CPB report to Congress on alternative funding finds no viable substitute for federal support

If Congress were to zero-out federal appropriations to public broadcasting, 54 public television stations in 19 states and 76 public radio stations in 38 states would be at "high risk" of shutting down, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) reported in "Alternative Sources of Funding for Public Broadcasting Stations," a comprehensive revenue analysis produced by Booz & Company and delivered to Capitol Hill June 20.

Lawmakers requested the research paper in December 2011 when they approved CPB's fiscal 2014 advance appropriation for $445 million. The report identifies five new or alternative funding options for public media — TV advertising, radio advertising, retransmission consent fees, paid digital subscriptions and digital game publishing — but says none of these offer "a realistic opportunity to generate significant positive net revenue that could replace the current amount of federal funding that CPB receives." "A shift from a noncommercial model to a commercial advertising model," the report says, "would have dramatically negative consequences for many of the communities that public broadcasters serve. In the absence of federal funding, there are small urban stations, small-market stations, rural stations and stations that serve diverse communities that will likely fail because they do not have the capacity to either shift to a commercial model or raise the revenue to replace the loss of CPB funding."