‘It will devastate us’: Montana's public media stations set to lose federal funding

Large portions of the public radio programming on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation are likely to soon “come to a standstill.” 

On Friday Congress voted to claw back funding for public media nationwide, and Fort Belknap’s KGVA 88.1 gets 70% of its annual budget from the federal government, according to Jack Jones, the station manager.

“It will devastate us,” Jones said when reached by phone Friday.

The U.S. House voted to pass the measure that will recoup $9 billion, mostly for foreign aid, but about $1.1 billion of which was meant for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the arm that doles out funding to local public media stations. All of Montana’s federal elected officials voted for the legislation and President Donald Trump is expected to sign it into law.

It's not only KGVA that will suffer: The cuts will ripple across all of Montana's major public media outlets, to the tune of more than $2.5 million in the first year alone.

Most Montanans receive their public radio through Yellowstone Public Radio (YPR) and Montana Public Radio, and Montana PBS is watched by about 250,000 Montanans each week, according to Aaron Pruitt, director and general manager of the service.

Montana PBS is set to lose $1.8 million in funding, which represents about 20% of their annual budget, Pruitt said in a written statement. Montana Public Radio receives about 11% of its annual budget from the Center for Public Broadcasting, which amounts to $353,000 in 2025, director Anne Hosler said, and YPR’s director said their annual budget will be cut by about 15% when this becomes law.

Hosler said in a written statement that they have “some tough decisions ahead.”

“This money has been critical to our funding model,” she added.

Public media throughout the nation will be impacted by the passage of the legislation, but large rural states with towering mountain ranges like Montana could be particularly harmed by the changes, explained Professor Lee Banville, director of the University of Montana School of Journalism.

Montana is the fourth-largest state by area in the country and huge swaths of it are rural, meaning the public media stations need repeaters to reach these communities buried in valleys who have historically relied on them to receive news and information.

“If they need to replace a tower in the middle of nowhere can they financially do that anymore? The answer might turn into ‘no’ and we might see certain parts of the state lose service,” Banville said Friday. “The saddest outcome of this is states like Montana could be affected a lot more than a state like New York.”

YPR’s geographic footprint is the largest of any public radio network in the lower 48 states, encompassing an area the size of Great Britain. The station’s airwaves are broadcast through a network of 13 transmitters and 25 translators, across the largely rural expanse of Montana, into Wyoming and most of Montana’s Native American reservations.

Lately, Ken Siebert, general manager of YPR, has been fielding many calls from concerned listeners about the future of the public radio station in light of Congress’s actions. When reached for comment Friday, Siebert was concerned but undaunted about the future.

“So I think we're all concerned about what the ripple effect of this will be throughout the system, but at Yellowstone Public Radio, we're committed to continuing doing what we're doing,” Siebert said.

The plan, according to Siebert, is to intensify fundraising and dig deeper into community collaborations in hopes of offsetting the lost funding. But to grow fundraising efforts also incurs "significant costs,” Siebert said.

“There's a number of listeners who don't contribute. Many of them in the past have used the excuse that, ‘well, you guys get money from the government,’” Siebert said. “Well, we don't get that money from the government anymore.”

For YPR, the effects of this legislation won’t be immediate: Siebert said the financials of the station are solid until June of 2026, but without a major increase in fundraising, hard decisions will need to be made.

When Siebert was asked if there is any silver lining, he said no.

“There's a lot of people who will say that, you know, it's going to force change and transformational change within the public media system,” Siebert said. “But ultimately, this is a loss for the just in general, the idea of free and fair media… there's no silver lining in taking away vital resources to allow for that.”

This is not the first time Congress has sought to cut public media funding; it is an effort that has been going on for decades.

John Twiggs, who has worked for Montana PBS for nearly three decades, said he wasn’t surprised to see the passage of the legislation.

“This has been building with every Republican administration since Reagan, and everyone knew this would be the most aggressive attempt,” he said in a text message Friday.

Federal lawmakers in favor of this funding cut argue these media organizations have a liberal bias and it is unfair to burden taxpayers with these costs, particularly while other outfits don’t get federal cash to support them.

Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that, “Taxpayers don’t fund Fox News and they shouldn’t fund NPR. Pretty simple concept.”

In a video update posted to X, Republican Sen. Steve Daines said, “We also pulled funding from NPR, which uses taxpayer dollars to promote woke ideas like defunding the police and allowing men to compete in women's sports.”

There have also been state-level attempts in Montana to cut funding for public media. During the 2021 legislative session, former Rep. Derek Skees, R-Kalispell, brought a bill that would have prohibited the state from funding public radio and would have eliminated their on-campus building space.

Skees said Friday that since the measure passed he has received calls from current lawmakers asking to carry his bill in the 2027 legislative session.

Even before this legislation was passed by Congress, Jones, who came into the managerial position at KGVA in April, was searching for ways to diversify the station's funding. The station, which has two employees and a handful of interns from the Aaniiih Nakoda College, has also not received any donations in the past few years. 

“It’s not like we have a lot of roads to take here as far as revenue,” Jones said. 

The airwaves on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation are likely to no longer feature segments about the different community events, stories from tribal elders reflecting on how their culture has changed and the Aaniiih Nakoda word of the day at the bottom of every hour.

“It's a sad day but it's not the end," Jones said. "There's always things to fall back on or turn to, but we gotta find out what that is for the radio station.”

Editor’s note: Montana State News Bureau Reporter Victoria Eavis is a former employee of Montana PBS.