Stand with the facts. Stand up for NPR Illinois 91.9 UIS and the public media system!

Updated July 18, 2025, 5 p.m.

Reality is settling in that NPR Illinois will have 12% less operating revenue beginning October 1, 2025. The U.S. Senate and House both passed the President Trump administration's rescission request. Thank you for you efforts to prevent federal defunding. Our national legislators' staffs said this issue was the highest volume of constituent outreach they have experienced recently.

The federal funding already appropriated by Congress for FY 2026 and FY2027 to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS stations has been rescinded.

NPR Illinois assesses the future after federal defunding

Listen/read this special Community Voices segment with station management discussing the path forward for NPR Illinois.

How can you help?

Read on to learn how NPR Illinois and other public media plan to adapt to federal defunding.

Donate

The community has invested in NPR Illinois for 50 years. It's a cultural asset, like a museum, park, or landmark. Let's make sure we maintain it and provide the resources for it to thrive and continue to inform, entertain, and convene the community. CPB funding to NPR Illinois goes beyond the grant to include music licenses and interconnection. NPR estimates NPR Illinois will have to raise $423,421 this year to replace it. There are several ways to donate and close this gap:

1. Become a new donor (or recruit some) - It's time to increase the percentage of the audience that donates above 10%.
2. Convert to the Calendar Club - Many donors consistently make one or more donations each year, but with automatic monthly giving we see how much to expect and budget more accurately while reducing the, "I thought I gave last year, I meant to..." occurrences.
3. Make a major gift - Make an appointment with development director Kate McKenzie (kate.mckenzie@uis.edu 217-206-6094) to discuss what you would like to achieve with your giving. A major gift is $25,000+ and can be done in installments (e.g.: $5,000/year for 5 years). A mid-level gift is also helpful which is between $1,000 and $24,999. Many retirement funds reach RMD status, where required minimal disbursement is needed. There are a lot of ways to make an impact that Kate can review with you. Our general manager, Randy Eccles, has a ennunciated a fever dream where NPR Illinois donors create a $50-million endowment which is tha amount that would produce in interest what it takes to operate the station annually.
4. Set up a planned gift - Most NPR Illinois supporters have the capacity to commit to a planned estate gift. If you are a long time annual donor, this will carry your impact into the future. Kate can assist with this, too.
5. Sponsorship - Do you have a business or employer that needs to get the word out? Make a donation and receive acknowledgement announcements on-air, at nprillinois.org, and in the NPR Illinois Daily newsletter. Starter packages begin at $2,500 and businesses have given as much as $200,000. Until we hire sponsorship account executives, contact Randy Eccles (randy.eccles@nprillinois.org 217-206-6403) to explore this option.

Contact

Contact your state representative and senator to let them know you value your public media station and ask them to increase the PRTV line-item in the Illinois Arts Council budget to $12 million annually from the current $2 million, calls are most effective, even if you leave a message:

• Illinois General Assembly - Find My Legislator

Continue to let national legislators know that public media funding is important:

U.S. Senate

• Richard Durbin (D-IL), Springfield 217-492-4062, DC 202-224-2152
• Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Springfield 217-528-6124,DC 202-224-2854

U.S. House of Representatives

• Nikki Budzinski (D-IL, 13th), Springfield 217-814-2880, DC 202-225-2371
• Mary Miller (R-IL, 15th), Quincy 217-640-6210, DC 202-225-5271

You can learn more about how to make your voice heard by visiting ProtectMyPublicMedia.org. Protect My Public Media provides resources and information to help you contact members of Congress and share your thoughts about public radio in central Illinois.

Share

Proudly share your support for public radio, and encourage your friends to support us, too. In conversations and on social media. Follow the NPR Illinois social media channels (under the headline above). You can also receive updates by subscribing to the NPR Illinois Daily newsletter.

What's the latest update?

• Congress sends bill cutting public media and foreign aid funding to Trump - July 18, 2025
• Senate passes rescission bill, back to house next - July 17, 2025
• House votes to claw back $1.1 billion from public media - June 12, 2025.
• Court recognizes CPB's independence; board members remain - June 8, 2025.
• Rescission Request: On June 3, the White House submitted a rescission request to Congress. If approved, the request would rescind funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) previously authorized by Congress.
• Executive Order: President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order attempting to block the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) from distributing federal funds to PBS and NPR, as he alleged “bias” in the broadcasters’ reporting.

Here are six things to know about public media and federal funding:

1. Public media reaches nearly 99% of the United States, including the most remote communities, with high-quality, non-commercial programming and services every day.
2. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is in limbo, but served as an independent nonprofit that distributed federal dollars (an average of $1.60 per person annually) to local stations. Federal funding for public media accounted for 0.01% of all government spending. This money was used to invest in programming and services according to each community’s needs.
3. In FY 2024, 12% of NPR Illinois' annual funding came from CPB. 
4. CPB funding allowed public media stations to pool resources towards satellite interconnection, emergency alert systems, music licensing and development of educational programs, all of which are too expensive for stations to do on their own and may reduce the local programs and services stations provide.
5. Federal defunding will harm stations and end services to many rural areas without broadband that depend on it. In some rural areas, public radio is the only local source of news, weather, emergency alerts, and other critical information. As stations are unable to contribute to the network, aggregated resources will be diminished and weaken the public media system. It will hurt other Illinois public media stations that we collaborate with to report on Illinois.
6. Learn more about funding and public media at Protect My Public Media.

What role did the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) play in public media and broadcasting?

CPB was distinct from NPR and PBS. It was not a broadcaster, producer, or distributor but a private, nonprofit corporation authorized by Congress in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 to support other public radio and television entities. Its two primary functions were to serve as a firewall between politics and public broadcasting and to help fund programming, stations, and technology.

Funding for CPB was established two years in advance through the federal annual appropriations process. The advance was intended to insulate funding from political pressures.

CPB’s general appropriation for fiscal year 2025 was $535 million – with the total federal support for public media amounting to about $1.60 per year per person. The CPB was responsible for allocating its funds from the federal budget in any way that fulfilled its mission: to ensure universal access, over-the-air and online, to high-quality content and telecommunications services that are commercial-free and free of charge.

Nearly 70% of the total funding was distributed directly to local stations like NPR Illinois so we could decide how best to program for our communities. CPB has had bipartisan support in Congress for more than 50 years.

How much CPB funding does NPR Illinois receive?

In fiscal year 2024, 12% of NPR Illinois’ annual operating revenue came from community service grants we received from CPB. That annual grant was calculated using a formula that took into account our region’s population, the amount of funding we are able to raise locally from donations by individuals, and financial support from small businesses and organizations.

In addition to community service grants, CPB allowed us to reduce costs on satellite connection, music rights, professional development, and also paid many of those reduced costs for the system. The loss of this funding has an estimated annual impact on NPR Illinois of $423,421. Stations like ours face new operating costs – and they will be much higher without the scale and efficiency CPB provided for the public media system. CPB also supported Harvest Public Media, part of our Health+Harvest coverage. NPR Illinois collaborates with the other public radio stations around our state. With our CPB funding eliminated, our ability to pay reporters at the statehouse bureau may reduce accountability coverage of Illinois state government.

Public radio is essential to the country’s music ecosystem. CPB negotiated blanket music licenses for noncommercial uses of music on behalf of the whole public media system and, with a portion of the federal appropriation, paid those licensing fees for all eligible public media stations. CPB was able to provide efficient rights management solutions for every public media station. It will be cost-prohibitive and burdensome for individual stations to negotiate the same licenses and fees on their own.

What would happen to NPR Illinois without that federal funding?

CPB funding made public media through 2025, possible. The support enabled us to provide all the best programming and unique services for central Illinois and the capital, like the statehouse bureau, State Week, Statewide, Community Voices, local newscasts, the NPR Illinois Daily newsletter, The X and Classic HD streams, and nprillinois.org across all public media platforms – from free over-the-air broadcast, to unpaywalled websites, podcasts, streaming, and more. Federal funds supported broadcast and digital delivery and laid a foundation for local initiatives that enriched and strengthened our community in a variety of areas:

• Local news: Michelle Eccles, Sean Crawford, Maureen McKinney, and Mike Krcil report everyday through newscasts and breaks in national programming.
• Music and the arts: NPR Illinois presents extensive arts coverage through interviews on Community Voices, playing local music on CV-X and The X streaming service, classical music on the NPR Illinois Classic stream, and airing of shows like Fresh Air, Nightsounds, Jazz Night in America, Jazz Inspired, Bluegrass Breakdown, Sound Opinions, Beale Street Caravan, and Hearts of Space. We also partner with multiple arts organizations to promote their events and offerings.
• Preserving and exporting regional life and culture: Community Voices helps us get to know our neighbors and archives those interviews at nprillinois.org. Since 2006, This I Believe has captured the outlook of high school seniors each year.
• Feeding curiosity and building community: with LISTEN sessions in a variety of communities, and other forums like the Citizens Club of Springfield and the World Affairs Council, NPR Illinois helps facilitate, address, and share regional issues. J-Corps (Journalism Corps) is beginning to identify engaged citizens at these meetings and develop them as community reporters.
• Public safety, emergency coverage, and essential information: Tornados, dust storms, flooding, even earthquakes are problems NPR Illinois keeps you apprised of as a local leader in the Emergency Alert System. During the 2023 derrecho, several areas of Springfield were without power for days. With no power to charge phones and many broadband wires down, battery operated radios tuned to NPR Illinois heard the latest local information needed to recover.