It’s been less than 72 hours since the Washington Post uncorked another breathless panic story about Trump’s latest supposed “attack” on democracy. This time, the headline screams that America’s musicians are bracing for disaster if federal funding to public broadcasting is rescinded.
For the more than 1,000 public radio stations that play independent music, Boilen says the bill is an existential threat. “It could very well mean that [Adult Album Alternative] stations and all the music stations in the public radio world would have to stop playing music,” said Boilen, who now hosts My Tiny Morning Show on Takoma Park, Maryland’s WOWD, where he serves as program director. “It silences so many stations.”
The horror. The tragedy. The death of culture.
Except they forgot to mention one small, inconvenient truth: Most of America left public broadcasting behind a decade ago.
The Sky Is Falling Again
You could feel the newsroom sweating from the headline on. They quote Tiny Desk creators, indie musicians, and aging radio personalities as if they’re gathering in a circle, lighting candles, and whispering eulogies to art itself.
It’s not the first time the corporate press has framed a budget cut like it’s the rapture. But in this case, they’re not just exaggerating.
They’re actively ignoring reality.
A Government Lifeline for a Platform Most Have Abandoned
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) receives nearly $500 million annually from federal appropriations. That's the money for PBS, NPR, and over 1,500 local affiliated stations. Most of that money goes towards music licensing, which allows those stations to avoid legal complications for playing recorded music.
The CPB funding typically covers all music licensing fees for public radio stations. Without the federal money that the CPB receives, those stations would have to negotiate licensing agreements individually beginning next year. (Licensing fees are paid to a handful of organizations that negotiate the rights to play songs on the air on behalf of musicians.) While larger stations like Philadelphia’s WXPN or Seattle’s KEXP might be able to fundraise for the music rights, all stations — especially ones in small communities — would struggle without the blanket licensing agreement that CPB negotiates.
The rest of the budget keeps the lights on. According to the WaPo, the fear is of losing the last honest brokers of local culture and independent music.
What nobody prints or says? For many years, most Americans stopped discovering music and local culture through public radio.
Where Music Lives Now
If up-and-coming artists want to make it, they turn to the internet to find their audience.
- Zach Bryan built a global fanbase through raw YouTube uploads.
- Oliver Anthony went from singing in a field to chart-topping sales in under a week without ever stepping foot in an NPR studio.
- Lainey Wilson saw her career explode thanks to TikTok loops and live-streamed shows.
There are coliseums full of music discovery: TikTok, YouTube, Bandcamp, and SoundCloud are the heavyweights, and there are plenty of others.
To continue listening to music, people pay a fixed amount. We don't have to sit through pledge drives promising tote bags. And they don't receive any CPB grants.
Over 90% of Americans aged 18-64 find their music online, according to a Pew Research study.
At the same time, NPR's audience fell significantly, from 37.7 million in 2017 to under 31 million in 2020. That trend doesn't appear to be reversing anytime soon.
That's no accident, it's evolution.
Public Broadcasting Isn’t Dying. It’s Already Dead.
The panic in these articles isn’t about saving indie artists. It’s about preserving an elite media class that has spent decades insulting half the country while cashing their checks.
Let’s not pretend that public radio is a sacred, neutral space. We have all heard of Nina Totenberg for years. We remember the sneering condescension toward conservatives. We remember how NPR handled the Hunter Biden laptop story: it flat-out refused to cover it. Not because it wasn’t real, but because, quote, “We don’t want to waste listeners’ time.”
Now, they’re clutching pearls because the people they ignored stopped footing the bill.
But What About the Little Stations?
Yes, local stations will feel the pinch if CPB funds go away. Some will close. Others will scale back. But it’s important to ask: should they survive simply because they’ve existed?
You can’t call yourself “independent media” and then cry when your federal allowance gets cut.
And those little stations have other options. Underwriting. Community partnerships. Even crowdfunding. It’s what conservative content creators, podcasters, YouTubers, and Substackers have been doing all along, without $465 million in taxpayer support.
If Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson can build empires without federal cash, maybe the dulcet-toned jazz DJ in Madison can fire up a Patreon.
The Real Fear Isn’t About Music. It’s About Control.
The Post, NPR, PBS, and their satellite affiliates aren’t scared of cultural loss. They’re scared of cultural irrelevance.
For decades, public broadcasting acted as a soft-power amplifier for progressive narratives. Climate alarmism, gender ideology, and race obsession are all wrapped in a warm, fuzzy blanket of cello music and tote bags. They trained generations to believe the people on the radio were smarter, kinder, and more noble than the riffraff on commercial airwaves.
Now that model is crumbling. It turns out that Americans like to choose what they listen to. They enjoy free markets. And they don’t like being called stupid or racist just for voting the wrong way.
So, the real panic behind these articles isn’t about Yasmin Williams losing airtime. It’s about a dying aristocracy finally seeing the writing on the wall.
A Cultural Reset Is Long Overdue
We are not a culture starving for art. We’re drowning in it. The barriers to entry are lower than ever. A kid in Appalachia can record a fiddle tune on his phone and upload it to the world in seconds. You don’t need a union job at a public station anymore to get heard.
What we are starving for is honesty.
Honesty about where taxpayer dollars go. Honesty about ideological bias. Honesty about whether an institution is worth preserving just because it’s been around since "Sesame Street" had felt fuzz.
It is perfectly reasonable for a nation facing debt, inflation, and cultural chaos to ask whether it needs to spend half a billion dollars per year on a media outlet that despises half the population.
Final Thoughts
If NPR and PBS are as valuable as their defenders claim, they should be able to survive without federal funding. If they collapse without it, that’s a market verdict, not a cultural death.
The Washington Post wants you to believe this is a funeral for American music. It’s not.
It’s the retirement party for a taxpayer-funded propaganda machine. And it’s long overdue.
