“This is going to be hard”: Texas public radio stations fighting to stay on the air after budget cuts

Subscribe to The Y’all — a weekly dispatch about the people, places and policies defining Texas, produced by Texas Tribune journalists living in communities across the state.

---

LUBBOCK — When Congress passed President Donald Trump’s wish to cut funding to public media radio stations, chaos erupted around the nation. Social media pages were flooded with outrage that NPR and PBS stations were in jeopardy.

In Lubbock, the biggest city on the South Plains, reporters at Texas Tech Public Media — the city’s NPR outlet — were focused on a story about a different program that lost its funding. The three-person news team knew their jobs could be on the line, but they didn’t have time to react. The reporters were busy producing the news so that the community would know by morning how the loss could impact the lives of Lubbock residents.

“We are going to continue doing everything we can for as long as we can,” Brad Burt, lead reporter for the station, told The Texas Tribune in August. “Things will be weird for a while, but it’s going to be the best we can make it.”

The 30 public radio stations streaming to millions of Texas listeners are under more duress than ever, facing unprecedented budget cuts. The federal funding these stations traditionally relied on will not arrive again after Congress passed its sweeping spending bill — largely based on Trump’s agenda — earlier this summer. One estimate from U.S. Senate Democrats suggested Texas public radio and TV stations could lose a total of $17.7 million.

Station directors told The Texas Tribune they can’t be sure how severe the consequences of the funding cuts will be. What they do know is that they’ll refuse to limit programming or resort to layoffs until they can be certain that they can’t make up the deficit.

“This is going to be hard,” said Corrie MacLaggan, executive editor of KUT and The Texas Newsroom, which coordinates collaboration among public radio stations. “Stations are looking at freezing their positions; they’re scouring expenses. We’re not cowering in a corner.”

Public broadcasters have always been strict about spending money, said Julie Grimes, general manager of Panhandle PBS, which lost about a million dollars. And stations such as hers have always turned to the public for support. Now, she said, stations must figure out how to make up for the losses without wearing out financial supporters.

“Stations were never intended to be completely dependent on federal funding,” she said. “The more existential crisis is how we continue to be relevant.”

Radio stations from Abilene to Marfa are racing against time to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to make up the deficit before they have to resort to cuts of their own.

Marfa Public Radio broadcasts throughout the Big Bend region and the Permian Basin, 30,000 square miles in West Texas, the state’s oil and gas-rich region. Few other stations in the state can match its reach. It takes five transmitter stations, a tower-like structure that transports the signal from Marfa to the towns of Fort Davis, Alpine, Marathon, Presidio, Fort Stockton, Midland and Odessa. Through the airwaves, one reporter covers local, state and national news. Nearly 30 volunteer local DJs host local music programs.

The endeavor is costly. Maintaining the towers, broadcasting equipment, programming and reporting alone can cost more than $460,000 — nearly a third of their funding, said Anne Pitts Marozas, executive director of Marfa Public Radio. And the money the station typically relied on to pay for that work is gone.

The morning after Congress passed the bill, the station deployed an emergency fundraiser. So far, it has raised $250,000. In November, the station will hold a gala, its biggest fundraising event. Marozas said she does not plan on cutting programs or fire her six employees. She hopes to persuade more individual and corporate donors to replace the lost money. Should the station fail, she said, multiple remote and rural communities could lose the one remaining access to information.

A beacon of West Texas culture, Marfa Public Radio has extensively documented the area’s historical roots. The work has earned them prestigious accolades, such as national and regional Edward Murrow awards.

“If Marfa Public Radio did not exist, there would be news deserts throughout this area,” Marozas said. “And there would certainly be a huge cultural gap that would exist because of the cultural storytelling and the music programs that we provide that reach far and wide across West Texas.”

In Abilene, Heather Claborn hopes that by May of next year, the station can recover the $154,000 it lost — nearly a third of her budget. Claborn, the general manager and news director of KACU, employs four people to fundraise and run daily operations. She also pays eight to twelve students every year to help report the news. They’ve won awards for their work at the station. In April, the station premiered the West Texas Dispatch, a show dedicated to covering Abilene and West Texas.

“Our current plan is to keep working on the fundraising aspect,” Claborn said. “And if we get through the October fundraiser and it's not keeping up with what we're needing, that would be when we would look at reducing costs a little bit more.”

They have received discounts from the national NPR offices on certain programming, a relief on their expenses. Claborn said she hopes to raise at least $50,000 by October during an on-air plea. She also hopes to raise additional money from foundations and wealthy families. But she faces another challenge: The information those donors tend to require to make decisions, such as the precise number of listeners, is not available because survey companies stopped conducting research in Abilene.

“I'm not the kind of person who is easily discouraged, so I'm just continuing to fight to make sure that we can continue to serve this community, and I'm optimistic,” she said. “I'm hopeful that our community will step forward and help us to create a new way to fund public broadcasting for the long term.”

Back in Lubbock, Texas Tech Public Media is used to working with a skeleton crew.

Last year, layoffs gutted the production crew and local programming. The station in El Paso is under the same umbrella, and the Lubbock team tries to cover what they can for that area, too.

The team said it’s a lot to manage. When the measles outbreak took over the region earlier this year, they were at the front lines of coverage — using their own vehicles to drive to Seminole, an hour away, and back in time to deliver the news. Car rentals are not in the station’s budget.

“When something of that scale happens, we have to be a well-oiled machine,” said Samantha Larned, another reporter for the Lubbock station.

Burt, the lead reporter at the station, said they have managed by having good relationships with other public media stations across the region and in Kansas and Oklahoma.

When it comes to finances, Burt said the university has helped on the operational side. It helps cover the $2 million they lost in grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They have gotten an outpouring of support from the community, including people in areas without broadband connections who rely on them during emergencies. However, they will have to start paying to have NPR shows in their rotation.

Burt said they have learned to roll with the punches. He’s confident they will be able to keep putting out news their readers depend on. At least, for now.

“We plan to keep doing this for as long as we still have power to the studio,” Burt said.

---

Three featured TribFest speakers confirmed! You don’t want to miss ​​Deb Haaland, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and 2026 Democratic candidate for New Mexico governor; state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston and 2026 Republican candidate for Texas Attorney General; and Jake Tapper, anchor of CNN’s “The Lead” and “State of the Union” at the 15th annual Texas Tribune Festival, Nov. 13–15 in downtown Austin. Get your tickets today!

TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.