The Corporation for Public Broadcasting confirmed that it is no longer managing the program that funded public media emergency alerting improvements. It said the Federal Emergency Management Agency should oversee the distribution of any remaining funds.
In a Monday release, CPB said that as a result of being defunded through the passage of the Rescissions Act, it can no longer absorb the costs and manage the Next Generation Warning System (NGWS) program. CPB announced that it will close operations on Sept. 30.
As we reported last week, FEMA has released a plan for the fiscal 2025 money that appears to put the distribution in the hands of states and tribal nations, without mention of public media as intended recipients.
Status of previous funds
Notably, CPB said that FEMA should assume responsibility for disbursing existing NGWS grant funds, “or most of the FY 2022 funding — and all funds from FY 2023 and FY 2024 — will go undistributed.”
“As a result, critical emergency alerting equipment will not be purchased, leaving communities — especially those in rural and disaster-prone areas — without the upgrades Congress intended,” CPB said.
America’s Public Television Stations’ President and CEO Kate Riley said that CPB’s announcement “compounds the losses” that communities face following public media funding cuts. She also urged FEMA to “establish a new process” to deliver funding to public broadcasters.
Many of those funds went to stations in rural areas, or regions prone to hazards such as hurricanes or flooding.
Congress originally created the NGWS grant program in 2022 and appropriated $136 million over three years. According to a CPB timeline, from the first round of funding, CPB awarded 44 grants totaling approximately $21 million. In the first year, CPB hired an NGWS team, which issued requests for applications and provided technical assistance to stations.
A second round of applications, of which CPB said “demand far exceeded available resources,” drew more than $110 million in requests from 175 stations.
FEMA’s next round of funding for FY 2025 appears to be more focused on methods outside of traditional broadcasting to disseminate IPAWS-compatible alerts.
“This is one more example of rescission consequences impacting local public media stations and the communities they serve — in this case, weakening the capacity of local public media stations to support the safety and preparedness of their communities,” said CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison in the release.
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