Southern Oregon Public Broadcasting is on the verge of losing nearly $1 million after the Senate passes a rare measure that would yank previously approved federal funding

By Lex Treinen for Ashland.news

Southern Oregon’s public television and radio stations are facing huge budget shortfalls as early as Wednesday, should President Donald Trump get his way.

Southern Oregon Public Broadcasting could lose 37% percent of its planned budget next year — about $900,000 — if the U.S. Senate passes a $1.1 billion claw-back of funding, which could happen before the end of the week. 

“Uncertainty is the word of the day,”’ said SOPB director Phil Meyer in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon. 

He said the station had already begun to plan for what the funding cuts — part of a rescission of a previously-approved budget — would mean for the station. 

“The worst case scenario budget is basically a hiring freeze,” said Meyer, “We’d look at (cuts to) individual initiatives, whether it’s local programming or our member magazine, and we’d have to find those cuts where we could.”

SOPB serves an area larger than the state of Maryland, about 18,000 square miles. The measure making the cuts was introduced at the request of Trump, who has railed against what he believes is a liberal bias in public broadcasting.

Meanwhile, Jefferson Public Radio, which broadcasts to an even larger swath of Southern Oregon and Northern California, could lose out on more than $500,000, about 14% of its budget, according to JPR. 

“The cuts are gonna have a pretty devastating effect to public radio stations around the country,” said Paul Westhelle, JPR executive director. “They’re gonna especially hit really hard on rural networks like JPR.”

Critics of the cuts have warned of the potential effects on emergency alert systems, programming in rural and Indigenous communities, child educational programming, and local news coverage, should the cuts go through. 

JPR is home to one of the biggest newsrooms in the Rogue Valley, with about eight reporters. Westhelle pointed to award-winning coverage over recent years, including of a 2023 story of an Ashland massage therapist accused of sexual assault, as ways the newsroom helps contribute to the community. 

Westhelle said JPR would try to make up for cuts with increased listener donations. In May and June, under threat of congressional cuts, listeners donated about $100,000 more than they did in the same donation drive as a year earlier. But it still leaves a big shortfall. 

“We’re already pretty lean, we’re very, very efficient,” he said. “We operate with a much smaller staff already, there’s not a lot of places to cut without not doing something.”

He said the station would have to reassess what cuts it would make based on how much listener donations shore up funding. 

Meyer said SOPB had been anticipating the cuts for months once public broadcasting started getting attention from the Trump administration and congressional Republicans. He said the board of directors passed two separate budgets: one with CPB funding and one without. 

The organization has reserves to get through the next two years. 

While neither JPR nor SOPB anticipated cuts to broadcasting infrastructure, Westhelle said that with already thin staffing, small cuts could have big effects. He said JPR operates with one full-time engineer maintaining its broadcast equipment. Relying on cell phone alerts doesn’t cut it when there’s an emergency, as there was in 2020 during the devastating Almeda Fire. 

He remembered hearing calls from residents trying to get information while evacuating on the highway, with internet service not working on their phones. 

“They didn’t know where to go. They were desperately tuning into JPR, trying to find out what was going on,” he said, “You need redundancy to cell phone towers if cell phone towers are caught up in a fire.”

The cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting were passed by the House, but have been more controversial in the Senate. Funding for CPB had already been passed as part of the congressional budget, but Trump and his allies have pressed for the unusual procedure known as rescission, in which previously allocated money is clawed back. 

The rescission was supported by Southern Oregon congressional Rep. Cliff Bentz, a Republican. Oregon’s five other congresspeople, all Democrats, opposed the rescission. 

Meyer said he met with Bentz in February to try to convince him of the importance of the funding. After Bentz supported the rescission, Meyer connected with Bentz’s staff, but wasn’t able to speak directly with Bentz. Bentz did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this article.

Late Tuesday, the Senate narrowly advanced a bill to the floor that separated the public broadcasting cuts from cuts to an international AIDS treatment program, giving the rescission a better chance of passing the full Senate. 

Still, some Senate Republicans have voiced opposition to the cuts. 

Among them, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, whose state includes many rural and Indigenous stations, has warned of the effects in her state, where many communities lack cell service. 

However, negotiations with the White House produced a plan on Tuesday to continue to directly fund 28 public radio stations serving Native American communities in nine states, NPR reported. 

Email freelance reporter Lex Treinen at [email protected].