It’s 9 a.m. on a Monday morning at KGOU’s headquarters in Norman, and the staff is filing in to start the new week. It feels like a normal Monday morning around here, but it’s not. It’s the first weekday since Congress cut funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, putting a big hole in the station’s budget.
“Of our revenue, it’s about 1/7th of our revenue, because about $215,000 is the hit on an annual basis,” Dick Pryor, KGOU general manager said. “This was previously appropriated money. Members of Congress came together in a bipartisan way and decided to appropriate about $535 million per year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to then be sent to public TV and radio stations. So the amount of money that was already appropriated for stations was $1.1 billion. That’s what just got taken back. It was sitting in the Treasury ready to be accessed by stations beginning in the new federal fiscal year, October 1. And now it’s lost.”
Dick Pryor doesn’t want to talk about cuts. At least not right now. He said there remains an opportunity to make up for the loss in funding through donations from listeners and sponsorships from businesses and organizations.
“There are various ways we could generate more dollars, and we have to exhaust that first before we even start to talk about cuts. Because if we’re able to bring in enough money to cover this loss there would be no need for cuts,” Pryor said. “And the reality on cuts — I don’t even like to talk about it — because we run such a lean operation there’s just not much, really, to cut, because we’re committed to continuing to provide the service to the people of Oklahoma that we have done for years, and that they expect.”
All of Oklahoma’s congressional delegation voted to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. None of the ones KGOU reached out to for comment responded in time for the publication of this story.
U.S. Senator James Lankford did release a video statement on the issue where he emphasized the savings that will come from this cut, and that public broadcasters like KGOU can go it alone.
“No one’s opposing NPR or PBS or OETA or any of those. This is not about their programming,” Lankford said in the video. “This is about saying if we’re going to save a billion dollars a year, this is an area where we believe they can make up the difference on that pretty well, and they could function like every other station in America.”
It’s important to note that KGOU can’t operate like every other station in America. It’s a non-commercial station, meaning KGOU can’t simply sell advertising. It just doesn’t work that way.
Nyk Daniels is the local host for Morning Edition. He’s been with KGOU for seven years.
“I started here as a student, and I got to know the staff. And we are a smaller station. And I just feel like we’ve always been the little station that could,” he said. “I feel like, yeah, it is a special place.”
