As CPB shuts down, Alaska’s public radio keeps broadcasting with Murkowski work-around but no state money

By SUZANNE DOWNING

The federal shutdown of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has become a stress test for public media across the country.

Congress eliminated funding for CPB in July 2025, and the organization announced in August that it would dissolve, with its board voting in early January 2026 to formally wind down operations.

For decades CPB had been the backbone of public broadcasting in the United States, funneling federal dollars to hundreds of local stations. In Alaska, many rural and tribal stations relied on CPB grants for as much as half to two-thirds of their operating budgets.

The cut triggered layoffs, program reductions, and emergency fundraising across the state.

Some stations turned to philanthropy and workarounds to get government money, including one-time federal relief, including about $4.5 million in Bureau of Indian Affairs funding that went to 14 Alaska tribal and Native-serving stations in the fall of 2025.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski was instrumental in helping secure that temporary money and has continued pressing for a long-term funding solution, arguing that rural radio in Alaska remains critical for emergency alerts and community communication, even as most people get their news and safety alerts on their phones these days.

Yet the CPB collapse has also underscored something Alaska’s public broadcasters have quietly lived with for years: state funding has already disappeared.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy has repeatedly vetoed legislative appropriations for public broadcasting, cutting off state support that stations. Despite dire warnings that stations would go dark without government money, none of Alaska’s 27 public radio stations have gone off the air. They have kept broadcasting through donations, grants, underwriting, and local contracts.

That reality has left the Alaska Public Broadcasting Commission in an awkward, almost ghostlike position. The commission still exists on the state’s books and its webpage remains active, but every single commissioner’s term has expired. There is no money to distribute, no active grant programs, and no meaningful role to play. With no funding flowing from the state, the commission functions as little more than a dormant shell — a zombie agency waiting for a future Democrat administration to revive it.

While the state commission sits idle, some local governments have stepped into the vacuum in ways that blur the line between public service and public subsidy.

In Bethel, KYUK will now be paid $1,000 an hour by the City of Bethel to broadcast city council meetings. KYUK used to carry the meetings for free, but the new contract means the city is effectively underwriting part of the station’s operations with taxpayer money, framed as a payment for services rather than a subsidy.

That kind of arrangement highlights how public broadcasting in Alaska is being kept alive not by a coherent state or federal system, but by a patchwork of emergency grants, donor surges, and even lavish local government contracts.

The CPB shutdown has drawn national attention to the vulnerability of public media, but Alaska’s experience shows that the unraveling differently: Stations learned how to survive without state money years ago.

The Alaska Public Broadcasting Commission, meanwhile, remains in place without power, funding, or leadership. It is a zombie agency — neither alive nor dead.

While Murkowski pushes for public money for what some see as a lifeline and other see as a Democrat media operation, Alaska’s public broadcasters have proven they can stay on the air without the government checks they once said they needed, even as the institutions built to support them — CPB and APBC — fade into irrelevance.