How much of PBS funding comes from federal government grants?
Executive summary
Public broadcasting’s central federal channel is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and most reliable reporting and government analysis pegs direct federal support to PBS at about 15–16% of its overall funding—money that flows through CPB rather than directly from Congress to PBS itself [1] [2] [3]. That figure masks wide variation: local member stations receive most CPB dollars and some rural stations depend on those grants for a quarter to more than half of their revenue [4] [5].
1. The headline number: roughly 15–16% of PBS funding is federal
Analysts and official studies repeatedly state that PBS receives roughly 15 percent (commonly reported as 15–16 percent) of its funding via federal grants routed through the CPB, not as direct line-item appropriations to PBS itself [1] [2] [3]. Ballotpedia and multiple news and academic outlets repeat the same ballpark, summarizing decades of CPB appropriations and CPB grant distributions as the federal component of PBS funding [6] [1].
2. How the federal money actually reaches PBS: CPB as the intermediary
Congress appropriates funds to the CPB, a congressionally created private nonprofit that then awards grants to local public television and radio stations; CPB does not produce programming nor control PBS editorial decisions [7] [4]. In recent years CPB’s appropriation has been reported at roughly $550 million per year, part of which—by statute and practice—flows to public television and to supporting the national system that supplies PBS programming [3] [5].
3. Local stations drive the real dependence: indirect federal influence
The federal percentage cited for “PBS” is an average that understates how crucial CPB dollars are to many local stations: CPB grants made up about 10.6% of the average public television station’s revenue in FY2023, but for smaller and rural stations CPB funds can represent 25% or more of budgets and in some cases over half of revenue [4] [5]. Because stations buy or subscribe to national PBS programming and pay membership fees, federal dollars to stations can indirectly subsidize PBS’s national service even when CPB grants are not paid to PBS directly [2].
4. Recent political changes and why precise accounting is hard
The scale and timing of federal support have been subject to political shifts: recent budget actions and a 2025 congressional clawback eliminated CPB appropriations in practice and led CPB’s leadership to cite devastating impacts, complicating year-to-year comparisons [8] [3]. Moreover, there is no single authoritative line-item that captures “all federal support for PBS” because CPB grants go mostly to local stations and some federal funds for related initiatives (like Ready to Learn) come through other agencies or programs [9] [2].
5. Sources, disagreements and the pragmatic bottom line
Government research and mainstream summaries (Congressional Research Service, CPB financial reports, The Conversation, Colorado Newsline) converge on a consistent conclusion: direct federal funding to the PBS system via CPB is on the order of mid‑teens percentage of PBS’s revenues, while local station reliance varies dramatically—some stations are barely affected, others would lose a quarter to a majority of their budgets [2] [4] [1] [3]. Some advocacy and station-level materials emphasize that federal support is a relatively small slice of the total federal budget (often cited as roughly 0.01% of the federal budget for CPB), a framing meant to show modest cost to taxpayers even as it underscores outsized local impact where commercial alternatives are scarce [10] [5].