The US Senate and House of Representatives passed President Trump's bill to defund public media. The bill will strip away vital funds for a number of Colorado based public radio stations, and will affect KVNF's yearly operations budget.
KVNF Senior Reporter Lisa Young spoke with KVNF Station Manager Ashley Krest on how the cuts will affect the station serving over 10,000 square miles on Colorado's Western Slope.
LISA YOUNG: Let’s talk a little bit about the passage of the bill that went through the Senate and then through the House of Representatives just a day or so ago. Tell us what this means for KVNF.
ASHLEY KREST: Sure, Lisa. It means the loss of funding for our community service grant, which we've gotten for many, many years now from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. It’s a grant that currently covers 20% of our budget. Now, that's varied from year to year because they base that support that they offer to small stations like us off of a few things. First, our rural status, and second, how much we can raise in non-federal financial support to match and go beyond those dollars. It's a calculation that they do. I believe it's 4 to 1. So $4 to their $1. And, you know, serving 10,000 miles of rural Western Colorado that's been no small challenge. We've been doing a good job at that and meeting our goals and filing our reports on time and following all of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting rules for many, many years now. So, yeah, we're looking at a $161,000 loss headed into our next fiscal year of 2026, which starts October 1st for us this year.
YOUNG: I think KVNF is positioned well to survive and continue, and that's what we're planning on doing but, there are a number of smaller stations that this could actually cause them to close.
KREST: We operate within the Rocky Mountain Community Radio network of stations. We have 22 of us between New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. I'm the vice president of that non-profit, which is also a 500 1C3, and definitely know that there are many stations within that network that get benefits from the negotiations on music rights or the access to affordable national news programming, whether it be NPR or BBC. I feel like the biggest hit will be those smaller stations, that are in our, in our network and in our vicinity that a lot of them necessarily can't handle this kind of a cut, especially when it's bigger portions of their overall income.
As I said,(the cuts are) 20% of KVNF’s (budget). We're going to have to find that extra money now from our listeners. Remember, only 10% of those who listen donate. So we have potentially 10,000 listeners at any given time here on KVNF and KVMT. That means there's a lot more folks that could donate and give to KVNF, because we have about an average of 1,300 or so donors at this time.
YOUNG: I think it's important to note that all of the Republican members of the House of Representatives, including Colorado's Jeff Heard from CD3, voted to defund public media. I'm wondering if you would like to comment on that and then also how KVNF will move forward.
KREST: Sure, Lisa. I feel like we motivated and moved our constituents to reach out to Jeff Hurd and CD3. I think there's ten stations that are in his district, ten public media stations, not to mention Rocky Mountain Public Television and Public media. And I feel a little disappointed for sure that he did not hear us. I believe the numbers are still coming in, but last we heard there were thousands and thousands and, you know, multiple thousands of people who did contact the representative to give their feedback that they did not want him to vote for this, and that they value the public media services that they tune into in rural western Colorado. So we hope that Jeff Hurd listens next time and respects the will of the people that voted for him (and) he is representing. However, I do think KVNF is in a good position to move forward.
It's not necessarily just the cut of federal funding that's going to impact us. There are other things that we have benefited from in the funding that's gone out to projects like StoryCorps, which came to this town many years ago and recorded the stories of the friends and neighbors that live in this community in Delta County and put them in an archive in the Library of Congress.
There are going to be programs and things that will take hits that will subsequently impact the KVNF programming. We also get our music rights negotiated and our satellite feeds through PRSS, which is a public system separate from NPR, and they are the stewards of that system. So there will be impacts there. There will be impacts around our website services if we can no longer afford to be NPR members.
So it's very important, Lisa, for members of KVNF and listeners of KVNF to step up and do a little more if they can and if they're able at this time. Your Mountain Grown Community Radio KVNF (has been) around for 46 years. What a legacy.
