News, weather, emergency alerts and other local programming at public media stations in Kentucky are at risk now that Congress has voted to claw back funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Thursday night’s vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to rescind $9 billion in funding for foreign aid and public media included $1.1 billion meant to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) over the next two years.
CPB financially supports PBS, NPR and more than 1,300 member stations across the country. That includes at least nine radio and television stations in Kentucky.

The lost funding will damage some of Kentucky's larger stations and could devastate smaller stations, especially in rural areas where residents rely on them for emergency weather alerts, in addition to programming.
Last fiscal year, CPB gave more than $4 million dollars to Kentucky Education Television. The station says that represents about 75% of their discretionary funds and it's budgeted for local programs.
“To be honest, I’m really nervous. We have a lot of great programming that a lot of people throughout the state count on,” said KET Technical Director Kris Brakefield about the cuts.
Republicans call for cuts amid claims of bias
Congress has over the years considered cutting funding for public media, but Thursday’s vote was the most significant step in that direction in nearly six decades of federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Republicans have chafed for years at NPR’s coverage, calling its coverage biased. Their concerns intensified in the wake of a 2024 essay from former NPR Business Editor Uri Berliner who criticized NPR for having a liberal worldview.
The cuts to CPB were driven by Republicans, including the president, seeking to punish what they say are “radical left-wing” NPR and PBS programs that benefit from CPB grants.
“We’ve talked about defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for decades. President Trump is the first one to be able to do it. He had a lot of enthusiasm for this package,” said U.S. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought following the Senate vote earlier this week.
The package still needs the president’s signature, but that’s likely given his support for it and a post last week on his social media platform saying that he would refuse to support any candidate that declined to vote for it.
“It is very important that all Republicans adhere to my Recissions Bill and, in particular, DEFUND THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING (PBS and NPR), which is worse than CNN & MSDNC put together,” Trump wrote.
Lawmakers debated the package on the House floor Thursday before passing the resolution on a 216 to 213 vote. Democrats defended the value of public media, while Republicans railed against it.
“Tonight is the culmination of months of work from House Republicans to defund leftwing state-sponsored media outlets like NPR,” said GOP Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas.
Local media losses in Kentucky
For public television and radio stations in Kentucky — including the one you’re reading right now — those federal funds from CPB amount to anywhere from roughly 5 to 30% of their current budgets.
Louisville Public Media CEO Kenya Young has worked in public radio for decades, including at NPR in Washington D.C. She disagrees with lawmakers who claim public media is biased. She contends it’s only fact-based journalism and it values perspectives over opinion.
“We do feel like we are in the trenches. We are doing some hard work, and it's hard to be seen as the enemy… particularly when you feel like you were doing very mission and public service oriented work,” Young said.
Young calls the cut a “gut punch.” At Louisville Public Media alone, the cut will blow a nearly $400,000 dollar hole into the current operating budget. But Young worries that rural stations in the state will face worse cuts.

“Our sister stations in Kentucky. Those stations are at a higher percentage of federal funding than we are. So much is at stake for those stations and not just the station but the area that they serve,” She said.
At KET, Marketing Director Todd Piccirilli says they’re already making changes. For the first time in decades, they won’t cover “Fancy Farm,” a longtime political tradition in Kentucky.
“We’re in the process and will make more determinations over the coming weeks of other things that we are either going to have to reduce or potentially eliminate as well,” Piccirilli said.
State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.