As a member of the Board of Trustees of Minnesota Public Radio and American Public Media, the news out of Washington D.C. wasn’t surprising but it did hit hard: $1.1 billion in federal funding disappeared with the stroke of a pen. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting shuttered after nearly six decades of service. Hundreds of public radio stations across America suddenly faced an existential question: What are we really worth to our communities, and how do we prove it?
The immediate reaction was expected—panic, anger, appeals to restore what was lost. But those emotions, while understandable, miss the profound opportunity staring us in the face.
This isn’t the end of public radio. This is the opportunity of a lifetime.
A Time for Innovation
Every industry that has undergone forced innovation has discovered the same truth: when success depends on direct value creation, real innovation emerges—initially as a means of survival, then eventually as a mode of operation.
The elimination of CPB funding isn’t taking away our foundation—it’s forcing us to build upon the one we already have. We get to ask the questions that truly matter: What does our community want and need from us? How can we deliver that value more effectively than we have in the past? What unique strengths do we possess that no algorithm, no corporate media giant, no social media platform can replicate? We’ll arrive at the answers to these questions through thoughtful listening as we embark upon creative experimentation with the entrepreneurial spirit that got us here.
Reclaiming Our Entrepreneurial Heritage
Public radio wasn’t born in a government office. It was created by passionate individuals who saw a need in their communities and fought to fill it. The early pioneers of public broadcasting were entrepreneurs in the truest sense—risk-takers who built something from nothing because they believed deeply in its necessity.
The funding crisis is calling us back to our roots. It’s reminding us that sustainable media organizations are built on the creation of value. It’s demanding that we rediscover our entrepreneurial DNA and use it to create something more valuable than the funding that we’re losing.
Every successful entrepreneur will tell you the same story: their greatest breakthroughs came not during times of comfort and abundance, but during moments of necessity. When the old way of doing things stops working, innovation isn’t optional.
Public radio stations across the country are about to discover capabilities they never knew they had. They’re going to find revenue streams they never imagined. They’re going to forge community connections deeper than ever before. And, perhaps most valuable of all, they’re going to define new modes of operation that will carry them through the immediate funding cuts and on to new heights. It won’t be easy, but nobody expected moving the world forward ever would be.
Let’s build!
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