Which rural and tribal public radio stations relied most heavily on CPB funding in 2025?
Executive summary
A narrow set of rural and tribal public radio stations were disproportionately dependent on CPB community service grants (CSGs) going into 2025—dozens of outlets relied on CPB for a third or more of operating revenue, with a smaller group depending on CPB for more than half of their budgets—examples named in reporting include KSJD (Cortez, CO), KSUT (Southern Ute), KYIE (Lapwai, ID), KGHR (Tuba City, AZ) and KDUR (Durango, CO) [1] [2] [3]. Public reporting and CPB-shared data point to 79 radio stations that relied on CPB for 30% or more of funding in the most recent CPB dataset and 32 stations that in 2022 relied on CSGs for more than half their revenue, many of them located on Tribal lands [4] [3].
1. The scale of dependence: dozens vulnerable, a core group in crisis
CPB and independent reporting show that while many rural stations received modest shares of their budgets from federal support, a concentrated subset carried very high dependency: CPB data shared with news outlets identified 79 radio stations that relied on CPB for at least 30% of revenue in FY2023, and an Alliance of Rural Public Media/CPB figure put 32 stations—many Tribal—above the 50% threshold in 2022 [4] [3]. Those percentages help explain why the rescission of CPB funding in 2025 posed an existential threat to particular small-town and Tribal broadcasters [5] [6].
2. Named stations that exemplify heavy reliance
Local reporting and advocacy pieces repeatedly singled out specific stations with very high CPB dependence: KSJD in Cortez, Colorado reportedly draws roughly one-third of its funding from CPB, KSUT (Southern Ute) has been described as receiving about 20% (and tribal stations overall commonly report far higher shares), and reporting also named KYIE (Lapwai, Idaho), KGHR (Tuba City, Arizona) and KDUR (Durango, Colorado) as stations that receive large chunks of their budgets from federal sources [1] [2] [3].
3. Geography and ownership: Western and Tribal concentration
The most vulnerable stations are clustered in the West and on Tribal lands: more than half of the 79 stations identified by CPB data as 30%+ dependent are located in the West, and roughly 20 of those are Tribal stations; Native Public Media and other trackers show most of the country’s roughly 57 tribal radio stations had been CPB grantees before the funding rescission [4] [7]. That spatial concentration reflects smaller markets, limited donor bases, and infrastructure costs that federal grants historically helped cover [8] [9].
4. What the CPB payouts looked like in 2025 and why that matters
In FY2025 CPB distributed approximately $388.35 million in CSG payments and announced final payments as it wound down operations after Congress rescinded future funding; radio grantees received per-station payments that ranged from about $5,370 to $26,582 under CPB’s formulas, with the aggregate distribution representing a material share of revenue for many small stations [5]. Advocacy groups point out that CPB money was often used for core operations, infrastructure, and emergency services rather than national programming—so cuts translate directly into local service losses [8] [9].
5. Limits of the public record and alternative views
Available reporting relies largely on CPB-shared datasets (FY2023, 2022 dependence figures) and reporting from outlets tracking station impacts; there is no definitive public list in these sources that ranks every station by exact 2025 CPB percentage, so claims about the “most” dependent stations must be read in that context—advocates stress dozens of high-dependence stations, while defenders of the rescission argued federal support was unnecessary or politically motivated, an argument reflected in the administration’s budget actions and subsequent legal fights over CPB policy [3] [6]. CPB press materials and Current/NPR reporting emphasize the corporation’s long role supporting rural and Tribal broadcasters even as the organization wound down, underscoring conflicting narratives about public purpose and federal spending [10] [11] [12] [6].
6. Bottom line: who relied most heavily in practice
In practice, the stations that “relied most heavily” on CPB in 2025 were a definable but dispersed group: the roughly 32 stations reported as getting more than half their budgets from CSGs (many Tribal), the 79 stations at or above 30% dependence (clustered in the West), and the named examples—KSJD, KSUT, KYIE, KGHR, KDUR—that reporting repeatedly cited as illustrative of the human impact when CPB funding was cut [3] [4] [1] [2]. The public record supplied identifies these patterns and examples but does not provide a single authoritative, numbered ranking of all stations by 2025 CPB reliance.