Fourteen Alaska radio stations whose operations were threatened due to deep public broadcasting cuts will now receive about $4.5 million in one-time funding, officials said Wednesday.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs funding comes from money meant to support radio stations that serve tribal and Alaska Native people. The funding will help keep the lights on at some of Alaska’s most rural and remote stations, which often serve a crucial emergency alert function as well as distributing news and community broadcasts.
But, station leaders warn, the one-time funding allocation is not a permanent solution to the funding chasm left by a July congressional vote to rescind more than $1 billion in previously approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The rescission stripped Alaska of about $15 million in annual public broadcasting funds.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski in a statement Wednesday said the funding would “help some of Alaska’s most rural radio stations make ends meet for now” but noted all Alaska stations still need stable, long-term support.
For Unalaska’s KUCB, one of the 14 stations getting a share of the Alaska funding influx, the money will come through a partnership with the Qawalangin Tribe of Unalaska and should restore the more than $282,000 the station lost.
That’s welcome news, said station general manager Lauren Adams.
“We have some breathing room and some time to think about how to preserve our core services,” Adams said this week.
After the July vote, Alaska’s rural stations established a Voices Across Alaska Fund through the Alaska Community Foundation, which as of mid-September had raised more than $3.5 million. That money will now stretch further with some of the stations that are the most rural, and least able to locally fundraise, getting some emergency money, Adams said.
The newly announced one-time federal funding came about when, during debate on the public media rescissions package, members of Congress including U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and Murkowski “secured an agreement from the Trump administration to reallocate approximately $10 million nationally in existing BIA funding to support threatened Tribal and Native serving stations,” Murkowski said in a statement. Roughly $4.5 million of that will go to Alaska stations.
In a statement, Sullivan’s office said he had advocated with “senior Trump administration officials” to secure the funding, and more could be coming.
“Senator Sullivan’s office is working through additional avenues to fund the other rural stations, and is confident the remaining rural radio stations not funded by BIA will receive funding in FY26,” the statement said.
Murkowski was the only member of Alaska’s congressional delegation to vote against the overall rescission of the public broadcasting funds.
The BIA funding came from unspent salaries within the agency and did not come at the expense of program cuts, Murkowski’s office said.
Alaska has more than two dozen public radio licensees. Around a dozen stations across the state will not be receiving the Bureau of Indian Affairs funds.
Adams, the Unalaska station manager, said the funding will go to “some of the most at-risk stations that would not otherwise be able to fundraise their way through this year, not all of them.”
“I think everybody is struggling,” she said. “But this is a really nice little bit of cushion to get us through this year and figure out what our next steps are.”
The following stations are set to receive funding from the BIA, either through partnering with a tribe or through a grant process, according to Murkowski’s office:
• KNBA-FM (Koahnic Broadcast Corp. in Anchorage)
• KBRW-AM (Silakkuagvik Communications Inc. in Barrow)
• KYUK-AM and KYUK-TV (Bethel Broadcasting Inc. in Bethel)
• KCUK-FM (Kashunamiut School District in Chevak)
• KDLG-AM (Dillingham City School District in Dillingham)
• KRFF-FM (“Voice of Denali Radio” created by Athabascan Fiddlers Association, in Fairbanks)
• KZPA-AM (Gwandak Public Broadcasting Inc. in Fort Yukon)
• KIYU-FM (Big River Public Broadcasting Corp. in Galena)
• KOTZ-AM (Kotzebue Broadcasting Inc. in Kotzebue)
• KSKO-FM (Kuskokwim Public Broadcasting Corp. in McGrath)
• KSDP-AM (Aleutian Peninsula Broadcasting Inc. in Sand Point)
• KUHB-FM (Pribilof School District Board of Education in St. Paul)
• KNSA-AM (Unalakleet Broadcasting Inc. in Unalakleet)
• KUCB (Unalaska Community Broadcasting Inc. in Unalaska)