My understanding is that only a tiny portion of NPR funding is from the federal government. I honestly don’t think that it’ll have a huge impact even if it’s defunded at the federal level.
On average, approximately 1% of NPR’s annual operating budget comes in the form of grants from CPB and federal agencies and departments, excluding CPB funding for the Public Radio Satellite System (PRSS).
I mean, I don’t think that NPR is a bad use of funds — frankly, I think that they put out some of the most-worthwhile content out there, and I’m particularly a fan of NPR Planet Money, which does a lot of podcasts covering basic economics concepts — but I don’t think that a whole lot would actually happen to NPR if federal funding went away.
EDIT: I’d also suspect that if state governments wanted to do so, they could probably take over that 1%. It makes sense, I think, to make radio content widely-distributed, since most of the cost is in production, and not widely-distributing it means that you’re not getting some of the good of increased user base, while paying the costs of production. But…radio isn’t really a public good, not at the (broad) state-government funding level – it doesn’t really have the property of non-excludability. That is, you don’t have to broadcast radio content everywhere. You can’t stop radio broadcasts from spilling over state boundaries somewhat, so maybe if tiny Delaware didn’t want to fund it, viewers in Delaware could still consume it, but someone in most of Wyoming isn’t going to be able to receive NPR on the radio if Wyoming doesn’t fund it and it can’t be broadcast in Wyoming.
EDIT2: It looks like NPR has a budget of about $300 million/year. So to put some perspective on this, 1% federal funding would be about $3 million a year, or less than a penny a year per American. That’s not nothing, but if we’re talking about something that most people in the US are willing to fund, I really don’t think that it’d be that hard to find states willing to chip in a total of $3 million a year. Frankly, I can think of a lot of things here in California that the state does pay for that cost a lot more and that I think are a heck of a lot less-worthwhile than NPR; I’d be perfectly fine having California pay the entirety of that (less than a dime a year per Californian), or to just participate in a group of states that chip in.
I just ate a sandwich and cup of soup at Togo’s, a sandwich place. The cup of soup was about $5. It wasn’t a bad cup of soup, but it cost 50 times what I’d pay per year even in that “California takes over all of the federal funding of NPR solo” scenario. I am absolutely confident that having NPR for the next 50 years — disregarding the time value of money, even — provides me with a hell of a lot more benefit than that cup of soup provided me with.
EDIT3: And to give NPR an additional kudos, I’d like to emphasize that this “I’d be fine with my own state covering the costs if it has to do so solo” is coming from someone who leans right-libertarian, would generally rather have the private sector provide solutions than the government where possible. I think that over the years, the quality of the material that NPR has put out relative to most purely-private-sector media has more than earned it the benefit of the doubt, and a place in the media landscape.
My understanding is that only a tiny portion of NPR funding is from the federal government. I honestly don’t think that it’ll have a huge impact even if it’s defunded at the federal level.
goes looking for numbers
https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances
I mean, I don’t think that NPR is a bad use of funds — frankly, I think that they put out some of the most-worthwhile content out there, and I’m particularly a fan of NPR Planet Money, which does a lot of podcasts covering basic economics concepts — but I don’t think that a whole lot would actually happen to NPR if federal funding went away.
EDIT: I’d also suspect that if state governments wanted to do so, they could probably take over that 1%. It makes sense, I think, to make radio content widely-distributed, since most of the cost is in production, and not widely-distributing it means that you’re not getting some of the good of increased user base, while paying the costs of production. But…radio isn’t really a public good, not at the (broad) state-government funding level – it doesn’t really have the property of non-excludability. That is, you don’t have to broadcast radio content everywhere. You can’t stop radio broadcasts from spilling over state boundaries somewhat, so maybe if tiny Delaware didn’t want to fund it, viewers in Delaware could still consume it, but someone in most of Wyoming isn’t going to be able to receive NPR on the radio if Wyoming doesn’t fund it and it can’t be broadcast in Wyoming.
EDIT2: It looks like NPR has a budget of about $300 million/year. So to put some perspective on this, 1% federal funding would be about $3 million a year, or less than a penny a year per American. That’s not nothing, but if we’re talking about something that most people in the US are willing to fund, I really don’t think that it’d be that hard to find states willing to chip in a total of $3 million a year. Frankly, I can think of a lot of things here in California that the state does pay for that cost a lot more and that I think are a heck of a lot less-worthwhile than NPR; I’d be perfectly fine having California pay the entirety of that (less than a dime a year per Californian), or to just participate in a group of states that chip in.
I just ate a sandwich and cup of soup at Togo’s, a sandwich place. The cup of soup was about $5. It wasn’t a bad cup of soup, but it cost 50 times what I’d pay per year even in that “California takes over all of the federal funding of NPR solo” scenario. I am absolutely confident that having NPR for the next 50 years — disregarding the time value of money, even — provides me with a hell of a lot more benefit than that cup of soup provided me with.
EDIT3: And to give NPR an additional kudos, I’d like to emphasize that this “I’d be fine with my own state covering the costs if it has to do so solo” is coming from someone who leans right-libertarian, would generally rather have the private sector provide solutions than the government where possible. I think that over the years, the quality of the material that NPR has put out relative to most purely-private-sector media has more than earned it the benefit of the doubt, and a place in the media landscape.