Friends of MVYRADIO,

We’ve had listeners ask us about the funding we receive and the current legislative actions to cancel that funding. I’m here to answer some frequently asked questions and suggest how you can help.

What is the CPB and does MVYRADIO receive funding from it?

The Corporation For Public Broadcasting is a private entity that receives a block of money that Congress has appropriated. The CPB in turn, offers grants to nonprofit/public radio and tv stations. This includes NPR and PBS but also includes hundreds of small stations around the country.

Since becoming a nonprofit over a decade ago, MVYRADIO has been receiving a CPB grant on a yearly basis. How much we receive each year is calculated via a formula that CPB uses, which includes how much money we raised on our own the previous year.

In short, MVYRADIO receives about 10% of our budget, or about $200,000 each year from the CPB.

This “Community Service Grant” is intended to fund programming that directly attends to the needs of the community we serve. It helps us produce local news programming like The Vineyard Current, for instance.

What is happening with CPB funding?

There are two tracks in motion right now.

One is the big budget bill that is moving through Congress as we speak. This budget includes a provision that would defund CPB starting in fiscal year 2028.

At the same time, the Executive Branch has started a “recission” process. Congress has already appropriated funding to the CPB for 2026 and 2027. CPB has this money in hand. Recission is a process where the Executive Branch asks the Legislative Branch to claw back already-appropriated money. Congress has a limited time to vote and act, to affect this process.

**Editor's note: An earlier iteration of this letter indicated that MVYRADIO's 2025 budget would not be effected since we have received the money we were expecting this year. This is incorrect. The correct information is below.**

Fortunately, MVYRADIO has already received the first payment from CPB that we expected in 2025. However, we usually receive a second payment in November of each year. If the recission process were to pass through Congress, this could affect that payment and our budget.

If we were to lose CPB funding for 2026 or beyond, it would be difficult, but not life-threatening for MVYRADIO.

We are fortunate to be in a strong financial position. While you may be hearing about some other public local radio stations that are cutting staff and programming, the factors in their cases do not affect MVYRADIO.

We are financially stable enough that we could weather the loss of the grant while we figure out how to either raise more money or cut services to account for that loss.

What can I do?

The primary focus for all of Public media right now is to stop the two legislative actions, and keep CPB funding intact.

Calling your representatives in Congress and asking them to support funding for the Public media is effective and necessary.

We feel confident that the representatives for the Cape & Islands are supportive of the cause.

But because of our far-reaching listening audience, we know there are many MVYRADIO listeners in other legislative districts. We encourage you to contact your representatives and encourage them to support public broadcasting.

It’s notable that this is not the first time some legislators have tried to defund CPB. In those cases, listeners (particularly in rural districts) spoke up about the importance of public broadcasting, enabling a bi-partisan coalition to form and preserve funding. We hope that if you live outside our broadcast area, and you have a legislator who can be moved to join a bipartisan effort, that you encourage them to do so.

Thank you!

We’re listener-supported MVYRADIO. And listener support comes in many forms, including donations, feedback and encouragement, and speaking up on our behalf. Thanks for supporting MVYRADIO and all of public media.

Sincerely,

PJ Finn
MVYRADIO Executive Director

PS. For more information and LOTS of other resources, visit Protect My Public Media.