Jerry WarehamThese are nervous times at the area's public broadcasting stations. The budget bill passed this month by the U.S. House of Representatives would cut $61 billion in federal spending, including the $430 million allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
About 70 percent of that CPB money is channeled to the nation's public radio and television stations. And Northeast Ohio's public broadcasters say the loss of that funding would have a devastating effect.
"We're obviously very concerned," said Jerry Wareham, the president and chief executive officer of Ideastream, the corporate umbrella over Cleveland's WVIZ Channel 25 and WCPN FM/90.3.
"In this environment, every program should and must undergo some degree of review and scrutiny. There's nothing wrong with that. But this funding is so integral to how the system works, its loss would fundamentally change the character of the system."
Backers of the cuts cite a number of issues, ranging from deficit reduction and alleged liberal bias in some programming to a belief that broadcasting should be subject to market conditions. Supporters of public broadcasting have an equally diverse array of arguments in favor, and say the system produces education-based programming unavailable anywhere else.
Ideastream receives a little more than $2 million a year from the CPB -- $1.7 million for Channel 25 and $370,000 for WCPN. That represents about 10 percent of its $19.75 million annual unrestricted operating budget. The rest of the money for public stations comes from membership drives, corporate and foundation grants and state funds, sources that also tend to shrink in a bad economy.
"People ask me, 'Why do you care so much? It's only 10 percent of your budget,' " Wareham said. "My answer is that I'm about 5-foot-10-inches tall, and if I were 10 percent shorter, I would be about 5-foot-3. You would notice that.
"It doesn't mean I would disappear, but I would be diminished. I would be less noticeable."
The concerns among area public broadcasting executives range from the system being seriously diminished to being endangered.
Nationally, CPB funds represent 15 percent of public stations' annual operating budgets. At stations in large cities or with substantial endowments, that figure can be as low as 7 percent. At stations in small cities and rural areas, it can be as high as 40 percent.
Kent-based Western Reserve Public Media (WNEO Channel 45/WEAO Channel 49) receives $900,000 a year from the CPB. That represents 18 percent of its $5 million annual operating budget.
Trina Cutter"We pay $1.2 million a year to PBS for programming, so if we don't get that $900,000, we're short," said Trina Cutter, Western Reserve's president and chief executive officer. "Try sawing off one of the legs of your table. If you saw off one of those legs, you wouldn't be able to carry anything of weight on it. It would fall. And that's what I'm afraid is going to happen."
Cutter isn't afraid of just individual stations falling without CPB funds. She's worried about the whole public broadcasting system going down.
"The falling-domino effect will be devastating," Cutter said. "If we don't get the CPB money, we don't pay the PBS bill. We don't pay the PBS bill, we don't get PBS programming. And if we don't get PBS programming, it's not as if there are discretionary funds to get programming from somewhere else."
There would be more falling dominoes out there.
"The ongoing regular operating support is 10 percent, but that doesn't begin to tell the whole story," Wareham said. "CPB grants pay for all kinds of individual initiatives. They help fund national programs like 'Nova,' 'Sesame Street' and 'Masterpiece.' They pay for the interconnection that ties the entire system together and allows us to exchange programs.
"The funding is seminal, not only because it's often the basis and the stimulus for additional funding, but because it's the glue that holds the system together."
The loss of CPB funding would create a double-edge sword, undercutting public broadcasting in two directions. If more public stations can't pay for national programming, the cost of that programming will go up for others. And without CPB support of that programming, the cost again must increase.
Mark Urycki"If they raise the prices for the shows, fewer stations will able to afford them," said Mark Urycki, program director at Kent public radio station WKSU FM/89.7. "And then they'll need to raise the prices even more, just to produce the show. Then the downward spiral is deadly."
WKSU receives $354,000 a year from the CPB, about 9 percent of its $4 million budget.
The elimination of CPB funding is far from certain. The budget battle moves to the Senate this week, and the White House version of the budget includes funding for public broadcasting. But if the cuts go through, the outlook will be bleak for many, if not all, public stations.
"We are such a lean operation, we just don't have a lot of waste here," Urycki said. "It would be a killer to overcome, because there's not another revenue stream out there right now. Our listeners have been very generous, but our corporate underwriting support has shrunk dramatically over the last two years."
That's the problem for many public stations -- no realistic financial options.
"We don't have an endowment," Cutter said. "We're restricted from taking advertising dollars by the FCC. The underwriting money has dried up. I'm trying to look at what our options are, and it's a scary place to be."