At the end of March, Radio World reported there were more than 4,000 noncommercial educational (NCE) radio stations in the United States. These stations occupy reserved portions of the FM spectrum set aside by the Federal Communications Commission for public service: news, educational programming, cultural expression, and community information. Of those 4,000-plus stations, a little more than 1,000 are affiliates of National Public Radio (NPR). That means the majority are something else entirely.
These include religious broadcasters, student-run college outlets, independent community stations, and hyperlocal operations serving small towns and tribal nations. This is where the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB), where I serve as chief executive officer, operates—representing nearly 200 member stations that are locally controlled, culturally rooted, and tightly woven into the civic fabric of their regions.
Most of these stations run on shoestring budgets. Many have only two or three paid staff—and while some may have more, some have none. What sustains them are volunteers: On average, according to an NFCB survey of its member stations, 125 community members per station donate thousands of hours annually to keep these local broadcasters alive. They host shows, repair equipment, raise funds, maintain websites, and sweep studio floors. This is not corporate media. These are neighbors serving neighbors.
And it is these stations—volunteer-powered, community-run—that now face existential risk after the decision by Congress to defund and close the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
When Congress eliminated CPB, it wasn’t simply cutting a budget line. It was dismantling the scaffolding that allowed community stations to serve their listeners. CPB paid for access to the Public Radio Satellite System (PRSS), the backbone of national distribution and emergency alert delivery. It also negotiated music streaming rights through SoundExchange, enabling even the smallest stations to legally reach digital audiences.
Those functions now hang in the balance. Without PRSS, communities in remote areas may not receive lifesaving warnings. Without CPB’s coverage of streaming rights, many stations will have to pull their digital streams entirely, erasing their ability to reach younger audiences and undermining the cultural programming that defines them.
So the cut wasn’t a result of abstract bureaucracy. It was aimed at removing systems that allow rural and tribal families to hear an evacuation order in a crisis, or music that reflects their cultural lives on a regular day.
For example, KMUD, Redwood Community Radio in California, maintained broadcasting during blizzards, power outages, wildfires, and a magnitude 6.4 earthquake in 2022—using snowmobiles and fire trucks to reach transmitter sites. A 100 percent volunteer-run station, KMNO, Mana’o Radio, in Maui, Hawaii, provided evacuation alerts and relief updates during the 2023 wildfires when other systems failed. WGDR/WGDH in Central Vermont delivered critical flood-related information in 2023, even as its team was out in the community helping neighbors to clean up and recover. In Salem, Oregon, KTUP Radio Poder, known by its slogan “La Voz del Pueblo,” continued serving Spanish-speaking residents during prolonged power and Internet outages, operating with just three staff and dedicated volunteers.
These efforts make it plain: What’s at stake isn’t simply broadcast infrastructure; it’s whether communities can count on lifesaving, culturally rooted, locally controlled service when it matters most.
Community radio is defined by its diversity, not its uniformity. While commercial outlets rotate the same narrow playlists, community stations are eclectic by design—broadcasting folk, Americana, jazz, blues, reggae, classic rock, punk, bluegrass, and especially local bands and emerging artists.
That diversity matters. Airplay on a community station can sustain a coffeehouse, launch a festival, or give an emerging musician their first audience. In rural towns and tribal nations, these stations are essential to the local arts economy, driving both cultural vitality and economic survival.
But community radio has always been more than music. It is also one of the few places where unheard voices can break through. Legacy media rarely carried Spanish- or Vietnamese-language programming, women-centered stories, or hometown news for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities. Community radio made room.
Stations like KTUP, La Voz del Pueblo, illustrate this power vividly—ensuring Spanish-speaking residents in its western Oregon range continue to access critical information, even when the Internet goes dark. Without CPB’s support structures, many stations serving immigrant, Indigenous, and rural audiences will be forced off the air—silencing the very voices that commercial and legacy outlets have historically ignored.
The deeper story here is about how the United States defines its public goods. These—including roads, libraries, clean water, schools—exist because societies decide that some things are too vital to privatize. Public broadcasting was once understood in the same way: free, fact-based information as a foundation for democracy.
But in the Congressional hearings that led to CPB’s demise, that principle collapsed. Instead of grappling with whether all Americans deserve equal access to information and culture, lawmakers staged a partisan spectacle—attacking NPR’s editorial decisions, weaponizing anti-transgender rhetoric, and fixating on Hunter Biden’s laptop. The real question of whether or not the public has a right to free information and representation was ignored.
And when the axe fell, the answer was no.
The consequences are stark. Defunding CPB won’t dent NPR’s executives or flagship programs. But it will devastate the thousands of non-NPR stations that sustain rural and tribal communities. The Government Accountability Office and the CPB have long warned that up to half of rural stations could close without federal support.
Some suggest philanthropy can fill the void. It cannot. Expecting donors to replace CPB is like expecting bake sales to replace the fire department. It misunderstands both the economics and the stakes of defunding the free flow of information.
Community radio does not exist because it is profitable—it exists because it is needed. Emergency alerts and Indigenous-language programming don’t generate advertising revenue. The market has no incentive to sustain them. Philanthropy can help bridge gaps or foster new innovations, but it cannot provide the permanence and scale that only a federal funding commitment can ensure.
These stations, held together by a few staff and armies of volunteers, deliver emergency alerts, spotlight local musicians, and tell hometown stories that otherwise vanish. They embody local control, civic responsibility, and efficiency. And yet they are the first to be sacrificed to political theater.
The next time wildfires sweep Montana, or a hurricane floods a Gulf Coast town, some families may turn their dials and hear nothing. That silence won’t be theoretical—it will be deadly.
The shuttering of CPB sets a precedent with implications far beyond radio. It signals that public goods—once thought of as untouchable—can be discarded whenever they become politically inconvenient. Today it is public broadcasting. Tomorrow it may be libraries, early childhood education, or public health. And once silenced, community radio rarely returns. A closed station loses not only a frequency but also the volunteers, trust, and a cultural role in the community built over decades. The silence endures.
Community radio is not nostalgic. It is infrastructure. It is the first play for a local band, the farm report for workers in the field, the evacuation order before a wildfire, the voice in Spanish or Navajo or Vietnamese that makes information accessible.
Defunding CPB does not punish NPR. It punishes the family waiting for an evacuation order, the tribal elder listening for both ceremony and safety, the LGBTQ+ young person who hears their identity reflected for the first time. The stakes are not about taste or ideology. They are about whether we choose equity, safety, and democracy—or silence.
We can still reinvest. We can still insist that truth, culture, and security belong to all. We at the NFCB and our member stations will continue to fight for that vision. But ultimately the question belongs to the nation: Will we defend the right to be informed and represented—or accept an incomplete democracy where millions are left behind?
Because once the radios go quiet, the silence spreads. And in that silence, democracy itself becomes harder to hear.