An Appalachian Radio Voice Threatened From Afar

WMMT in Whitesburg (KY) is imperiled by the federal budget ax. As lawmakers seek to cut billions of dollars in federal spending, the Republican-controlled House voted in February to end financing for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2013. While President Barack Obama wants to continue financing the corporation, the current budget turmoil has left its long-term fate uncertain.

Juxtaposed against other hardships in Appalachia, the beaming of a radio signal might seem a luxury. But WMMT, which reaches across the mountains, coal fields and hollows of eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia and southern West Virginia, creates a connective tissue for its far-flung, geographically isolated listeners. It also offers respite from the daily grind. Like the redbud trees that are starting to burst forth in violet patches along the scrubby hillsides here, the sounds from the radio can be, if not essential, at least life-affirming. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributed $420 million last year to 1,300 public television and radio stations across the country. It gave WMMT, which is not affiliated with National Public Radio or a university, $86,000, or one third of the station’s $256,000 budget. Rural radio stations are far more dependent on federal money than their urban counterparts and more likely to go under if it is cut. Nearly two dozen rural stations, many of them on Indian reservations, rely on corporation financing for at least 50 percent of their revenue. (By contrast, grants from the corporation and other federal agencies supply about 2 percent of NPR’s overall revenues.) Rural stations face additional challenges. They need multiple transmitters to reach widely scattered areas. And their listeners are often on fixed incomes, with little or no discretionary money to donate, especially in a down economy.