June 2025 WMNF News & Notes

Why We’re Asking for Your Help

The short version of this message is this: click here and tell your representative in the U.S. House and Senate that you want them to continue funding public media. Just tell them what WMNF means to you: https://protectmypublicmedia.org/urge-congress-call/

Urge Congress: Protect Public Media Funding

If you need more convincing, read on.

Long time listeners of WMNF have heard us say many times that listeners are the most consistent and reliable source of funding for community radio. In fact, the legacy of listener-sponsorship comes from World War II conscientious objectors. In 1949, they said that it was possible to produce radio so valuable that others would pay for it, directly. At that time, radio and television programs were essentially very long commercials for products with a smattering of content, including comedians, live music, and the occasional short drama. If you are not old enough to remember, look up the history of the “soap opera.”

In 1967, the U.S. Congress stated again, that commercial interests are often different from public interests. Congress created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the explicit purpose of providing funding directly to local broadcast facilities to provide educational and informational programming. The funding allows stations to either purchase, produce, or otherwise obtain quality programming that meets the needs of the local community. Each station is required to be financially transparent and create Community Advisory Boards. We are staffed by your neighbors who live in the community and report to a local board, or in some cases a university. Local community members decide what you see and hear on public radio and television. Commercial interests and the government are prohibited from telling us what to put on the people’s airwaves, our small sliver of the full radio and television spectrum.

Public broadcasters have also built up an emergency network to provide their communities with important messages from local, state, or federal officials in times of emergency. Commercial broadcasters have neither the inclination nor the infrastructure to do what local, public broadcasters have built over decades. We are dedicated to serving our community. Most commercial broadcasters now belong to national conglomerates with no relationship to everyday people, other than for selling advertising and obtaining the ratings to base their fees.

Some of the programming public broadcasters purchase is produced by National Public Radio (NPR) or the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Each station decides how much. At WMNF, we air the NPR headlines at the top of most hours. We play other NPR programming on HD3-The Source, WMNF’s 24-hour news and public affairs station. “Big” stations like WMNF produce a lot of our own content. In our case, we do it with volunteers who deeply care about the topics and music they provide on air. WMNF also airs programming from Pacifica, like Democracy Now! Those conscientious objectors from 1949 created the Pacifica foundation, and WMNF has been a member of the Pacifica network since our founding. Over the years, WMNF has purchased programming from a variety of sources as part of our commitment to providing the best of what we think people want to hear and what will advance our mission of peace, justice, and sustainability.

WMNF will survive without funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The estimated $130,000 is about 6% of our annual operating budget. However, it will hurt. There will be a loss of services. You’ll hear it. For smaller, or more rural stations, this will likely sink many of them. Currently, 99% of the U.S. public receives some sort of public media FOR FREE, or for $1.60 per person per year. Loss of CPB funding will not destroy WMNF, but it will destroy our national network for educational, informational, and safety content that connects us.

You might not believe that the federal government should fund public media. You might believe we have to make hard choices to deal with the deficit. If your values are in line with those conscientious objectors from 1949, or Congressional leaders in 1967, I urge you to contact your Congressperson and Senator today. Use the link at the top of this message to find out who they are and how to do so. There are some sample letters and phone scripts if you want to call, or even better, just tell them why WMNF is important to you.

Randi M. Zimmerman

General Manager, WMNF 88.5FM