull public broadcasting's federal funds, the Republican Party changed its mindset and decided to actually do it. The rescissions package that the Senate approved in the wee hours of Thursday morning will claw back the money that Congress allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The House still needs to approve the revised bill by midnight Friday, but that feels like a foregone conclusion.
In the past this would be someone's cue to bring up the fate of poor little Elmo, but these days Sesame Street has a home on Netflix anyway. And PBS and NPR themselves are sure to survive this cut. (Remember that huge endowment that Joan B. Kroc left to NPR 22 years ago? Last I heard, the network hadn't even touched the principal.) Much of the debate about the bill has therefore focused on individual stations that receive CPB subsidies.
So suppose you work at a noncommercial radio station and you suddenly have a hole in your budget. Maybe you'll try to fill that gap with an emergency fundraiser—but even if that's a smashing success, you can't count on your listeners to stay in crisis mode forever. If you've been relying on the government's money and the government isn't sending you those checks anymore, you'll need to find a way to keep yourself afloat, and that might mean changing your approach to broadcasting.
