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Public radio and television employees around the U.S. went to work Thursday wondering what the future may hold after the U.S. Senate passed a measure rolling back more than $1 billion of their funding in the wee hours. 

In Minnesota, there are six public TV stations serving various regions. With a small staff but a sprawling reach, Granite Falls-based 

 serves more than one million people in southwestern and west central Minnesota, northwestern Iowa, southwestern North Dakota and eastern South Dakota. Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds, which are part of the rescission package, account for a major chunk of Pioneer PBS’s budget. 

Shari Lamke, general manager of Pioneer PBS, joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer on Morning Edition to share how the lost revenue would affect the station and the public. 

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The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity. Listen to the interview by clicking the player button above.

How have you been preparing for the possibility of losing CPB funding? 

It's kind of hard to plan for a third of your budget going away, but that's kind of what we've been doing. What programs do we cut? What staff do we lose? And when you're a staff of 23 that's really hard to keep doing what you do. We're dedicated to telling the stories of this region, and that takes people being out there, talking to people in the region, making sure unique stories are told, and that's kind of at risk right now. 

What’s the future of award-winning shows like Pioneer PBS’s ‘Postcards?’ 

We're very lucky that the state has been pretty bipartisanly supportive of what we do. “Postcards” is funded by Minnesota Legacy money, the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, so it's safe. We are also pretty lucky that we live in a state that has good philanthropy. So we have some programming that's funded by, you know, organizations, nonprofit organizations, but not all of it. So while “Postcards” is safe, some of the others may not be. 

You use CPB money to pay to run PBS programs, right? 

Yes. That's pretty much what pays our PBS dues. So what happens with that? I don't know. It's half a million dollars a year we pay to carry NewsHour and Nova, Nature and all of the PBS programming. So that's at risk. We also use it to pay for things like regional weather [forecasting] and other local programming, like Market to Market, which serves our region;  people out here care about what's going on with agriculture. So, you know, we pay Iowa PBS to run their show, so all of that is kind of at risk right now, too. 

You can fundraise until the cows come home, but there are only so many individuals who can make donations in your area. Are you thinking there might be a creative way to backfill the loss of federal money? 

It's irreplaceable. It's about a million dollars we're gonna lose. That's a third of our entire budget. Even with a million people that we serve, it's all small town, rural — they're not going to write $50,000 checks or $100,000 checks. They just can't. And there's a lot of people we serve out here who can't afford cable, can't afford satellite TV, can't afford streaming services. We are the only broadcaster out here right now, free over the air. So the lifeline to the world for a lot of people out here. 

You’ve been in this business a long time and kind of sound defeated. How are you doing? 

I don't think I'm defeated. Hurt, certainly. Yeah, this is a tough one. You know, you work your entire career for the good. 

Disclosure: This story was produced by MPR News producer Gracie Stockton and senior producer Heidi Raschke. Editor Lisa Ryan edited the web story. When reporting on the business of MPR and public media, we do so independently from news executives and do not let them review material before it runs.

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Shari Lamke, general manager of Pioneer PBS, joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer on Morning Edition to share how the lost revenue would affect the station and the public. 


Federal funding loss is 'irreplaceable' for Granite Falls-based Pioneer PBS

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