Arizona PBS’ General Manager on Trump’s call to cut funding for public media

On Tuesday, June 3, 2025, President Donald Trump formally called on Congress to pull $9.4 billion in funding for foreign aid and public media.

About $1.1 billion of that funding was previously approved to be allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for the next two years. CPB provides funding for both PBS and NPR.

This request by President Trump must be approved in the next 45 days with a simple majority of the legislators in both chambers of Congress for it to become law.

Scott Woelfel, General Manager of Arizona PBS, joined “Arizona Horizon” to explain what this means for the future of public media.

Woelfel touched upon the impact that Arizona PBS has on the community outside of broadcasting.

“This is all outreach to the community and it’s all over the state especially in underserved areas. We’re helping students directly with preschool programs. You know if you look nationwide, about 50% of students don’t have access to organized preschool, that’s almost 80% in Arizona. So we’re stepping into that breach and helping kids get that head start,” Woelfel said.

He also shared that with this proposed funding cut, smaller stations could be facing more severe impacts than bigger stations.

“When you look across the country there are states, Michigan has eight public media stations. So there are small communities that have their own station, those are the stations that really are at risk. You know we get about 10-12% of our funding from federal funding, in smaller stations it could be 50 or 60%,” Woelfel said.