08/02/2025
A letter from Patricia Harrison, President of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Dear Public Media Colleagues,
Thank you for your extraordinary efforts on behalf of our shared mission.
In the face of a series of challenging outcomes—from the passage of the rescissions package to yesterday’s exclusion of funding for CPB in the Senate FY 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill—we are confronted with difficult decisions about the future.
While there may be opportunities for special funding to support stations, and we are actively supporting those efforts, the absence of any approved federal funding for FY 2026 leaves CPB with no choice but to begin taking steps toward an orderly and responsible shutdown.
Today we informed employees that the majority of staff positions will end with the close of this fiscal year on September 30, 2025. A small transition team, led by me and including CPB officers, will remain through January 2026 to ensure a responsible and orderly closeout of operations, focusing on completing final distributions, resolving long-term financial obligations such as content distribution and compliance, and fulfilling our fiduciary duties. These include assessing viable ways to ensure the funding support we have provided covering music rights and royalties for the system continues.
Our board led by Chair Ruby Calvert, working with management and Audit and Finance Chair Liz Sembler, are dedicated to achieving the legal, financial, and operational responsibilities of closure ensuring compliance, accountability, and continuity throughout this process.
For nearly 60 years, CPB has carried out its mission established by Congress to help build and sustain a trusted public media system—one that informs, educates, and serves communities across the country. It has been our privilege to support and advance the growth of public media through investments in stations, producers, research, and technology, trusted educational content, locally relevant journalism, emergency communications, and so much more in partnership with all of you and the American people.
As we look at the months ahead, our priority is to determine how best to support the public media system through this transition. Clear, consistent communication and transparency will guide our actions as they have throughout CPB’s historic role as a trusted steward of public funds.
We will provide regular updates, offer guidance to those facing significant challenges and ensure open channels for your questions. While the resources remaining are limited, we will manage them with care, integrity and a deep commitment to the mission we have shared for decades.
Through leadership, resilience, and unwavering dedication, you have built one of the most trusted institutions in American life—one that is essential to our civil society, reflective of the ideals expressed in the Constitution, core to our commitment to children’s education and how we define ourselves as a nation.
PUBLIC MEDIA WILL ENDURE.
Let’s utilize the next several months to make that happen. We will move forward with purpose and an unwavering commitment to the mission we have carried out together for decades.
Pat Harrison
President and CEO
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
