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Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, October 17th, and I'm Mark Ross, retired managing partner of P.W.

C and president of the City Club Board of directors.

It is my pleasure to introduce today's forum, where we will unpack the future of public media across our nation.

For many Americans, Public Media is the home of NPR, PBS, and is synonymous with the likes of Mister Rogers, Elmo, and Ken Burns.

Documentaries.

It is also a crucial resource for local journalism discourse and even emergency alerts that keep our neighbors safe.

This year, the Rescissions act of 2025 was passed by Congress and signed by President Trump, cutting all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which will close its doors as a result in January 2026.

The new law removes more than a half $1 billion in federal funding from the public media ecosystem.

The hardest hit are likely to be smaller market rural and tribal stations, some of whom rely on public support for important communication in disaster prone regions of the nation.

Public media has clearly entered a new era of uncertainty.

Today, we will discuss the impacts of the new reality, how stations are planning to adapt after the closure of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and what efforts are underway to support the most at risk public media organizations in our country.

Joining us for this incredibly timely conversation are Tim Isgitt CEO of Public Media Company, a nonprofit organization that supports local public media organizations around the country, helping them expand their service and impact and strengthen our communities and secure their future.

Previously, Tim served as senior vice president of communications and government affairs at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as in leadership and service roles at the U.S.

State Department.

Also joining us is Kevin Martin, who since 2017 has served as the president and CEO of Idea Stream Public Media, northeast Ohio's multiple media public service organization.

Prior to joining Idea Stream, Kevin served as senior vice president and chief operating officer of KQED and spent seven years as the vice president of station Grants and Television Station Initiatives at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Kevin also serves with me on our City Club board of directors.

Moderating the conversation is Tony Richardson, president of the George Gund Foundation.

A quick reminder for our live stream audience.

If you have a question during the Q&A portion of the forum, you can text it to (330)541-5794, and City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

And before we part, before we start, it's important to disclose that idea.

Stream Public Media is the City Club's primary media partner, and for decades has helped us bring our forums to the airwaves and the web.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, Kevin Martin is on our board of directors.

We booked this forum in response to the Rescission Act because public media is so important to this community.

The region, the state and our nation now.

Members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Tim Escott, Kevin Martin and Tony Richardson.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So we're going to jump in.

And, obviously at the outset there was some context in sort of this level setting around the state of federal funding and the loss to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which just announced after 60 years of its existence, it's going to be closing the shop.

Can you speak about the impact that will have on a sector in our country at large?

I'll start with Tim, and then Kevin.

I want to jump in.

Happy to.

You.

Can you hear me now?

Okay, great.

Well, first, thank you all for, hosting this conversation.

It's it's a real honor to be here at this esteemed forum.

So, yes, the, Rescissions act this year, ended federal funding for public media, which means the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has for 57 years administered that money.

No longer is going to receive money.

So that officially happened on October 1st, just a few weeks ago.

What it means, CPB has been the administrator of federal funding for local public media organizations around the country.

Their annual appropriations about $600 million a year.

Most of that comes to CPB and goes out to local public media organizations around the country.

Like Idea Stream.

CPB also, does pays for some other services from the system and interconnection system music rights.

There's all sorts of things, a lot of content as well.

So it's a big loss for this public good.

In a lot of different dimensions.

Yeah.

You know, when this closure, that Mark didn't mention is that Tim and I worked together at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for.

I think we overlapped for maybe 5 or 7 years.

And, one of my jobs was to, oversee, a large part of 70% of the, government, appropriation.

So that meant about $320 million of the appropriation that went primarily to stations.

But, you know, PBS got some funds for, PBS, our kids programing.

But what that means for, Idea Stream is that, 200, $2.7 million hole that was created immediately.

When the rescission happened, then the clawback and the clawback was $1.1 billion.

And these were funds that were previously appropriated for two years.

And let me just say a word about that, because it was President Gerald Ford who, enacted that forward funding for public media to really protect it, from from Congress, to protect it from itself.

And so this was something and I would say public media has had broad bipartisan support.

Every year, in part, most of my job with a large part of my job for the past 34 years, I've been in public media, has been, going to the Hill and talking to representatives, whether they're from Texas, California, Minnesota or Ohio.

And it's been bipartisan support every place I've gone.

And so this was unusual.

It caught us somewhat by surprise.

Even though we noticed that there's a huge division, in the country right now.

I never thought that given my career, that I would see kind of the, the dissolution of, CPB.

So it feels a little surreal.

And I have lots of friends, as Tim does.

Who who work there.

So I'd be curious.

And, we can speak about, obviously the funding loss.

And what is it that means for operation and staffing and downsizing?

But how are you thinking differently about your business model and, similar.

Yeah, sure.

So I, well, let me just say we had a fantastic year this year.

Our fiscal year ended September 30th.

September 30th.

That's our fiscal year in.

And we've had the best, fundraising from the generous support, foundations, corporations and especially individuals.

Throughout the year and, so that prepared us really for this fiscal year that we're currently in and we're going to enter this year very strong financially.

We have a healthy, endowment.

And so I think that, we'll be able to really make sure that, we could.

Work with other stations, because I think one of the things we're going to realize, which we have, I think in the past 3 or 4 months, is that there's going to be some need for us to step in and help small and rural stations.

And I know that's one of the things that, Tim is working on.

Right now.

Yeah.

So I'll talk about that for a second.

Really, in January and February this year, my organization, we got really curious about what the sort of immediate impacts of the potential loss of CPB funding would be for the system.

And, we we did a little analysis, using station financial data and were able to determine that a significant portion of stations would likely close in the first year after CPB, went away.

These are stations that rely heavily on a percentage of their revenue from CPB.

And we put that on a map and looked and they're mostly all in rural and underserved areas of the country.

Serving 45 million people.

It's 115 different organizations that receive 30% or more of their revenue from CPB.

In rural, underserved areas of the country.

Where quite often they are the only source of local news and community connection.

And that's 45 million Americans that could lose service, you know, immediately.

So we, started talking to some stakeholders in philanthropy and a few other, folks about about this problem.

And, over the summer developed what we're calling now, the Public Media Bridge Fund.

Our goal was to raise $100 million to help these most vulnerable stations, not only sort of assist, you know, stay on the air and stabilize in the with the loss of CPB funding.

But to really begin to find those pathways to sustainability.

This this bridge Fund, as we're calling it, we're by the way, we're about to make our first grants in November.

So this is all coming together very, very quickly.

To these stations.

But, you know, the idea is to, to find some pathway to sustainability absent the CPB funding, and to give these stations time and support to find that.

So thank you.

Thank you.

So as I think about the sector at large and, just this idea of truthful news and information and public media and the role you play in that space.

When we think about advances in technology, right, and these things that we have here and how fast we're able to consume information, deliver information and create content.

Given the landscape and how diverse and how disruptive this has been to your space, speak about what makes public media unique during this time.

I'm going to leave that heart when for me, I can take it.

Well, you know, no, that's.

We both have something to say about that.

I mean, I've been in public media for 34 years, so I've seen a lot of change.

I think the media industry is the fastest and most dramatically changed industry there ever was.

I mean, I, I was in it when, cable really became mainstream.

And the question is you get 500 channels, why do you need public media?

And the irony is, is that it really strengthened the value of public media because the truth is that most Americans use maybe a dozen channels.

You know, of the 500 channels, and they would pick their favorites.

And we were always one of the the ones that, most Americans would go back to for, for their news and information or whether it's Brit coms, you know, or their period dramas or whatever it is.

They kept their, their attention, their dial, on us on the TV side.

And of course, then you had, the, the conversion from analog to digital, which is also a major change for not just public media, but for commercial media as well, where the whole nation had to, decide or had to figure out how to, get a new TV or new, receiver in order to get their programs.

And now, of course, we have a streaming, explosion, which, you know, is changing consumer habits in terms of how you'd prefer to.

And I forgot about TiVo and all this DVR that happened to, if you can remember that, and VCRs, which most people never learned how to work.

But you know, it's one of these things where, consumer habits are changing.

And one of the big differences is that before, when there was three large networks, ABC, NBC and CBS, one to many, one to millions.

Now it is really an audience driven medium, and it's quickly moving toward a creator driven medium.

So we're having to adapt to all of that.

And, a 14 year old with a laptop can be a media company because that person can really deliver a lot of content that is very, entertaining and useful.

And we're seeing that with YouTubers and TikTok and other medium.

So I talk often about, sort of the unique characteristics of public media in the US.

And I'll name three real quick.

And then I'm going to get to your question very specifically.

But, first of all, us public media by design in this country, is decentralized.

We're not NHK in Japan or the BBC in, the UK.

We are a collection of 550 local public media organizations that collectively, operate 1600 stations across the country.

That means local stakeholders, are making local decisions about how best to serve local communities.

And that's very powerful.

The second is that it was always designed to be a public private partnership.

I mentioned 600 million annually from CPB last year that unlocked 3.2 billion in that station's got in support from their communities.

So a $3.8 billion system.

I mentioned that it's, you know, I used to run around the hill to, talking to members of Congress about the value of the federal appropriation and talking about this public private partnership.

And it was always a bit of frustration that we weren't doing more right.

And that we had this wonky system.

But imagine where we'd be today if we didn't have it.

Congress just ended CPB, but they're not ending public media, right?

So that's that's really important to keep in mind.

The last thing I'll just remember, mentioned is that, those 1600 stations serve 99% of the country.

And public media was always designed to serve everyone for free.

And I just think those are really powerful things that we need to keep in mind as we chart a course to this, future without, federal funding.

The last thing I will say is, and I'm teed this up in my answer earlier, but public media is unique because it's about mission.

We are inundated with media that, treats us as consumers.

It's, funded by corporations or algorithms or AI or political interests.

Right now.

Public media is local, and it's answerable to local communities.

And it's about the mission to serve communities, information and cultural needs.

And I just think that's really unique.

And as we think about the future of our democracy and our society, and the role of media in that, I think public media, we need to talk more about the value of public media, right.

So I'm going to go back to this, the democracy that you just raised and at the George Gund Foundation, democracy building is one of the core pillars or tenets of our grantmaking.

Just given where we are in, in our country right now, sort of the socio political, environment.

I'd be curious to hear, your thoughts on, the state of democracy.

And when you think about the First Amendment, you know, freedom of speech, freedom of the press.

You speak to those particular, tenets of our Constitution are being attacked.

And what does it mean for your sector in particular?

That's a big question.

That's way we're.

Yeah, that's, Well, Tim, I know that you certainly are in that space right now.

You know, and I've been thinking more philosophically about that type of thing because, I think it's important to kind of rise up out of the weeds and, and the operations and, you know, one of the questions I get most often is one of the ones you brought up the question, the first question, which is, can public media can, what will happen to public media?

Will it will it kind of die with it diminish?

Will it thrive?

I do think public media can thrive and probably will thrive, meaning, PBS and NPR.

I think they will find lots of funders for their, for this, the resources that it get for the American public.

But I still believe that public media belongs to the American public, period.

And I think that is one of the things that, I hate that we're going to that we might lose is the accountability to the American public for.

Yeah.

Tell Tony, thanks for the question.

I, I mean, is there any doubt that media is playing an enormous role in our democracy right now?

Unfortunately, it's, playing such a huge role to pull us apart and to divide us.

These national, polarized narratives are repeated day in and day out on a variety of platforms, and we're bombarded with it.

Right?

And I think the really interesting conversation is what is the role that media could play in bringing us together?

And I think that's really starts at the community level.

And it's about stitching communities together and connecting them and providing a, safe place to have civil dialog like this room.

And the opportunity to do that in communities all over the country.

We can't do that if we lose all of these public media stations right now.

And, so I think that that is the job at hand is, is is stabilizing and securing local public media service for all the country right now.

And then to go about the work of sort of re inventing, public media organizations that can serve their communities for the next 50 years, just like they did the last 50 years.

Appreciate that.

And, you know, go from the macro to bring it back to sort of the micro.

And, and I think about the role of philanthropy during this time, what should be the role of organized philanthropy?

You know, Kevin, you had mentioned how you were able to stabilize operations from the generosity of individual donors, corporations, foundations, but can you to speak to the role of philanthropy during this time?

Sure.

And it's something that I talk about all the time.

Whenever I get an opportunity, because of every place I've worked and I've worked in a lot of major markets, northeast Ohio and in particular, Cleveland is the most philanthropically inclined.

Yeah, of any place where you have.

And I think it's because in many ways it's in the DNA where United Way and the Community Foundation, we're really strong players in the very beginning.

And I think that set the stage for support and and just individuals as well.

So I think that plays a big part in why, idea stream really punches way above its weight when it comes to, giving from individuals and from foundations.

And I just think it's, you know, California was not like that or San Francisco.

Dallas wasn't like that.

Twin cities comes close.

But you know, they've changed quite a bit as well.

Yeah.

I my observation since the rescission vote is that like taking an enormous role, and really stepping up and I, you know, I mentioned we're about $57 million we raised in about ten weeks for our bridge fund.

We're trying to get to a 100 million.

But financing is also playing a role in helping support children's programing, and national programing and PBS and NPR.

And, yeah, without that philanthropic culture and without the the value they place on public media, none of that would be possible.

Where again, where would we be today without that?

Absolutely.

And, at our foundation, we we've increased our grantmaking pay out and specific, particularly around democracy building in coalition coordination and just, bringing communities together and organizations together to really leverage their collective influence, advocacy and strengths.

So I'm curious to Kevin, I'm going to come back to you around sort of the role of idea stream here regionally, locally, is there a role and what has been the role of idea stream of, strengthening the, the regional infrastructure, around public media?

Yeah.

I mean, I guess stream public media plays an outsized role, not just in the region of Northeast Ohio, but in the state.

As the largest public media entity, really by far in in Ohio, we have a responsibility to, do statewide production.

So we have 30 staff, at the state House that covers the, the House, the Senate and executive branch.

But we also cover the, Ohio Supreme Court.

We also have a small team that does the, editorial side, meaning cover the legislature from an editorial standpoint.

And we started a, collaborative is called a statewide collaborative called The Ohio Newsroom, about two and a half years ago.

And that is a collection of, four, anchor stations, here in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus and Yellow Springs.

But it involves all of the Ohio NPR stations.

And we, we we lead that, because we have, you know, the resources and capacity to do it.

And it has really grown.

The funding for that has grown.

And unlike the, folks at the statehouse, they don't really cover politics.

They cover, voices from all over Ohio.

And so far they've been close to, I think, 88 counties in Ohio.

They've been to 80, 80 counties, meaning, giving voice to those who are beyond kind of the three seas of Columbus and Cincinnati and Cleveland.

And I'm really proud of that because I think it it just shows the strength of public media in Ohio, how we come together.

And that's unique.

And it's rare.

That doesn't happen any other place where, the eight public television stations and the 13 public radio stations come together for, for the greater good.

Great.

Can I just make a comment?

Sort of nationally, too?

Because every public media organization out there, every local one, a PBS, NPR all being faced with the reality of reduced revenue right now, for some, it's not that much.

For some, it's significant.

That focused on, but the solution beyond that is really going to be about more collaborations, some mergers and, some shared service, agreements.

We can't afford to continue to operate, these individual organizations in the breadth and scale that we have right now.

And, and to maintain that service to 99%, the local service to 99% of the country, we're just going to have to do things differently.

And it's forcing some really, uncomfortable conversations, some tough conversations right now, some tough decisions.

But, if our goal is to continue to maintain local public media service, we're going to have to do things differently.

And that's just the reality.

And by the way, it's going to look different in every community across the country.

So wow, wow.

For transparency, those last two questions weren't planned, but you did a great job.

You nailed it.

So I did.

We are about to begin the audience Q&A for those just joining via our live stream and radio audience.

I'm Mark Ross, board president at the City Club of Cleveland.

Today, we're talking about the future of public media after the shuttering of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and how stations across the nation are adapting after the congressional elimination of federal dollars.

We welcome questions from everyone city Club members, guests, students and those joining via our live stream at City club.org or live radio broadcast at 89.7 KSU.

I'd stream public media if you'd like to text a question, please text it to (330)541-5794 and the City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

May we have the first question?

Yeah.

Thanks.

Nice socks, by the way.

I get compliments on your comment.

Your your, remarks about, how there was bipartisan support for, public media, prompts me to ask if you think there is support or would be support for a separate bill funding refunding public media.

And if you if you put that up as a separate bill, would there be any Republicans who would take a leadership position?

And then even more specifically, where do you think our Ohio representatives would fall on an issue like that?

So let me start.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, yeah.

So as head of government affairs at CPB for a number of years and, we faced a few votes to either defund CPB or pull out MPR funding.

And when I was there, 2005 to 2012, 2013, those votes would come be unanimous, you know, Democrat support for public media.

And usually around 70, 80 Republicans, which made the votes this year so shocking.

Where has that support gone?

Why has it eroded?

And these members of Congress just passed are cast their votes in a very public way, you know, and it was, I think, spun as a vote against NPR and PBS and liberal programing or whatever.

But in reality, it hits local stations.

And I think they knew that and they did it anyway.

So I don't have a lot of hope for this Congress and this administration, that funding is going to come back.

But I think, again, if we care about the role of media in democracy, we need to be having a conversation about what the future looks like.

And so I'm hopeful that we can get there one day.

Yeah.

I agree with that.

And, I would say, you know, it's been a mix.

It's been a mixed bag, with the Ohio Legislature, but largely positive.

I've been involved with the testimonials, testifying, at the state House now, three times, since I've been here.

And, we've gotten support for our coverage of the House and Senate and executive branch, we've gotten increases for our coverage of the Ohio, Supreme Court.

And this year, for the first time, we got increase a 5% increase for the coverage, the editorial coverage of the Statehouse news bureau, which that has not happened, I don't think, in the history of, of our involvement there.

But we did get cut for educational efforts.

And, that has really hurt, public, especially public television stations across Ohio.

Because a lot of those stations depend largely, on the educational efforts.

And that was their core service.

It's part of our service, too.

But we have diversified, services.

And so it wasn't that critical or that it didn't hurt us as much, but it really does.

We have to find some ways to maintain kind of our educational efforts, for, preschool and K through 12.

I don't think.

there is such power in when, at the end of NewsHour or Sesame Street, they would say this program is funded by the American people and viewers like you.

And now, without that leverage, it's a challenge.

But also knowing that with federal funding comes some restrictions.

What are some new things you can do?

Looking at opportunities with 100% funding from private donations.

That is a great question, Melanie.

I knew you would have a great yes, yes.

And to be honest, I think we're still exploring that.

I mean, we're it's it's uncharted territory.

And, I think the spirit of what we do still rests with the accountability of the American people and whatever region you're serving, whatever city you're serving, whatever local.

And I don't know that that will change, even though we don't have federal funding, I think it's something that is going to be important for every public media provider, across the country to maintain that and to be accountable because, you know, we we still will rely on individual, giving, foundation giving, corporate giving.

All of those things are will be really important, going forward.

So, I would hope that, we will see whatever the configuration is, whether it is a trust fund or for PBS and a trust fund for NPR, which there might be, for a national programing, what we do at a local level will will remain the same.

But some tweaks.

Yeah.

I mean, Kevin alluded to this earlier, but, the media and technology landscaping is changing.

So rapidly right now, it is really hard to look around corners and see what the next trend is going to be.

And for media organizations that are dedicated to serving community needs, how we're going to do that in the future is, is is murky.

It's hard to see.

But I think, that there are opportunities to, to do that, to engage communities, to serve communities.

Information needs in new ways and hopefully find some efficiencies along the way, too.

I think more collaborations are definitely needed.

Different operating models are needed.

And making sure that we're that local organizations are spending their resources on service, not the back end operations.

And it's expensive to run broadcast technology.

It just is.

So maybe there's an opportunity down the road to continue to pivot into more efficient, less costly ways to serve community needs.

That's not a very specific answe Kevin, you mentioned that the 14 year old can get a TV.

And b broadcasting in that sense, but there's no editor.

There's no way to verify.

We got, you know, the folks Fox that are liable for two quarter of $1 million.

The change that is taking place is like what's seen in Pentagon, that they are, you know, giving up their credentials rather than agreed to.

It's the whole idea behind to how to change the narrative that exist.

And so it's a much bigger game.

And how does the NPR is going to play and make sure that their the real messages go out rather than what the, the administration wants it to be out there.

Thanks.

Thanks, Fareed.

Again, I know you'd ask a great question.

And if you layer on AI on top of that, in deepfakes, the question will be what can you believe?

You know, what is the truth?

I saw some AI demonstrations just last week that, you could not tell that it wasn't the person speaking who was actually speaking.

You can do deepfakes in a way that, it's going to become an even more challenging, for politicians to, do ads and represent themselves.

So, I think it does feel a bit like the wild, wild West, you know, and I think what we're experiencing now is some conflicts.

And contradictions, you know, because in one sense, it gives more voice to more people is a more open society.

Social media certainly is is a platform that's, that's open and has allowed more people to is giving more voice to people.

But as you said, if there's no fact checking and what's happened in many ways the social media is this it's become kind of an organizing principle as opposed to understanding, true opinions.

And so what you have are campaigns, you know, that, are orchestrated as and, you know, the irony is it is squelch is, I think, dissent and threatens dissent, where the very thing that social media should give life to is dissent and all voices.

But it really doesn't do that.

I don't know if that's the complete answer to that question, but, Tim, do you have anything?

I yeah.

You're right.

And, And I think people are still looking for information they can trust.

Right.

And if you think about who media institutions are accountable to corporations, political interests, whatever technology companies, public media is accountable to, local communities, look outside today.

You know, that's who we are accountable to.

And I think, you know, really leaning in on being trustworthy.

We're not always going to get it right.

And there's going to be we're humans, humans that produce news and try to tell stories.

And, there's going to be subjectivity baked into that.

And, but the pursuit of truth and trying to earn the trust of our communities every single day is part of public media's mission.

And I just I had really quickly just jump in, years ago when I met Kevin and we were funding a lot of different sort of media, organizations, you would always lead with this, truth for news and information, and I had never heard it frame that way.

And it's stuck with me.

And that's how I now talk about media and information, truthful news and information.

So thanks for that.

Put that in my vernacular.

I'm glad I could help.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

I appreciate how passionate you all are for what you're doing.

I'm an instructor at Cleveland State University, where I teach professional communication.

I teach that trustworthy professionals are ethical, transparent, and value shared governance.

I also belong to the community, a displaced and disgraced community, formerly the radio station WKRp, was run by students at Cleveland State University.

As a student organization.

We believe in the future of evidence as a researcher, as a community member, we care about the evidence that was used to make the decision to take the radio station from a diverse group and put it in a monolith, a place to make decisions based on what stewards of the public trust have made and taken something from the students very abruptly, that they grew and had diverse voices.

So could you tell us more about the evidence that was used to displace this multi faceted, multi-generational, multi-class, multi-ethnic organization for a smooth jazz approach to radio?

I think this question is for me, and I'll.

I'm not trying to make light of it, because I think your question is very serious and it's a serious issue.

And I'm really privileged to be able to kind of speak to it, because I think the one thing that is, is really interesting about social media is that, as you said, free.

There's there's a lot of misinformation.

It becomes an echo chamber of, misinformation.

And so when you hear it over and over again, and we've seen this now for over ten years, you begin to believe it.

Let me just say that I am really proud that we, have partnered, with Cleveland State University.

I think they're great partners.

And for me, that's so important because the type of arrangements that we insert into it, really it depends on the trust between those two partners.

And we've worked very closely with the administration and others that they, included within the, their circle of decision makers.

And I can tell you that, first of all, and I and I need to say this because I owe it to our, our, our jazz host is not a smooth jazz station.

If you listen to it at all.

It's not smooth.

But the reason I have I've been reluctant to talk about that is because I am not an editorial.

I don't want to read into the editorial thing.

And and I'm not an anti smooth jazz person.

It's just that if you listen to it, you'll realize that the host that we have now, that is not their preference.

But what I would say is that, I would not put myself in a place to, make judgments about what is important in terms of the values and the priorities of Cleveland State University.

That is not what I do, and that's not what public media does.

Our industry stream, public media does.

We do have our our priorities.

We do not.

We have our services.

And what I don't want to do is to, try to pit one service against another because I think they're all good public services.

And one of the things that I think will be important for us going forward is to look forward and to see how can those voices continue.

You know, one of the things that we've done well, we looked at the, we commissioned a study to just to find out where our audience was and how they consumed, content today.

There are a lot of takeaways, but one of the takeaways was younger people love to, they're not intimidated by, you know, apps.

They'll download an app and they'll listen and know they'll watch content on their phone or, you know, they they're far more comfortable with those types of, consumption where older like me.

Yeah.

Population.

And they consume the more conventional methods.

We, we did a, a kind of a listening session at Oberlin once, and we were talking about, radio.

And I was really shocked.

It's my first time realizing that, those people were in the room.

They didn't use radio, they just didn't consume radio.

And they said, well, what is that, like, free Wi-Fi?

You know?

And you said, well, well, yeah, you can say that is free Wi-Fi because it's one to many and you can get it anywhere where the reception is good.

And so things are changing.

And one of the things that I think is really important as that I've lived through, and a lot of others in the media business has lived through, is all these changes, is that we need to adapt.

We need to adapt to where the audience is and, and how they're consuming media today.

And I know that, certainly Idea Stream has been really focused on putting our resources there.

But thank you for answer yet.

And I think, I think I don't know the circumstances and it would be inappropriate for me to talk about it.

I will mention sort of a macro, issue that we're sort of faced with right now.

There are over 350 public radio organizations around the country.

About half of those are university licenses, meaning the university holds the noncommercial license.

And we're obviously in a media, ecosystem that is rapidly changing and the business model is constantly evolving.

Universities are also in a rapidly changing business model environment.

Two right now.

And, we know that many of them are going to be making decisions about the future operations of public radio.

And it is, again, it won't be a one size fits all.

But it's something that we're paying really, really close attention to right now.

I think I think we're going to see a lot more university sort of getting out of the business of public media in the future.

Great, great question.

By the way.

We're moving back to the national stage.

The administration found it pretty easy to withdraw funding from public radio and TV.

Is there a next step, in your opinion, going to be to move against your licenses if you continue to bring us the programs that most of us really enjoy, like the PBS NewsHour and Washington Week?

Great questions.

Thank you for that question.

Because it what's interesting and this is the first time this has happened really in my career where you had, an FCC chair that's really aligned, with, with the, with the ministration in ways that we haven't, which is unprecedented.

They are very aggressive on, compliance, which I think is in their purview.

And they should be aggressive with FCC, compliance.

But we've also seen them.

Yeah.

Well, he's issued a letter to Congress that he's targeting, public media to see if they're if they are compliant.

Now, I'm not worried about that because I think public media stations are the most compliant people on the planet.

And they they cross every t, they dot every guy, and they make sure that, you know, they are, compliant with all of the rules and regulations.

But he has stated he's built 20 stations, public media stations, that they're going to investigate to see if they are in compliance with the desire to do something, whether it's a fine or whether, it's taking license away.

I don't know, how far that can go in terms until it runs up into, you know, the, the Constitution.

But even these days, it's hard to know, what constitutional, tenets will stay.

Hi, my name is Maryam Alzheimer.

I'm an English teacher at MC squared Stem High School.

And my main concern in question as somebody who grew up watching PBS, is the social emotional aspect and the, the defunding of the children's programing and what you guys think will be the effect going forward of taking away that funding, you know, from Sesame Street to Mister Rogers reruns and even you guys spoke about period pieces.

That was my first intro into, like, Jane Austen.

So what do you believe is the outcome for the children from these underfunded and rural areas?

Well, you're the reason we do what we do.

Yes, really.

Thank you for that.

Yeah.

Well, I would just say that, again, we're in unchartered territory.

It's important to us.

You know, one of the things that, it was important that we've learned is that there's been a digital migration.

And the first sign of that was, parents needing more control of screen time, you know, for for their kids.

And so we saw maybe ten years ago the ratings actually for television go down and the ratings for because we're also on YouTube, we have our own channel on YouTube went way up.

And that was before any of the other migration happened.

And so but that told us that, you know, there's a real change in consumption habits.

And I would imagine and in fact, I know I was on the board of PBS for six years, and their commitment for PBS kids programing is strong.

They know that that is the brand.

They know there's a value, connected to that.

And, I can't imagine that there's going to be a reduction in resources when it comes to children's programing.

Yeah.

I, I have a six year old, Molly of Denali and Wildcats are part of his diet.

I mean, in fact, in his narrative somewhere, there's dads trying to save wildcats from the guys who, build a, electric pickup trucks.

You can you can just follow that one however you want to, but we know how essential, early education, programing is, is pre-K universal free?

Right.

And it is essential to get kids ready to learn and get ready for school.

And it is top of everyone's mind, particularly the public television side.

Right.

And it's, I mentioned all of the philanthropic efforts right now.

There's a lot focus on that.

So, yeah.

Hello.

My name is Laurie Albright.

I'm a retired, school psychologist working in the public schools.

And I'm sorry to bring up this topic again, but I, my husband and I, we greatly increased our, commitment to idea stream because we value it so much in this dangerous environment.

But I am really struggling with the decision.

That idea stream partnered with Cleveland State.

I hear you talking about how important it is for that collaboration.

I completely agree, and it seems to me that the tone deaf part of this agreement is on Cleveland State side.

However, Idea Stream is a partner in this, and this college radio station is part of what makes Cleveland.

Cleveland, another jazz station, doesn't make Cleveland.

Cleveland.

And and so my question is, might you, as a partner in this collaboration, opt to revisit this in the spirit of that community accountability that you talk about?

Thank you for that question.

Well, I would say that we certainly the talks will continue.

And, one of the things that we are working very closely with, Cleveland State is their I don't know if you are familiar with their nationality programs.

They have identified some nationality programs and we have some space, you know, that we can accommodate some of those nationality programs.

Regarding the students, one of the things I have learned, and I didn't know this until, we had our, set of ideas forum last Tuesday, and, I didn't know the distinction between clubs at Cleveland State University and, other degree related programs.

So my understanding is that, the radio station was a club, you know, something like the or did the chess club or the drama club or one of those clubs and what I heard, Doctor Bloomberg say is that her biggest and highest priority is on degree programs and getting kids ready for careers and not to say that there's no value in those clubs, but, one of the things you just heard him say is that what we do know in terms of the reality of, institutions of higher learning, is that there's a dwindling student population, which means there's going to be less funds, less resources, and there's going to be some hard decisions that are being made by universities.

I'm glad I'm not one that has to make it.

We have our mission that we're trying to serve.

I do think, you know, public, that jazz programing is important.

It may not be that important to you, but it's important to a large constituents who.

And it's an original art form.

And African-American art form.

And it's something that we have, been a champion of for over 40 years.

So it's not like we said, okay, let's why don't we just start a jazz program?

And serve the community is a community that exists in this community, and it's a core service that we have provided that I hope we continue for another 40 years of time.

For one more question, we're going to do a text question since we haven't gotten one yet.

Can you talk about the precedent, the clawback set as a strategy and or a weapon for removing funding for other federal agencies or projects?

It seems like now that it's been proved that it can happen, it might happen more and beyond public media.

Yeah.

It's, an interesting tactic.

Kevin mentioned Kpbs sort of privileged position as being forward funded, two years that was put in place to protect, editorial independence of public media, to keep Congress from doing what it just did.

Yet they legally enacted a process to claw back future funding, the 1.1 billion over the next two years for for CPB.

I think it's an if they can do that, which is a huge lift.

I think all decisions are on the table moving forward, as a tactic and a strategy.

That's what I'll say.

Thank you, Kevin, Tim and Tony for joining us at the City Club today.

Forums like this one are made possible thanks to generous support from individuals like you.

You can learn more about how to become a guardian of free speech at City club.org.

The City Club would like to welcome students joining us for MC squared Stem High School and Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School.

We'd also like to welcome guests the tables hosted by Idea Stream Public Media, the George Gunn Foundation and Exp coming up next week at the City Club on Tuesday, October 21st, we host the 2025 state of the schools with CMS CEO Warren Doctor Warren Morgan at the Huntington Convention Center.

Then on Friday, October 24th, Tiffany Shea with jobs for the future will discuss the evolution and promise of artificial intelligence for the future of work with Janine Kaiser from the Campus Policy Strategies.

As a moderator, you can learn more about these forms and others at City club.org.

Thank you once again to our speakers and to our members and friends of the City Club.

I'm Mark Ross and this forum is now adjourned.

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