Public media is struggling under Trump. L.A.’s KCRW may have found the way forward

It was a textbook addition of insult to injury. When President Trump signed an executive order last May taking federal funds away from public broadcasters, he dubbed the document: “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media.” Apparently, the financial lifeblood of public radio and TV wasn’t merely wasteful; it was wasteful because of its recipients’ malicious intent. Later that summer, Congress made the order a reality—or at least the “ending subsidization” part, if not the maliciousness. The Rescissions Act of 2025 clawed back 1.1 billion (with a “b”) in funds already allocated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. With its federal financial support evaporating, the CPB soon announced it was winding down operations. Sure enough, the year that followed has seen layoffs and programming cuts across the board in public media. While these losses have been harsh for NPR and PBS, the crisis also presents an opportunity for public media to remind people what it can do and why it still matters. KCRW in Los Angeles, an NPR member station, is staring down the same struggles as the entire industry—it lost 1.3 million in federal funds last year—but it’s also peering past them. By revitalizing its programming and the way listeners access it, deepening the relationship between its shows and their fans, and putting on more live events like the Summer Nights festival running throughout this month, KCRW may be building a replicable blueprint for public media to thrive in volatile times. Here’s how KCRW has fared since last year’s government intervention: Listenership across linear, streaming and podcasts has grown exponentially, with millions of podcast downloads bringing in fans from well beyond L.A.; the financial pledge goal for this year is already well within reach; and the company is on track to finish 2026 with ad revenue and off-radio sponsorship (corporate support tied to nonbroadcast platforms) growing to more than 30 of overall sponsorship funding—a healthily diversified revenue mix for a radio station. Not that KCRW considers itself just a radio station. “People will ask me, ‘Oh, how’s the radio business?’” says KCRW’s president, Jennifer Ferro. “And I say I don’t know anything about the radio business. I’m in the community business.” Getting more personal with programming A lot has changed in the 32 years since Ferro began working at KCRW as an assistant to the general manager. Back then, she was one of roughly 30 staffers, operating on a budgetary pittance; now, headcount has grown to over 100, with a budget of 24 million. But the most significant changes at KCRW throughout that time have happened in just the past six years. Before Trump put public media on his hit list last summer, COVID-19 had already fundamentally changed the way KCRW’s fans engage with it. “Prior to COVID, everyone in Los Angeles was in their cars, driving to work Monday through Friday, during very specific hours, and the companion they had was radio,” Ferro says. “It was the easiest, one-touch technology, and it made KCRW a big part of people’s commute experience. But now, that’s all been disrupted, whether people are coming into the office three days a week or not at all, and we saw this radical change in the way people listened.” As audiences abstained from their former radio habits, the team at KCRW sought out fresh ways to remain relevant and become more accessible. Part of the resulting strategy involved recruiting marquee podcast talent, going all in on newsletters, and giving KCRW’s prized music curation a life beyond radio with a redesigned app and 24/7 streaming playlists. Around the time of the 2024 election, the company launched two new podcasts: Question Everything, an investigation of media distortions from the S-Town creator Brian Reed, and The Sam Sanders Show, a deep dive into pop culture with the NPR Politics Podcast cofounder. Both shows have been hits, each quickly surpassing 2 million downloads and the former winning four Signal Awards and a 2026 Webby. After developing some heavyweight podcasts, KCRW also invested in highly curated music and culture newsletters for all its shows. The one tied to culinary crowd-pleaser Good Food, for instance, takes fans further into host Evan Kleiman’s personal cooking journey, while the dedicated Substack Backseat Babies helps families navigate life in L.A. Rather than serve as perfunctory dispatches to harvest clicks on KCRW’s website, the newsletters offer self-contained content designed to deepen engagement with fans and, ideally, convert them into sustaining members. “I’ll be honest—we don’t even care about our website,” Ferro says. “Which seems prescient, because with ‘Google Zero‘ now, websites don’t seem to matter anymore.” Getting more personal with listeners Another recent change that appears to be driving growth is a big increase in live events, which KCRW has arguably made core to its identity. Over the past year and a half, the organization has steadily expanded its live footprint to over 1,000 annual events, significantly scaling up both its outdoor public series and intimate studio sessions, along with sponsored film and TV screenings, grub-related gatherings connected to Good Food, and partnerships with museums, cultural institutions, and local businesses around the city. “We like being this fulcrum in the community, helping out these bars, restaurants and coffee shops that really kind of make a neighborhood a neighborhood,” Ferro says. View this post on Instagram While KCRW has always strived to be a convener of L.A. residents, Ferro says, the organization truly stepped up during the Southern California wildfires back in January 2025. Lasting over three devastating weeks, the fires ultimately sorted most of the area’s residents into two groups: those who were directly affected and needed help, and those who were not but wanted to help. Both groups were desperate for reliable information, a void KCRW filled. The broadcaster became simultaneously a hub for civic info, a community organizer, and a cultural relief operation. The team at KCRW created hyperlocal dedicated resource pages, which they kept updated throughout the crisis and recovery period. They also put together KCRW Music Relief, offering targeted support for local musicians who make the kinds of tunes that color KCRW’s programming, and injected some positivity in a dark time by collecting and sharing fan-made Love Letters to LA. Between its disaster relief efforts and robust live-events slate over the past 18 months, KCRW hasn’t just been reporting on, guiding, or entertaining the community; it’s been a load-bearing part of it. A replicable strategy for public media success Of course, even as KCRW has pivoted to deal with the new reality, it was unable to avoid some fallout from the collapse of federal funding. “Once the rescission happened, we knew that money was never coming back,” Ferro says. “It was pretty one-to-one: We lost 1.3 million, and so we reduced our expenses by 1.3 million.” As part of that reduction, KCRW cut 10 of its staff last October, joining the ranks of public media outlets incurring layoffs in the past year. Just nine months later, though, the outlook at KCRW is already brighter. View this post on Instagram Now that expenses are under control, a recent 22 increase in membership and substantial growth in subscriber donations confirm the company’s recent strategy is working. The success doesn’t necessarily seem restricted to a major city like L.A., either. Forging more intimate connections between programming and fans, broadening further beyond radio, and partnering with brands and local venues for live events could be a winning playbook for just about any public media channel looking to prove its indispensability. Whether it’s guiding people through tough times or bringing them together to celebrate, outlets like KCRW have lately been showing off the range of what they have to offer. As Ferro says, “I think putting a target on public broadcasting last year reminded people how valuable it is to have these public resources in their lives.”