KEET Considers Staff and Program Cuts

The Impact of the Rescissions Act on Public Broadcasting

At the end of last week, President Donald Trump signed H.R.4 — the Rescissions Act of 2025 — into law. This legislation marks the conclusion of a lengthy effort by the Trump administration to defund and potentially dismantle the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The initiative aimed to reclaim approximately $1.1 billion in previously approved funds, which would have had a significant impact on CPB’s affiliated organizations, including PBS and NPR.

Broadcasters have long warned that these cuts could severely affect local TV and radio stations, especially those serving rural and tribal communities. One such station is KEET-TV, a PBS affiliate in Humboldt County. Federal funding makes up about 45% of the station’s budget, according to Executive Director David Gordon, who spoke with the Times-Standard this June.

Gordon recently shared concerns about the effects of the rescission bill on KEET. He mentioned that staffing cuts and reduced programming are likely outcomes. The station is currently waiting to see how the funding reductions will affect PBS as a whole, which could further limit KEET's ability to provide content to its audience.

“There are going to have to be some reductions in programming and in staffing,” Gordon said. “It’s just there’s no other way to make it work … and preserve the PBS service that we provide. It is something that has been discussed with the board and folks will see what we’re going to be doing here over the next few days and few weeks.”

He also noted that PBS itself will need to adjust due to the loss of funding from stations. “If the funding is gone to the stations, that money doesn’t go into PBS in the form of dues and that sort of thing. So there will be some programming changes with the PBS offerings. Exactly what those will be, we have an idea of a few things like maybe fewer episodes of series, maybe going back deeper into the archives for some series. Those are the kinds of changes that people may or may not be quite so obvious right at first.”

Gordon pointed out that viewers of PBS Kids may already be seeing the effects of funding cuts. In May, the Trump administration terminated the CPB’s Ready to Learn grant funding, which had a significant impact on that division. “PBS Kids took a pretty big hit when the Ready to Learn funding was cut a couple of months ago, and so that division the PBS had already undergone a lot of staff reduction, a lot of programming cutbacks,” he said. “And we can only imagine it’s not going to necessarily get much better than that. So that’s probably the most obvious thing that that folks may notice.”

Despite these challenges, public support for PBS remains strong. According to reporting by The New York Times, cuts to the CPB, PBS, and NPR have led to increased individual donations. Gordon mentioned that there has been a natural rise in donations to KEET, but the station has not yet launched formal fundraising efforts. This is because they need to explain to viewers exactly what a donation drive would fund.

Gordon expressed gratitude for the community’s support, particularly during a time when the station is dealing with an unrelated transmitter issue. He encouraged PBS viewers on the North Coast to "keep the faith."

In addition to KEET, rescission-related cuts will affect KHSU, Humboldt County’s local NPR affiliate, which is currently transitioning management from Sacramento-based CapRadio back to license-holder Cal Poly Humboldt. These cuts will also impact other local media stations not affiliated with PBS or NPR, such as KMUD, which receives grant funding through the CPB.