Why You Should Act Now to Help Save Public Media with Alice Ferris

There is an urgent threat facing public media in the United States: a proposed federal budget cut that would not only threaten its future, but also "claw back" funding that's already been awarded to public television and radio stations across the country.

Read the transcript and notes for this episode on our website.

Adrian McIntyre opens with a personal anecdote about the impact of public media on his family, setting the stage for a critical discussion on the ramifications of potential funding cuts. Alice Ferris and Abbie Fink discuss the wide-ranging implications for communities that rely on the rich tapestry of content and services provided by public media.

Defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will have far-reaching negative effects. Alice explains how public media also provides educational resources for classroom teachers and the national emergency alert system. She highlights the importance of localized storytelling and the unique programming offered by regional stations in rural and tribal areas.

Contrary to the Trump Administration's claims, research shows that public media outlets like PBS and NPR are highly trusted and respected by the majority of Americans.

Alice urges us all to reflect on our personal connections to public media and the pivotal role it plays in community and cultural education, and then to take action to voice our support.

Here's what you can do RIGHT NOW: go to Protect My Public Media or the American Coalition for Public Radio, where you'll find fast, simple ways to contact your congressional representatives and urge them to save your public media stations.

Key Takeaways

• Public media faces a significant threat due to proposed federal funding cuts that aim to reclaim previously allocated budgets.
• Public media is a vital national resource, offering educational tools and content to enrich classroom learning experiences, as well as the emergency alert system.
• Local public media stations, particularly in rural and underserved areas, would be severely impacted, risking the loss of crucial community-based programming and services.
• The defunding proposal is part of a larger attack on fact-based news reporting by the current administration, which perceives NPR and PBS as biased against the President--despite recent scientific studies proving their trustworthiness and value.
• YOU can take action TODAY to help save public media, and we encourage you to contact your congressional representatives via ProtectMyPublicMedia.org

About the Guest

Alice L. Ferris, MBA, CFRE, ACFRE, is founding partner of GoalBusters Consulting with over 30 years of fundraising experience, specializing in strategic planning, campaign development, and public media support. She got her start at PBS Wisconsin, blowing bubbles during Lawrence Welk Show pledge breaks, and now appears on-air for Arizona PBS and national PBS fundraising programs, including Masterpiece. Alice teaches at the University of Denver and is an Associate Member of Rogare, the international fundraising think tank. She also hosts epic Chinese New Year parties, is a slow runner, and is a retired competition ballroom dancer.

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Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Itcouldbe theend o"fpublicmediaaswe as we know it." That's
the banner I read just lastnight. I was sitting with my 10 year
old son, and we were talkingabout the language in Mark Twain's
HuckleberryFinnneveractuallythoughtaboutwhatoursortofparentpointofviewwouldbeabout,thatthereare our

(00:25):
"parent point of view" wouldbe about that. There are racist slurs
in the book. It's also aclassic of American literature. And
so I did what every goodparent does: I Googled to find out
if anybody was talking aboutan updated or modernized version

(00:45):
of this book. endedup onthewebsiteforNationalPublic Radio.
Radio. There was a story frommany years ago, 20 11, about whether
or not Mark Twain's languageshould be changed. And my 10 year
old and I listened to thestory--on my smartphone, in 20 25--and
we heard passionate argumentsfor and against. People called in.

(01:10):
An English professor pointofview. Apersonwho hadreadthe bookinhighschoolhadanotherpointof.Andweloved
point of view.Welovedtheopportunityto hearthat
information.And to hear thatinformation. I scrolled down, and
at the end be the page wasthis stark warning: "It could be

(01:37):
the end of public media as weknow it." And it went on. "The White
House has issued a memorandumasking Congress to claw back funds
that have already beenappropriated for the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting. Ifapproved, American txpayersgetlittletonosavingsanda,
"ie

(02:02):
I am stunned that we're havinga conversation like this. I can't
think of a single person thathas not at some point quoted something
from Sesame Street, Mr. RogersNeighborhood, Electric Company, "I'm
only a bill on Capitol Hill."I mean, I still sing that song when
I'm talking about something todo with our elected process. And

(02:23):
yet the current administrationis trying to take away what public
broadcasting is. I think, forso many people, they take it for
granted. They know that it'sthere. They may not completely understand
how we have it, how it'sfunded. They might thechannelandsee
the programmingandtheaskingfor financialsupport.But alotofus

(02:44):
probablyjustknowit'salwaysgoingto bethere.And
IwasasIamknowntodo And as I ambeforeIgoto sleep, I'mscrolling throughsocialmediaand
IhappenedonLinkedIntoseeavideoaboutreallytheimportanceofprotectingpublicmedia.SoI the

(03:04):
toAliceFarrisandsaid,hey,would youjoinus onthepodcastandtalkalittlebit
and said, "hey, would you joinus on the podcast and talk a little
bit about this?" That waswasavailableandcouldjoinus totalkaboutit.
Alice,thankyouforcomingonandtokindofgettheconversationstarted. Ifyou
couldshare alittlebitaboutyourselfand you for coming on.

(03:27):
To get for you.,i
Well, thank you, Abbie, forthe invitation. I really do appreciate
it. And as you mentioned, I'mAlice Ferris. I am the founding partner
of GoalBusters Consultingbased in Flagstaff, Arizona. havebeenworkingsomehowwithpublic
public media for about 35years. It thosethingsthat hasbeenalifelongpassionofmine,butalso

(03:50):
hasbeen kindoftheonecommonthreadofmyentireprofessionalcareer.Istarted atWisconsinPublicTelevision,whichisnowknownasPBSWisconsin,andIhaveneverlost
my affiliationwitha stationor2or3 or10.SoI'vebeenworkinginpublicmediafora

(04:11):
verylongtime.
And as Adrian said in theintroduction, ublicmediarightnow
now is on the chopping block.It's one of the things that our administration
is looking at forelimination--reduction or fromafederalperspective,whichis
challenginginandofitself.Butit'sgoingtoput,youknow,theonuson It's
going to put the onus on thelocal stations to fundraise communityand

(04:40):
itissomuchmorethancanyoutellmehowto gettoSesame Street?Right?
There is much more than, "canyou tell me how to get to Sesame
Street," right? There is somuch your personalpassion andyourprofessionalcareer
forsolong,tellusmoreabouttheroleofpublicmediaandwhyitissoimportant for

(05:00):
ustoprotectthisimportantpartof ourcommunicationchannels.
Well, first of all, publicmedia has been under attack before.
There have been consistentperiodcattemptsto reduceoreliminatefederalfundingforpublicmedia.And
media. And every single timein the 35 year association I've ithasbeendefeatedinthe

(05:24):
pastbecausepeoplejustlikethethreeofuswouldgooutthereandsay,wait,Ilove publicmedia
and here'show I've "wait, Ilove public media and here's how
I've used it in my own life."And Congress, congressional representatives,
have responded with, "ofcourse, you're right. firsttimethatI

(05:44):
really too." I think this timefeels different. This is the first
time that I really have feltthat there is a possibility that
federal funding would beeliminated for the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting, whichupportspublictelevisionand and radio
stations across the country.And part thestrategythatwasusedthis

(06:10):
time was used this time is farmore focused, far more draconian--because
they have never, eversuggested giving back the SobeforeIkindofgetinto
been allocated. So before Iget into Iwanttoaddresstheotherpartof
yourquestion,whichisthe,hey,whyis thisimportant?And

(06:34):
it's notjust question, whichis, "hey, thinkthat's important?"
And that can bechallenging,programming. Because forsolongabout
the medium thatispublictelevisionorthemedium that
is publicradio. Soit's the,oh,Iheard thaton nprormy kidsloveSesamestreet,orinthiscase,my

(06:59):
kidsloveDanielTiger it's the,"oh, otherprogram on NPR," or "my
kids love Sesame street," orin this case, "my kids love Daniel
Tiger" or whatever the otherprogram is. I also hear, "hey, I
listen or watch the PBS NewsHour every weekday." So those are

(07:22):
the kinds of things that wetypically will hear that are very
programming focused. But whatpeople underestimate is, first of
all, public broadcastingstations tend to be that backbone
for other services that arebeing provided. So, for instance,
if you're a teacher in aclassroom and you are teaching about

(07:46):
a particular topic, say, forinstance, the American Revolution
and the 250th anniversary ofthe American Revolution, where do
you get the teaching tools tobe able to share information about
that in the classroom? Well, Iwill bet that coming up this fall,
there will be classrooms thatare showing pieces of Ken Burns American

(08:10):
Revolution documentary, whichwill be released in the fall. I've
had the privilege of seeingthe opening act, the preamble, as
he likes to call it, of theAmerican Revolution film. I got chills.
It was amazing. It was .. ""
Alice, I grew up in a radiostation--not a public media station,

(08:31):
but an independent nonprofitstation that was down in the low
end of the FM dial, just acouple of clicks or analog dial twists
away from the affiliatestation in my area. And I grew up
with the tone of the EmergencyBroadcast System. And you're so right.
What people don't understandis anationalinfrastructurethatincludescivildefenseandpreparedness,emergencyresponse,andincludessomanythings.

(09:00):
And it'smorethanjustanoutdatedlegacy aspectofourpublic
safetyandinformation.Itisacriticalpartoftheway information.
It is a elsetoreplaceit.Ijustdon't thinkwerealize.I'msogladyou're
bringingupthispointthatthisgoesbeyondtheprogramming.Thisisn't aboutBig

(09:22):
up this point that this goesbeyond the programming. This isn't
about Big Bird. This isn'tabout, you know
Yeah, I agree with that.
And so much of, for those ofus that grew up this way, it is so
much a part of our history ofhow we learned certain things. And
I, you know, your point aboutthe use of this content and the programming

(09:45):
in the classroom. On our mostrecent episode, we were talking about
the Arizona MediaAssociation's investment in education
reporters at our mediaoutlets, you know, and specifically
to talk about educationsolutions. And it's because we are
not able to provide the typesof things we need for our education
system. So teachers havealternativewaystogetinformation andteaching

(10:10):
toolsthatallowthemtosharevaluable information,documentaryprogramsandotherthings.Andso
whatwillmovepeople What willmove people to be compelled to call
know, dothatis,you know,wehaveto you know, we have to find
them careaboutwhatthis is.But,youknow,broadcasting systemsbeenaroundfor

(10:31):
what,30, But the broadcastingsystem has i
Over 50 years.
Yeah. And so many of us havegrown up with that being part of
our after-school or ourweekend programming. And yet we know
there are other things that wejust don't understand or didn't realize
that it was there. owhatis isdriving this? There's been discussionsaboutbudgetcutsandotherthings,

(10:53):
fundingissueswith,youknow,thatare beingtalkedaboutacrossthiscurrentadministration.Butwhydoyouthinkthey'repinpointingpublic
broadcasting? Imean,whyisthissucha,andwhyhasitbeeninthepastsuchan easy
a ... and why has it been inembedded andleft easy mark? Why isn
It's an interesting question.Fundamentally it comes down to a

(11:15):
problem that in many respectspublic media, non-commercial stations,
have created themselves, whichis ... the target is actually PBS
and NPR and thisadministration's irritation with
what they consider "biasedleftist media." There have been national

(11:37):
studies, scientificallyfromuniversities,asrecentlypublishedasAprilof2025, April
of 20 25,PBSandNPRcontinuetobesomeofthemosttrustednewsentitiesin thecountryandthat
theseentitiesareperceivedasbeingvaluabletopeople's informationconsumptionandalsobeingtrustednewssources.Sothisidea

(12:03):
oftrustandcommunitytrustandpublictrust isreallyembeddedintopublicmediajournalism.
However,this is reallyembedded into public media journalism.
However, thisAndsothat'spartoftheattack.It isthe"I'mgoing
tosilence to the president,and so that's part of the attack.

(12:26):
It is the "I'm going tosilence the media that continually
points out things that maybe Idon't want people to hear about."
And then back to the situationwe've created on our own, is that
the vast majority of publicmedia stations, radio and television,

(12:46):
are affiliated with either NPRor PBS. Not every, as Adrian already
mentioned, not every nonprofitradio station or television station
is actually affiliated withNPR or PBS. But they could potentially
be getting funding throughtheCorporationforPublic for Public

(13:07):
Broadcasting. Because the waythe Corporation for Public Broadcasting
works is that they are in anindependent corporation that happened
to be chartered by the UnitedStates government. However, they
are an independentcorporation, so they can function
similar to any other nonprofitorganization. And the way they are

(13:32):
funded is that they get anallocation from Congress, from the
federal budget, that issupposed to be forward-funded two
years. And this specificallywas put into the incorporation, the
declaration of creating theCorporation, because they wanted
to insulate the Corporationfor Public Broadcasting from political

(13:56):
influence. So if they had anability to protect that money, essentially
forward funding at two years,then in theory they could weather
some of these challengesthrough various administrations.
And the times that the CPB hascome under attack have almost always
been under Republicanadministrations. And most of the

(14:20):
time plentyofpeople whowereonthe were on the Republican side of
the aisle who would say, "No,I appreciate public media in my community,"
especially those districtsthat were very rural or just very
disconnected from other majormetropolitan areas, or had high levels

(14:43):
of indigenous or diversepopulations. Because they know how
important the public mediaentity is in their community to share
the stories of their localcommunity. What's different this
time is thg
Well, and we've seen a similarthing happen in science research.
The National ScienceFoundation, the National Institutes

(15:05):
for Health, researchers withgrants funded in part, often a large
part, but in part withgovernment funds, have had their
programs stopped abruptly,their research frozen. And I just
don't know that we have a wayto think about the dimensions of

(15:26):
the down-side impact here.More than yearsago,Iwas I was living
in the Middle Eastworkingtotrytobring awareness topovertywarasa
to poverty, war, as a mediarelations spokesperson. And particularly
in Darfur, in western Sudan,the get peopletojust wraptheirheads

(15:48):
around thescaleofthiscrisis.Imean,itwassobig,somanypeople this
crisis. I mean, it waswerealways many people displaced
by the conflict. We werealways looking for metaphors or ofDarfurisaslargeasthestateofTexas.We'retalkingabouta

(16:09):
vastlandscape.OronetimeIwasspeakingliveontheBBC fromthemiddleof
arefugeecamp, about a vastlandscape. Or one BBCRadioOxford,andI
wouldsay,youknow,I'mstandingin themiddleofa.Ofacamp,and
there say, this was BBC RadioOxford, and I would say, "I'm townofOxford,including

(16:29):
of a camp, and there areSowe'realwayslookingfor waystotryto
getthe scaleacross.Idon'tthinkwe havegoodlanguagetotalk
of Oxford, including thecolleges." Things of gets nature.
So we're always looking forways to try to get the scale across.
I don't think we Alice,thinkaboutthescaleofwhat'sbeingthreatened?

(16:56):
In many respects, I don'tnecessarily think about the national
scale of it as much. I thinkabout the personal impacts. And so,
for instance, KUYI Hopi Radioin Kiqötsmovi, Arizona. The vast
majority of their budget foroperating radiostationcomes fromtheirTCorporationforPublicBroadcastinggrant.AndwhatKuyi

(17:27):
And what KUYI does is thatthey are the local voice for the
Hopi nation. If you are in aschool bus as a kid driving to school,
they are probably playing KUYIon that school bus. And they are

(17:50):
learning their native languagebecause they have the Hopi Lavayi
program that talks about theHopi language and teaches them, "here's
the word of the day," andthat's as they're driving on the
bus to go to school. If theHopi Foundation, which NavajoPublicRadioinTubaCityis

(18:13):
inasimilar I don't know wherethey would come up with the money
to replace that money thatkeeps the station on the air. KGHR
Navajo Public Radio in TubaCity is in a similar situation where
they're licensed to GreyillsAcademy.So it'sahigh high school.

(18:37):
Wheretheyfind$100,000outofthinair to replacethemoneythat
runsthatstation?And forKAWCisabout$200,000ayear.TheirCorporationforPublicBroadcastingGrantisabout$200,000ayear.Soifyouaskedme,howamIgoingtodoublefundraisingbetweennowandOctober,Icouldn'tgiveyouananswer.Imean,ifIknewhowtodoublefundraising,Iwouldhavedoneitbynow.

(19:07):
True.
We know that we could keep thestation on the air, because the station
is licensed to Arizona WesternCollege and they are very supportive
of having a public radiostation. We can keep KAWC on the
air. But what immediately getsimpacted if we lose the CPB grant
is the quality of the contentthat comes out of that radio signal.

(19:28):
As you said, if you knew howto double the amount of money you
fundraised, you'd have done italready, right? And there are large
and small organizations thatwhen you think about public broadcasting,
you have some larger entitiesin the major metropolitan cities
that maybe have a little bitmore influence in terms of their
fundraising efforts and theirdonation drives and some of those
other things. Buteven that,it's a very, in the larger context
of fundraising in today'sworld, it's difficult regardless
of what we're trying togenerate contributions from. And
that's a long term solution towhat's happening right away. AndI
think your earlier pointabout, you know, this has always
been a forward thinkingfunding program, right. That right
now in 20 25, we are lookingat what monies we'd be getting in
'27 and '28. So we have timeto plan. We have opportunities to
evaluate our resources, putfundraising plans in place, whatever
that might be. If it isthispotentialto havetogiveitback,whichisheartbreakingto
thinkaboutbecauseheartbreaking to think about because
it is ... It's going impactthethe delivery of the product. It's
going to impact theindividuals that are working there.
It is a much bigger discussionaround, you know, what we as consumers
see. This is a whole otherthing that's going to be happening.
And so as we're thinking aboutthis conversation and, you know,
if we all agree of theimportance of what public media is
to our communities and theimpact that it can have in large
and small communities acrossour state, what do we do? What is
our role as consumers ofwemake adifferenceinthisdiscussion?W

(21:24):
I think, number one is tothink about how you personally use
public media. And I want totake the national programming off
the table for you. I want tochallenge you to think about what
does your local stationprovide to you? Maybe it's, "I love
watching Horizon on ArizonaPBS, because Ted Simons is going

(21:46):
to tell me somethinginsightful about something that's
going on at the Capitol." Ormaybe it's, "hey, I listen to KJZZ
and I am a big fan of TheShow,"and I heard this one feature
on something going on inTempe." Or maybe it's like I mentioned

(22:07):
the indigenous stations. Maybeit's, in KAWC's case, we're doing
the KAWC student newsroom,where, because news deserts,we'retrying
togrowourownjournalists.We'retryingtotrain own
journalists. We're trying totrain young people who have never

(22:31):
even thought about journalismas a career to become reporters because
they're already embedded inthe community. They already understand
what it's like to live insouthwestern Arizona near the US
Mexico border. I want you tothink about the local service that

(22:53):
you are getting from yourpublic media entity. And then if
you go toProtectMyPublicMedia.org, there is
a link there to reach out toyour congressional delegation and
to say, here's what'simportant to me about public media,
because theywill--maybe--listen to their constituents

(23:16):
when they say it's important.But the reason I want to take the
national stuff off the tableis that that's been the focus, that
national programming. Theattacks on NPR and PBS have been
the way that we've gotten thisfar with this threat, this existential

(23:36):
threat agai.I, ,
Thanks for listening to thisepisode of Copper State of Mind.
If you enjoyed theconversation, please share it with
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(23:56):
State of Mind in ApplePodcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast
app. We publish new episodesevery other Friday. Copper State
of Mind is brought to you byHMA Public Relations, the oldest
continuously operating PR firmin Arizona. The show is recorded
and produced by the team atSpeed of Story, a B2B communications

(24:18):
firm in Phoenix, anddistributed by PHX.fm, the leading
independent B2B podcastnetwork in Arizona. For all of us
here at Speed of Story andPHX.fm, I'm Adrian McIntyre. Thanks
for listening and for sharingthe show with others if you choose
to do so. We hope you'll joinus again for another episode of Copper

(24:38):
State of Mind.