It was a textbook addition of insult to harm. When President Trump signed an govt order final Could taking federal funds away from public broadcasters, he dubbed the doc: “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media.” Apparently, the monetary lifeblood of public radio and TV wasn’t merely wasteful; it was wasteful due to its recipients’ malicious intent.
Later that summer time, Congress made the order a reality—or a minimum of the “ending subsidization” half, if not the maliciousness. The Rescissions Act of 2025 clawed again $1.1 billion (with a “b”) in funds already allotted for the Company for Public Broadcasting. With its federal monetary assist evaporating, the CPB quickly introduced it was winding down operations. Positive sufficient, the yr that adopted has seen layoffs and programming cuts throughout the board in public media.
Whereas these losses have been harsh for NPR and PBS, the disaster additionally presents a chance for public media to remind individuals what it will possibly do and why it nonetheless issues.
KCRW in Los Angeles, an NPR member station, is staring down the identical struggles as your entire trade—it misplaced $1.3 million in federal funds final yr—however it’s additionally peering previous them. By revitalizing its programming and the best way listeners entry it, deepening the connection between its reveals and their followers, and placing on extra reside occasions just like the Summer Nights festival working all through this month, KCRW could also be constructing a replicable blueprint for public media to thrive in risky occasions.
Right here’s how KCRW has fared since final yr’s authorities intervention: Listenership throughout linear, streaming and podcasts has grown exponentially, with tens of millions of podcast downloads bringing in followers from effectively past L.A.; the monetary pledge purpose for this yr is already effectively inside attain; and the corporate is on observe to complete 2026 with advert income and off-radio sponsorship (company assist tied to nonbroadcast platforms) rising to greater than 30% of total sponsorship funding—a healthily diversified income combine for a radio station.
Not that KCRW considers itself only a radio station.
“Folks will ask me, ‘Oh, how’s the radio enterprise?’” says KCRW’s president, Jennifer Ferro. “And I say I don’t know something concerning the radio enterprise. I’m locally enterprise.”
Getting extra private with programming
Lots has modified within the 32 years since Ferro started working at KCRW as an assistant to the overall supervisor. Again then, she was one in all roughly 30 staffers, working on a budgetary pittance; now, headcount has grown to over 100, with a funds of $24 million. However essentially the most vital modifications at KCRW all through that point have occurred in simply the previous six years.
Earlier than Trump put public media on his hit checklist final summer time, COVID-19 had already basically modified the best way KCRW’s followers have interaction with it.
“Previous to COVID, everybody in Los Angeles was of their automobiles, driving to work Monday via Friday, throughout very particular hours, and the companion they’d was radio,” Ferro says. “It was the best, one-touch expertise, and it made KCRW a giant a part of individuals’s commute expertise. However now, that’s all been disrupted, whether or not persons are coming into the workplace three days every week or by no means, and we noticed this radical change in the best way individuals listened.”
As audiences abstained from their former radio habits, the crew at KCRW sought out contemporary methods to stay related and turn into extra accessible. A part of the ensuing technique concerned recruiting marquee podcast expertise, going all in on newsletters, and giving KCRW’s prized music curation a life past radio with a redesigned app and 24/7 streaming playlists.
Across the time of the 2024 election, the corporate launched two new podcasts: Question Everything, an investigation of media distortions from the S-City creator Brian Reed, and The Sam Sanders Show, a deep dive into popular culture with the NPR Politics Podcast cofounder. Each reveals have been hits, every shortly surpassing 2 million downloads and the previous profitable 4 Sign Awards and a 2026 Webby.
After growing some heavyweight podcasts, KCRW additionally invested in extremely curated music and tradition newsletters for all its shows. The one tied to culinary crowd-pleaser Good Food, as an example, takes followers additional into host Evan Kleiman’s private cooking journey, whereas the devoted Substack Backseat Babies helps households navigate life in L.A. Slightly than function perfunctory dispatches to reap clicks on KCRW’s web site, the newsletters supply self-contained content material designed to deepen engagement with followers and, ideally, convert them into sustaining members.
“I’ll be sincere—we don’t even care about our web site,” Ferro says. “Which appears prescient, as a result of with ‘Google Zero‘ now, web sites don’t appear to matter anymore.”
Getting extra private with listeners
One other current change that seems to be driving development is a giant enhance in reside occasions, which KCRW has arguably made core to its id.
Over the previous yr and a half, the group has steadily expanded its reside footprint to over 1,000 annual occasions, considerably scaling up each its outdoor public series and intimate studio sessions, together with sponsored film and TV screenings, grub-related gatherings related to Good Meals, and partnerships with museums, cultural establishments, and native companies across the metropolis.
“We like being this fulcrum locally, serving to out these bars, eating places and occasional outlets that basically form of make a neighborhood a neighborhood,” Ferro says.
Whereas KCRW has at all times strived to be a convener of L.A. residents, Ferro says, the group actually stepped up in the course of the Southern California wildfires again in January 2025.
Lasting over three devastating weeks, the fires finally sorted a lot of the space’s residents into two teams: those that had been immediately affected and wanted assist, and people who weren’t however wished to assist. Each teams had been determined for dependable data, a void KCRW stuffed. The broadcaster grew to become concurrently a hub for civic information, a neighborhood organizer, and a cultural aid operation.
The crew at KCRW created hyperlocal dedicated resource pages, which they stored up to date all through the disaster and restoration interval. Additionally they put collectively KCRW Music Relief, providing focused assist for native musicians who make the sorts of tunes that shade KCRW’s programming, and injected some positivity in a darkish time by accumulating and sharing fan-made Love Letters to LA.
Between its catastrophe aid efforts and strong live-events slate over the previous 18 months, KCRW hasn’t simply been reporting on, guiding, or entertaining the neighborhood; it’s been a load-bearing a part of it.
A replicable technique for public media success
In fact, whilst KCRW has pivoted to cope with the brand new actuality, it was unable to keep away from some fallout from the collapse of federal funding.
“As soon as the rescission occurred, we knew that cash was by no means coming again,” Ferro says. “It was fairly one-to-one: We misplaced $1.3 million, and so we decreased our bills by $1.3 million.”
As a part of that discount, KCRW cut 10% of its staff final October, becoming a member of the ranks of public media retailers incurring layoffs up to now yr.
Simply 9 months later, although, the outlook at KCRW is already brighter.
Now that bills are below management, a current 22% enhance in membership and substantial development in subscriber donations affirm the corporate’s current technique is working. The success doesn’t essentially appear restricted to a serious metropolis like L.A., both. Forging extra intimate connections between programming and followers, broadening additional past radio, and partnering with manufacturers and native venues for reside occasions might be a profitable playbook for almost any public media channel trying to show its indispensability.
Whether or not it’s guiding individuals via powerful occasions or bringing them collectively to have a good time, retailers like KCRW have currently been exhibiting off the vary of what they’ve to supply.
As Ferro says, “I believe placing a goal on public broadcasting final yr reminded individuals how helpful it’s to have these public assets of their lives.”
