EVANSVILLE – Evansville's NPR and PBS stations are set to lose half their budgets after a middle-of-the-night Senate vote to gut public broadcasting. Still, the stations' president and CEO vows that "WNIN is not closing its doors."
That was the message Thursday morning as public radio and television outfits across the country scrambled to react to the news that the Senate voted to rescind $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The vote was 51-48, with only two Republicans crossing party lines. Indiana's two senators weren't among them. Both Jim Banks and Todd Young voted to take the money away.
It was part a $9 billion slashing of a horde of federal aid programs, including the United States Agency for International Development, which provides education and food in poor or disaster-torn nations.
The cuts come almost three months after Indiana voted to make massive reductions as well. In a late-night vote of their own, state legislators rescinded $3.675 million in funding from Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations.
WNIN lost about $440,000 due to the state's decision, or about 10-15% of its annual budget. Now, with federal legislators following suit, that amount will balloon to about $1.5 million, around half of WNIN's money for the next fiscal year. The cuts will take effect in October.
That's assuming the U.S. House of Representatives and President Donald Trump give their final approval. Considering the House has already greenlit a similar version of the bill – and Trump threatened not to endorse any Republican who voted against it – that's all but certain. Final approval was expected to come later Thursday or Friday.
Tim Black, WNIN's president and CEO, said it will take a Herculean effort to make up that money through local dollars. But the stations have a smidgeon of leeway for the time-being.
"We are fortunate to have reserve funding that we’ll be able to fall back on for a period of time," he said Thursday. "And then as we are going forward and involved in our budgeting process, we do have a couple of other things we may have to take a look at.”
That includes WNIN's Downtown offices near the riverfront. The station owns the building, and Black said they may consider selling it for extra money.
The largest and loudest elephant in the room, though, is the possibility of staffing cuts. Like he did in April, Black vowed WNIN will do everything it can to keep its workers employed. But nothing is guaranteed.
"I think anybody would have to realize, with that kind of shortfall, it’s something we’’ll have to consider," he said. "But we’re going to do our very best to attempt to keep (job cuts) as low as possible.”
Layoffs, political arguments and the national deficit
Hordes of other stations, though, can't afford that conversation.
Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations has already told its staff it will lay off its eight-person statewide reporting team at the end of the year due to budget cuts. And some rural stations across the U.S. will likely close altogether, leaving some small towns without a reliable source for news, traffic and weather.
Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, offered an amendment Wednesday that would have protected some of those stations, NPR reported, but the Republican majority shot it down.
The cuts stem from political gripes put forth by Trump and other Republicans over the last several years. They claim NPR and PBS reporting has a liberal bias and paints them in an unfavorable light. The stations have denied that.
The reductions have also been pitched as a way to reduce the national deficit. Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune praised them as a "step in the right direction" Wednesday, but even he acknowledged the $9 billion cut amounted to "one-tenth of 1% all federal spending."
Meanwhile, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit between now and 2034.
'The very obvious support we have in this community'
Black said he was disappointed by the vote. But it was "not unexpected."
"I’ve been preparing for this for a little while. I suppose my feeling is one of, right now, trying to solve a problem," he said. "I see that as my job. We can continue to exist in this community."
Local dollars still make up half of WNIN's budget. They come from listener donations, corporate sponsorships and money raised during community events. He hopes the cuts may inspire some residents or local businesses to give more.
He's already felt some of that generosity. Since the threat of cuts began to loom several months ago, he said people have gone out of their way to help.
"I have been extremely touched over the course of the last few weeks about the very obvious support that we have in this community. I always knew it was there, but I have heard and received so many wonderful supportive comments from people," he said. "Many individuals are literally sending us $20 bills, $10 bills, in envelopes.
"For many people, that is a large amount of money, and yet they’re taking the time and making the effort to give that to us. Because we’re important to them.”