Jul 18, 2025 - Business
How federal cuts will hit public TV and radio in New Orleans
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Congress voted to cut nearly $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, marking a devastating blow for PBS and NPR.
Why it matters: The cuts will have a significant impact on local stations that rely on federal money to survive.
Zoom in: Louisiana's public broadcasting networks received CPB grants totaling $4.6 million in 2023, according to CPB documents.
- Statewide, the CPB cuts hit TV and radio stations in Monroe, Shreveport, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Lafayette, Alexandria and Hammond.
- In New Orleans and Metairie, that includes WWOZ, local NPR affiliate WWNO, WLAE and PBS member station WYES.
State of play: Local stations like these are typically heavily reliant on CPB funding.
- WWNO station manager Paul Maassen tells Axios New Orleans the cuts represent about 9% of the station's budget. "It's also important to help us attract support from other funders," he wrote in an email. "We use it for local productions and to purchase some national programs, so this has the potential to impact what we can offer in [our] programming schedule."
The big picture: While the cuts target NPR and PBS, the national organizations won't feel much of the impact.
- Only around 1% and 15% of NPR's and PBS' national revenue comes through CPB, respectively.
- The majority of federal funding is allocated to local member stations, which use it for day-to-day operations.
- Those stations are often the only sources of local news programming in rural communities amid a steady decline of local newspapers.
Go deeper: How the bill got passed