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Monday, March 28, 2011

Threatened end of Corporation for Public Broadcasting endangers rural community radio

Community radio stations in rural areas may have to cut programming or sign off, if Congress eliminates funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as House Republicans have voted, writes the general manager of one Appalachian radio station. WMMT-FM in Whitesburg, Ky., is the station of Appalshop Inc. and serves 30 counties in rural Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and West Virginia. The station is "funded through listener support, business underwriting and the occasional grant to produce radio documentaries about Appalachia," Marcie Crim, WMMT's general manager, writes in an op-ed for the Lexington Herald-Leader. "We are not a National Public Radio affiliate, but like countless other community radio stations we receive funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that is critical to our survival."

Community radio stations, which often receive more than 40 percent of their funding from CPB grants and generally serve rural areas, people of color and Native American reservations, "will have to cut programming significantly and in some cases go completely dark" if CPB funding is cut, Crim writes. She notes WMMT is in danger of shortening its schedule to just a few hours a day, cutting all public affairs broadcasting or possibly going off the air all together.

Community stations provide essential public services. When a diesel spill polluted the North Fork of the Kentucky River in Whitesburg in February, the city waited to notify people in the affected area. "Without WMMT on the air telling our community of the danger, even more people would have continued to use the water," Crim writes. "We don't air NPR programming; we tell our listeners when their water is poisoned (which happens more often than you can imagine)."

Crim concludes, "Community radio is produced by and for our communities and we can't do it without the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. NPR may lose only 2 percent of its budget if CPB is defunded. However, whole communities will lose a vitally important local voice." (Read more)

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