CPB Dissolves After Public Media Funds Rescinded

On January 5, 2026, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the private nonprofit created by Congress to steward federal support for public media, announced that its board had voted to dissolve the organization after 58 years of service, according to a statement from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The board’s decision followed Congress’s rescission of all CPB federal funding for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. This amounted to roughly 1.07 billion dollars in forward-funded appropriations that had been slated for public broadcasting but would no longer pass through CPB to stations.

For most of its existence, CPB functioned as a financial intermediary rather than a broadcaster. It distributed federal appropriations to more than 1,500 locally owned stations and supported national programming, system infrastructure, and archival projects.

In its January 2026 statement, CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison said that, once funding was removed, the board concluded that CPB’s final act should be to "protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values" by dissolving. This was preferred "rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks."

Key Points: CPB Shuts Down

On Jan. 5, 2026, CPB announced a unanimous board vote to dissolve after Congress withdrew about $1.07 billion for FY 2026-27.
CPB served as a funding steward, distributing a large share of its federal appropriation directly to more than 1,500 local stations.
Most CPB staff were laid off by the end of September 2025 as the corporation entered a wind-down phase to close remaining obligations.
CPB’s final grants support the American Archive of Public Broadcasting and place its institutional records with the University of Maryland.
The Public Broadcasting Act still permits future appropriations, but no new federal intermediary for public media has been created so far.

Origins and Mandate

CPB was created by Congress in 1967 through the Public Broadcasting Act, which established a private, nonprofit corporation to facilitate the development of noncommercial educational radio and television services.

The law, published on the CPB website, declared that it was in the public interest to encourage the growth of public broadcasting for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes. It also called for maximum protection from interference or control by federal officials.

A 2017 report by the Congressional Research Service noted that CPB was chartered as a private corporation rather than a federal agency. It was governed by a board of directors appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Statutory limits barred the board and staff from exercising direction or control over program content, station programming, or editorial decisions. This kept CPB’s formal role focused on financing and system design instead of direct programming.

A Stewardship Model, Not a Broadcaster

Unlike PBS or NPR, CPB did not own broadcast licenses, operate transmitters, or produce shows. It served instead as the main distributor of federal appropriations to local licensees, including state networks, university stations, tribal outlets, and community nonprofits.

According to the Congressional Research Service, CPB used formulas that accounted for factors such as station size, nonfederal financial support, and service responsibilities to allocate grants across the system.

The CRS report found that roughly 70 percent of CPB’s annual appropriation typically flowed to local radio and television stations as Community Service Grants. This made CPB one of the largest single sources of funding for many public broadcasters.

Beyond those station grants, CPB funded national programming, digital interconnection, and collaborative journalism projects that combined reporting resources across states and regions. This provided infrastructure that individual stations often could not afford on their own.

Because the corporation was barred from dictating program content, these investments were designed to shape the system’s capacity and reach rather than its editorial line. They supported a network of independent local licensees that shared programming and technical standards.

The Funding Cut and Board Vote

In 2025, Congress voted to rescind approximately 1.1 billion dollars in previously approved funding for public broadcasting. This included the forward-funded 535 million dollars per year that CPB was scheduled to receive for fiscal years 2026 and 2027, according to reporting by Nieman Reports.

Because of the structure of U.S. public broadcasting, lawmakers did not cut appropriations to NPR or PBS directly. Instead, the Rescissions Act removed the money from CPB, which had been set to distribute most of it to about 1,500 radio and television stations that pay national networks for programming.

Nieman Reports recounted that CPB announced on August 1, 2025, that it would lay off the majority of its staff by the end of September and wind down operations by the end of January. The move was described as a response to the loss of federal support.

The trade publication Current later reported that CPB had let go of most of its staff at the end of September. The corporation then entered a formal wind-down phase after Congress rescinded its forward-funded appropriations, leaving a smaller team to manage remaining grants and obligations.

On January 5, 2026, CPB announced that its board had voted to dissolve the corporation. In the same announcement, board chair Ruby Calvert said that "what has happened to public media is devastating" and linked the decision directly to Congress’s elimination of all funding for CPB.

Preservation and Wind-Down

As part of what it described as an orderly closure, CPB said it would complete the distribution of all remaining funds in accordance with Congress’s intent. It would not retain unspent money or extend operations without resources.

The January 2026 release stated that CPB would provide support to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. This support would allow the archive to continue digitizing and preserving historic public media content.

CPB also announced that its own archives, dating back to its founding in 1967, would be preserved in partnership with the University of Maryland. The records would be made accessible to the public as part of that institution’s archival holdings.

According to a history published by the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, the archive is a collaboration between GBH and the Library of Congress that began in 2013. Its mission is to coordinate a national effort to identify, preserve, and provide access to the historical record of publicly funded broadcasting in the United States.

The same history notes that the National Public Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland, founded in 1990, has concentrated on preserving documents from entities such as CPB, PBS, and NPR. This positioned it as a natural custodian for CPB’s institutional records.

Pressure on Local Stations

The closure of CPB has immediate consequences for rural and smaller-market stations that depended on its grants for a large share of their operating budgets and for the infrastructure that keeps signals on the air.

Nieman Reports observed that, as of the 2023 fiscal year, about one-third of CPB’s appropriation went to rural stations. This included outlets serving Indigenous communities that provide local news, cultural programming, and emergency alerts.

In that coverage, Native Public Media President and CEO Loris Taylor described CPB’s support for Tribal stations as "irreplaceable." She wrote that the news, culture, and emergency alerts those stations provide "are not luxuries" but "part of the public safety infrastructure that saves lives."

The same article noted that in some communities, public media outlets are the last or nearly the last local media organizations remaining after newspaper closures and consolidation in commercial broadcasting. This makes the loss of CPB funding a direct risk to coverage of local government, severe weather, and community events.

Larger urban stations may be better positioned to replace part of the loss with listener contributions, foundation grants, and underwriting. However, Nieman Reports relayed analyses suggesting that a portion of smaller stations could still face closure within a few years, even with temporary boosts in donations.

What Remains

With CPB gone, support for public media depends more heavily on state appropriations, philanthropic funding, and audience contributions. Nieman Reports and other observers describe these arrangements as uneven across markets and often weaker in the very communities that relied most on federal support.

Nieman Reports documented short-term surges in donations at some stations after the funding cuts. However, it also quoted station leaders and researchers who doubted that contributions and foundation grants alone could sustain smaller outlets, especially in rural areas with limited donor bases.

Possible revenue sources such as licensing public media content to streaming platforms or building digital services supported by advertising often direct income to producers and distributors. This redirects funds away from the transmitters and local newsrooms that maintain community coverage, altering incentives compared with CPB’s systemwide grant model.

The Public Broadcasting Act still authorizes federal appropriations for CPB. Current noted that Congress could, in principle, restore funding or design a new intermediary to distribute it, but as of early January 2026 no successor mechanism had been enacted.

In CPB’s final release, Patricia Harrison said that "public media remains essential to a healthy democracy" and expressed hope that future leaders would recognize its value and defend its independence. The end of CPB’s role leaves that work to stations, universities, philanthropies, and policymakers now operating without a dedicated federal steward.

Whether a new national funding structure emerges or support continues to shift toward states, donors, and commercial platforms, the dissolution of CPB marks a lasting change in how public media in the United States is financed and governed.