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> It receives less than 1 percent Why do they keep saying they receive almost nothing, yet at the same time say government funding is essential to their operat

> It receives less than 1 percent Why do they keep saying they receive almost nothing, yet at the same time say government funding is essential to their operation?

Arborealist 4y ago
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judge2020 4y ago
https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance... > Public radio stations receive annual grants directly from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) that make up an important part of a diverse revenue mix that includes listener support, corporate sponsorship and grants. Stations, in turn, draw on this mix of public and privately sourced revenue to pay NPR and other public radio producers for their programming. Sounds like it may be more than 1% in total?
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  NPR is one of several providers to individual public radio stations. The government supports those individual stations; they use some of that support to purchase programs from NPR, American Public Media, PRX, etc.
- thelittlenag 4y ago
  The numbers I am last aware of, while ten years old now, were that Federal funding was roughly 10% of their operating budget, with 90% coming from other sources. This came more or less directly from our NPR station in DC as they talked about fund raising in their many, many drives. And this wasn't for the station itself, I believe this was for NPR, since they then went on to talk about how many stations, mostly in rural areas, had a funding inverse of that. Basically, if you are listening to NPR outside a major population center, then its almost certainly because Federal dollars make that possible. And if you listen and contribute to a major station, then you are one of the few that pay the 90% or so of the budget for the content on NPR.
  - stametseater 4y ago
    > The numbers I am last aware of, while ten years old now, were that Federal funding was roughly 10% of their operating budget, with 90% coming from other sources. If that's accurate, then I'd love for NPR to explain the order of magnitude gap between their claim of 1% and that 10% figure. That's a huge difference. to upon_drumhead: Federal funding laundered through sub-orgs that share the same "NPR" branding is still federal funding.
    - upon_drumhead 4y ago
      Member station funding is different then the actual NPR organization funding. Member stations paying NPR is the bulk of NPRs funding.
    - vharuck 4y ago
      From the article: >Most of NPR's funding comes from corporate and individual supporters and grants. It also receives significant programming fees from member stations. Those stations, in turn, receive about 13 percent of their funds from the CPB and other state and federal government sources. Also, here's NPR's report on financing: https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance.... It also includes breakdowns of member station financing. 8% average from CPB, 5% from other government sources.
  - mbreese 4y ago
    You’re conflating the local NPR affiliate with the news company and radio content aggregator. It like you’re saying that my local NBC station is owned by NBC News, when it’s locally owned (well, in my case owned by a company with a lot of stations, but not NBC itself). Less than 1% of NPR’s budget comes directly from the government itself through competitive grants, etc. Some of the budget comes from member stations (presumably more than 1%) who themselves receive some level of state or federal funding. Those are the entities that receive ~10% of their budgets from a government of one kind or another (the rest coming from donations or other non-profit funding). But those stations can get content from a variety of other public radio sources. I believe NPR can (did?) handle some of the distribution of non-NPR content via their satellite services. Originally NPR was directly funded by the CPB to a much greater extent. However that changed substantially in the 80s when the stations themselves started receiving funding from the CPB instead of NPR. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR#Funding https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR#Funding
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  If you look at the breakdown lower in the page, 31% of NPR's revenue comes from member station licensing fees and of the member station funding 13% comes from government sources, so in total that would be 4%.
pigbearpig 4y ago
They also say my $60/yr is essential so I can’t see NPR saying $3 million as non-essential.
mikeryan 4y ago
Because the bulk of NPRs funding comes from the dues of member stations most of which are non-profits and receive funding from a myriad of sources. Hard to say what percent of their funding comes from some governmental source but it’s all indirect and arms length. A lot of folks confuse NPR With PBS which is publicly funded and many of NPR’s member stations are PBS affiliated.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  > Because the bulk of NPRs funding comes from the dues of member stations most of which are non-profits and receive funding from a myriad of sources. From wikipedia: Although NPR receives less than 1% of its direct funding from the federal government, member stations (which pay dues amounting to approximately one third of NPR's revenue), tend to receive far larger portions of their budgets from state governments, and also the US government through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
  - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
    https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance... 31% of their funding comes from member stations. 13% of member station funding comes from government sources. In total that would make about 31% * 13% = 4%.
    - fortuna86 4y ago
      > 13% of member station funding comes from government sources What is the source of this number? Also is 4% as opposed to 1% a change that alters any of the underlying fundamentals ?
      - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
        The source is the document in the hyperlink at the start of the comment.
fooblaster 4y ago
They usually emphasize listener funding in virtually all broadcasts I have ever seen.
bilekas 4y ago
Because every penny counts. What business would turn around and say : "We don't need that 1%, you can have it back". It's state affiliated. Like Tesla. Like any company who received covid relief. Tax breaks etc. Less than 1 percentage is simply not influential. It's disingenuous to say it's owned by the government.
- rdtsc 4y ago
  It depends on the perception one has of the US govt. If one considers them benign and aligns with their policy, 1% seems is not a big deal. If one doesn't, even 1% funding is considered influence. Imagine one politician you don't like receiving 1% from the Russian or North Korean government, or say from the Meta corp, I wouldn't have a problem calling out them as being "funded" or even "influenced". > What business would turn around and say : "We don't need that 1%, you can have it back". The one which would try to claim independence and non-influence from said entity?
- sidfthec 4y ago
  > It's state affiliated. Like Tesla. Like any company who received covid relief. Tax breaks etc. So... everyone and everything is state affiliated and should be labeled as such? That's obviously not the case. State affiliated should be limited to organizations that are influenced/controlled significantly by the state, which NPR is not. This is actually the definition that Twitter advertises.
  - t3pfaff 3y ago
    I believe the "state affiliated media" tagline is as you might guess, intended for media who's editorial opinions should be taken with their state affiliation in context. What utility does it serve to label SpaceX, Tesla, Lockheed, Boeing, or any other company that does not publish editorial opinions as "state affiliated". I don't get what people don't understand here. NPR and PBS would not exist right now or in the future if their government funding grants were revoked. That puts a nonexistent bias on their editorial decisions. I seem to remember NPR "leaking"/breaking the story on WMDs in Iraq with one of their journalists directly quoting internal contacts in the Pentagon as their source. They are clearly far from immune to being used as agents of propaganda. That being said, I personally hold both NPR & PBS Newshour in very high regard. I do think that placing them in them in the same categorisation as RT or even the BBC is reductionist. Perhaps there should be varying levels of "state affiliated media" labeling.
waboremo 4y ago
Let's say you're being paid $1k per month by your job. You would say you receive almost nothing, right? Simultaneously, you would also say what you do get is essential to your livelihood. Same here, larger scale. Hope that helps you visualize the situation.
- sahila 4y ago
  That's not an accurate analogy if what you're saying the $1k/month is your entire pay. More accurate would be saying I make a $100k/month of which $1k comes for a certain source, and then me saying that thousand is essential to my livelihood. I'd be lying if I said that; I make a whole lot less than $100k/month and I could easily forgo $1k/month today which just goes into my savings anyways.
  - waboremo 4y ago
    No, that's incorrect. You're comparing unstable funds vs stable funds. Income from a job is stable (relatively), income from other sources like say a monthly donation, is unstable. So yes, my example is still accurate: they rely on the 1k/mo as STABLE funding.
    - sahila 4y ago
      Where do you address the fact that npr says that “stable” funding represents only 1% of total funding?
      - waboremo 4y ago
        What's there to address? 1% stable funding is still 1% you can rely on, just because you receive additional funds from private sectors or alternative sources that are unreliable, doesn't negate this. You can literally see this in CPB funding, where private sources are incredibly variable, and that is what CPB gets, NPR is only allotted a portion.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    It's disingenuous to talk as if the relationship to NPR content to their funding is some simple linear relationship. Every penny of their income is important. If they had less content to provide to member stations, those stations would have less content and would pull in fewer donations. It then becomes a death spiral since less content results in fewer donations. While federally originated dollars are a small portion of NPR's total income they're not unimportant since they can't be replaced by other sources. A 1% reduction in income means they need to reduce expenses by 1%. In your analogy, $1k/month goes into savings. Losing that wouldn't break you financially. You're not spending your all of your income. If you were you'd need to cut your expenses by the $1k/month. In that case you'd consider that 1% pretty important.
ismokedoinks 4y ago
Disconnect between direct federal funding and aggregate funding from a variety of public institutions or grants from publicly funded NGOs at national/state/local levels I imagine.
js2 4y ago
In 2022, CPB got $465M from the Federal government. Of that, $72M goes to "Direct grants to local public radio stations", $24M to "Radio National Program Production and Acquisition grants" and $7.3M to "Radio Program Fund". https://cpb.org/aboutcpb/financials/budget https://cpb.org/aboutcpb/financials/budget According to NPR's 2020 budget, total revenue was $275M, of which $92.7M was "Station dues, programming and digital fees". https://media.npr.org/documents/about/statements/fy2020/National%20Public%20Radio%20-%20Consolidated%20Financial%20Statements%202020.pdf https://media.npr.org/documents/about/statements/fy2020/Nati... So ~ 1/3 of NPR's revenue is from member stations, and some percentage of that revenue is part of the $72M that the stations were granted from CPB. Looking at WBUR's budget as a randomly picked example, its 2022 revenue was $39.7M of which $1.8M was grants. Let's call that 4.5%. https://media.wbur.org/wp/2023/01/WBUR-Special-Purpose-Financial-Statements-June-30-2022.pdf https://media.wbur.org/wp/2023/01/WBUR-Special-Purpose-Finan... Let me pick another random station, WUNC. In 2018 its total revenue was $13.8M. of that CPB grants were $617.8K. Again, about 4.5%. http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wunc/files/wunc_2018_audit_final.pdf http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wunc/files/wunc_2018_... Using 4.5% as the percentage of of the $72M from CPB that ends up as part of the 1/3rd of NPRs revenue. 4.5% x 33% = ~1.5%. I gather then that even though it's a small part of NPR's revenue, it's very high leverage in helping to keep all of the member stations afloat. I guess that's how they can simultaneously downplay the dollar amount while also speaking of how critical it is. https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance... I may have gotten my math wrong here somewhere, corrections appreciated. I ignored the $24M and $7.3M of the CPB budget because I wasn't sure what to do with them, but you can read more about those here: https://www.cpb.org/funding/ https://www.cpb.org/funding/ It's probably fair count some part of those dollars as part of NPR's funding, I just don't know how much.
yamtaddle 4y ago
I think it has more to do with preserving the fiction that they're significantly more independent from commercial interests than other news media. Losing dedicated public funding would make them a commercial network that also begs for donations a few times a year, probably harming donation and removing some of the halo-effect that advertisers are looking for by "sponsoring" them (paying for ads). In short, it'd push them farther out of the ad niche they've carved for themselves, which could have serious revenue consequences beyond that 1%.
dghughes 4y ago
Grocery stores traditionally or supposedly only make 1% to 3% profit. These days it's probably 1%. So I'd say 1% is a lot if it's the thing keeping the company from going under if that income disappears.
- fwungy 4y ago
  Yes, but food is incredibly popular and buying it the most popular way to get it, so they're making a small margin on good volume.
DrThunder 4y ago
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user3939382 4y ago
Let’s graph all their sponsors and their connection to the corporations that also puppet our elected officials. My guess is the vast majority of their funding looks like: Megacorp -> NPR Megacorp -> Exec -> NPR Megacorp -> Political NGO -> NPR In addition to the direct Federal grant which is under the control of the same politicians in turn owned by these corporations. The idea that it’s some independent real news organization is a farce.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  Not to mention it is conveniently a non-profit so all those donations are tax write-offs. What better way to influence the voice of a media company?

> It receives less than 1 percent Why do they keep saying they receive almost nothing, yet at the same time say government funding is essential to their operation?

Arborealist 4y ago

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judge2020 4y ago

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance... > Public radio stations receive annual grants directly from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) that make up an important part of a diverse revenue mix that includes listener support, corporate sponsorship and grants. Stations, in turn, draw on this mix of public and privately sourced revenue to pay NPR and other public radio producers for their programming. Sounds like it may be more than 1% in total?

ceejayoz 4y ago
NPR is one of several providers to individual public radio stations. The government supports those individual stations; they use some of that support to purchase programs from NPR, American Public Media, PRX, etc.
thelittlenag 4y ago
The numbers I am last aware of, while ten years old now, were that Federal funding was roughly 10% of their operating budget, with 90% coming from other sources. This came more or less directly from our NPR station in DC as they talked about fund raising in their many, many drives. And this wasn't for the station itself, I believe this was for NPR, since they then went on to talk about how many stations, mostly in rural areas, had a funding inverse of that. Basically, if you are listening to NPR outside a major population center, then its almost certainly because Federal dollars make that possible. And if you listen and contribute to a major station, then you are one of the few that pay the 90% or so of the budget for the content on NPR.
- stametseater 4y ago
  > The numbers I am last aware of, while ten years old now, were that Federal funding was roughly 10% of their operating budget, with 90% coming from other sources. If that's accurate, then I'd love for NPR to explain the order of magnitude gap between their claim of 1% and that 10% figure. That's a huge difference. to upon_drumhead: Federal funding laundered through sub-orgs that share the same "NPR" branding is still federal funding.
  - upon_drumhead 4y ago
    Member station funding is different then the actual NPR organization funding. Member stations paying NPR is the bulk of NPRs funding.
  - vharuck 4y ago
    From the article: >Most of NPR's funding comes from corporate and individual supporters and grants. It also receives significant programming fees from member stations. Those stations, in turn, receive about 13 percent of their funds from the CPB and other state and federal government sources. Also, here's NPR's report on financing: https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance.... It also includes breakdowns of member station financing. 8% average from CPB, 5% from other government sources.
- mbreese 4y ago
  You’re conflating the local NPR affiliate with the news company and radio content aggregator. It like you’re saying that my local NBC station is owned by NBC News, when it’s locally owned (well, in my case owned by a company with a lot of stations, but not NBC itself). Less than 1% of NPR’s budget comes directly from the government itself through competitive grants, etc. Some of the budget comes from member stations (presumably more than 1%) who themselves receive some level of state or federal funding. Those are the entities that receive ~10% of their budgets from a government of one kind or another (the rest coming from donations or other non-profit funding). But those stations can get content from a variety of other public radio sources. I believe NPR can (did?) handle some of the distribution of non-NPR content via their satellite services. Originally NPR was directly funded by the CPB to a much greater extent. However that changed substantially in the 80s when the stations themselves started receiving funding from the CPB instead of NPR. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR#Funding https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR#Funding
TheCoelacanth 4y ago
If you look at the breakdown lower in the page, 31% of NPR's revenue comes from member station licensing fees and of the member station funding 13% comes from government sources, so in total that would be 4%.

pigbearpig 4y ago

They also say my $60/yr is essential so I can’t see NPR saying $3 million as non-essential.

mikeryan 4y ago

Because the bulk of NPRs funding comes from the dues of member stations most of which are non-profits and receive funding from a myriad of sources. Hard to say what percent of their funding comes from some governmental source but it’s all indirect and arms length. A lot of folks confuse NPR With PBS which is publicly funded and many of NPR’s member stations are PBS affiliated.

throwawaylinux 4y ago
> Because the bulk of NPRs funding comes from the dues of member stations most of which are non-profits and receive funding from a myriad of sources. From wikipedia: Although NPR receives less than 1% of its direct funding from the federal government, member stations (which pay dues amounting to approximately one third of NPR's revenue), tend to receive far larger portions of their budgets from state governments, and also the US government through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance... 31% of their funding comes from member stations. 13% of member station funding comes from government sources. In total that would make about 31% * 13% = 4%.
  - fortuna86 4y ago
    > 13% of member station funding comes from government sources What is the source of this number? Also is 4% as opposed to 1% a change that alters any of the underlying fundamentals ?
    - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
      The source is the document in the hyperlink at the start of the comment.

fooblaster 4y ago

They usually emphasize listener funding in virtually all broadcasts I have ever seen.

bilekas 4y ago

Because every penny counts. What business would turn around and say : "We don't need that 1%, you can have it back". It's state affiliated. Like Tesla. Like any company who received covid relief. Tax breaks etc. Less than 1 percentage is simply not influential. It's disingenuous to say it's owned by the government.

rdtsc 4y ago
It depends on the perception one has of the US govt. If one considers them benign and aligns with their policy, 1% seems is not a big deal. If one doesn't, even 1% funding is considered influence. Imagine one politician you don't like receiving 1% from the Russian or North Korean government, or say from the Meta corp, I wouldn't have a problem calling out them as being "funded" or even "influenced". > What business would turn around and say : "We don't need that 1%, you can have it back". The one which would try to claim independence and non-influence from said entity?
sidfthec 4y ago
> It's state affiliated. Like Tesla. Like any company who received covid relief. Tax breaks etc. So... everyone and everything is state affiliated and should be labeled as such? That's obviously not the case. State affiliated should be limited to organizations that are influenced/controlled significantly by the state, which NPR is not. This is actually the definition that Twitter advertises.
- t3pfaff 3y ago
  I believe the "state affiliated media" tagline is as you might guess, intended for media who's editorial opinions should be taken with their state affiliation in context. What utility does it serve to label SpaceX, Tesla, Lockheed, Boeing, or any other company that does not publish editorial opinions as "state affiliated". I don't get what people don't understand here. NPR and PBS would not exist right now or in the future if their government funding grants were revoked. That puts a nonexistent bias on their editorial decisions. I seem to remember NPR "leaking"/breaking the story on WMDs in Iraq with one of their journalists directly quoting internal contacts in the Pentagon as their source. They are clearly far from immune to being used as agents of propaganda. That being said, I personally hold both NPR & PBS Newshour in very high regard. I do think that placing them in them in the same categorisation as RT or even the BBC is reductionist. Perhaps there should be varying levels of "state affiliated media" labeling.

waboremo 4y ago

Let's say you're being paid $1k per month by your job. You would say you receive almost nothing, right? Simultaneously, you would also say what you do get is essential to your livelihood. Same here, larger scale. Hope that helps you visualize the situation.

sahila 4y ago
That's not an accurate analogy if what you're saying the $1k/month is your entire pay. More accurate would be saying I make a $100k/month of which $1k comes for a certain source, and then me saying that thousand is essential to my livelihood. I'd be lying if I said that; I make a whole lot less than $100k/month and I could easily forgo $1k/month today which just goes into my savings anyways.
- waboremo 4y ago
  No, that's incorrect. You're comparing unstable funds vs stable funds. Income from a job is stable (relatively), income from other sources like say a monthly donation, is unstable. So yes, my example is still accurate: they rely on the 1k/mo as STABLE funding.
  - sahila 4y ago
    Where do you address the fact that npr says that “stable” funding represents only 1% of total funding?
    - waboremo 4y ago
      What's there to address? 1% stable funding is still 1% you can rely on, just because you receive additional funds from private sectors or alternative sources that are unreliable, doesn't negate this. You can literally see this in CPB funding, where private sources are incredibly variable, and that is what CPB gets, NPR is only allotted a portion.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  It's disingenuous to talk as if the relationship to NPR content to their funding is some simple linear relationship. Every penny of their income is important. If they had less content to provide to member stations, those stations would have less content and would pull in fewer donations. It then becomes a death spiral since less content results in fewer donations. While federally originated dollars are a small portion of NPR's total income they're not unimportant since they can't be replaced by other sources. A 1% reduction in income means they need to reduce expenses by 1%. In your analogy, $1k/month goes into savings. Losing that wouldn't break you financially. You're not spending your all of your income. If you were you'd need to cut your expenses by the $1k/month. In that case you'd consider that 1% pretty important.

ismokedoinks 4y ago

Disconnect between direct federal funding and aggregate funding from a variety of public institutions or grants from publicly funded NGOs at national/state/local levels I imagine.

js2 4y ago

In 2022, CPB got $465M from the Federal government. Of that, $72M goes to "Direct grants to local public radio stations", $24M to "Radio National Program Production and Acquisition grants" and $7.3M to "Radio Program Fund". https://cpb.org/aboutcpb/financials/budget https://cpb.org/aboutcpb/financials/budget According to NPR's 2020 budget, total revenue was $275M, of which $92.7M was "Station dues, programming and digital fees". https://media.npr.org/documents/about/statements/fy2020/National%20Public%20Radio%20-%20Consolidated%20Financial%20Statements%202020.pdf https://media.npr.org/documents/about/statements/fy2020/Nati... So ~ 1/3 of NPR's revenue is from member stations, and some percentage of that revenue is part of the $72M that the stations were granted from CPB. Looking at WBUR's budget as a randomly picked example, its 2022 revenue was $39.7M of which $1.8M was grants. Let's call that 4.5%. https://media.wbur.org/wp/2023/01/WBUR-Special-Purpose-Financial-Statements-June-30-2022.pdf https://media.wbur.org/wp/2023/01/WBUR-Special-Purpose-Finan... Let me pick another random station, WUNC. In 2018 its total revenue was $13.8M. of that CPB grants were $617.8K. Again, about 4.5%. http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wunc/files/wunc_2018_audit_final.pdf http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wunc/files/wunc_2018_... Using 4.5% as the percentage of of the $72M from CPB that ends up as part of the 1/3rd of NPRs revenue. 4.5% x 33% = ~1.5%. I gather then that even though it's a small part of NPR's revenue, it's very high leverage in helping to keep all of the member stations afloat. I guess that's how they can simultaneously downplay the dollar amount while also speaking of how critical it is. https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance... I may have gotten my math wrong here somewhere, corrections appreciated. I ignored the $24M and $7.3M of the CPB budget because I wasn't sure what to do with them, but you can read more about those here: https://www.cpb.org/funding/ https://www.cpb.org/funding/ It's probably fair count some part of those dollars as part of NPR's funding, I just don't know how much.

yamtaddle 4y ago

I think it has more to do with preserving the fiction that they're significantly more independent from commercial interests than other news media. Losing dedicated public funding would make them a commercial network that also begs for donations a few times a year, probably harming donation and removing some of the halo-effect that advertisers are looking for by "sponsoring" them (paying for ads). In short, it'd push them farther out of the ad niche they've carved for themselves, which could have serious revenue consequences beyond that 1%.

dghughes 4y ago

Grocery stores traditionally or supposedly only make 1% to 3% profit. These days it's probably 1%. So I'd say 1% is a lot if it's the thing keeping the company from going under if that income disappears.

fwungy 4y ago
Yes, but food is incredibly popular and buying it the most popular way to get it, so they're making a small margin on good volume.

DrThunder 4y ago

[flagged]

user3939382 4y ago

Let’s graph all their sponsors and their connection to the corporations that also puppet our elected officials. My guess is the vast majority of their funding looks like: Megacorp -> NPR Megacorp -> Exec -> NPR Megacorp -> Political NGO -> NPR In addition to the direct Federal grant which is under the control of the same politicians in turn owned by these corporations. The idea that it’s some independent real news organization is a farce.

nemo44x 4y ago
Not to mention it is conveniently a non-profit so all those donations are tax write-offs. What better way to influence the voice of a media company?