Crystal Ashike’s reporting for local radio station KSUT made national news when she broke a story on white vans that were showing up on Navajo land and whisking people away. The photojournalist, who is herself Navajo, uncovered how tribal members were being offered access to treatment for substance abuse, only to end up in fraudulent sober living homes.
KSUT is an NPR-affiliate radio station that serves five counties and four tribes in southwest Colorado and northwest New Mexico, providing local news like Ms. Ashike’s story. And it’s about to lose nearly a fourth of its funding when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting winds down on Sept. 30.
The CPB announced it was closing operations after Congress passed a rescissions bill this summer, clawing back nearly $1.1 billion in funding for public broadcasting. This nonprofit corporation, established by Congress in the 1960s, provides a small percentage of funding for NPR and PBS, institutions Republicans have long accused of having a liberal bias. It also helps fund local radio stations like KSUT, which are affiliated with NPR and air some of its content alongside their own programming tailored to local communities.
Why We Wrote This
KSUT, a radio station serving a remote community in Colorado, exemplifies the new challenges many rural public broadcast stations face as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting closes. For now, local listeners are helping to keep the station afloat.
A 2023 study by the Public Media Company, an advisory firm, found that 78 local stations across the country were at risk of having to shut down operations if they lost that government funding. KSUT hasn’t arrived at that point – yet. But for this station serving small mountain towns, there’s a lot of uncertainty. And for many in the community, it fills an indispensable role.
“I think we’d really be in a news desert for anything that mattered to us locally, regionally, if it weren’t for KSUT,” says Carol Fleischer, a longtime listener.
From tribal news to emergency alerts
KSUT is based in Ignacio, a town of about 1,000 people in southwest Colorado that is also the headquarters of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. The Southern Ute originally founded the station in 1976 to provide community news and traditional Native American music. At the time, it was one of only eight tribal stations in the country.
After becoming an NPR affiliate in the 1980s, KSUT now runs two separate signals, with one exclusively dedicated to tribal news. The tribal signal broadcasts from 8 a.m. to midnight every weekday. Its programming is a compilation of news affecting local tribes, traditional music, and talk shows like a weekly broadcast on health issues affecting Indian Country.
Caitlin Babcock/The Christian Science Monitor
The second signal airs a morning regional newscast, a compilation of the station’s own reporting as well as collaborations with other Colorado stations. They also broadcast programming from NPR and BBC News, plus music handpicked by their DJs.
During the summer – which in southwest Colorado means fire season – KSUT’s morning host puts together a list of updates on any fires that are burning and how effectively they’re being contained. When necessary, the station broadcasts live emergency and evacuation alerts. The fire season this summer has been a pretty intense one, says Tami Graham, the station’s director, with six active fires in the area.
For some listeners, radio is the primary or only source for this kind of information. In the mountains and canyons of the KSUT broadcast area, cell service is “hit-or-miss,” as one resident describes it. More than 20% of people in La Plata County lack reliable broadband service, meaning radio may be their only way to receive emergency alerts. The internet connection can even be unpredictable around the radio station headquarters.
“There’s this whole conversation around, is radio still relevant?” says Ms. Graham. “Well, it’s extremely relevant in rural areas like this.”
Relying on “duct tape and glue” to keep going
Like many stations around the country, KSUT has seen an outpouring of support in the weeks since the CPB announced its shutdown. Members have upped their monthly donations, many listeners are sending money for the first time, and the station has even had funds come in from people far across the country.
Given the support, KSUT doesn’t have any immediate plans to reduce their operations. But it’s hard to know how things will look in six months once public radio fades from the news, says Ms. Graham, sitting in her office moments after returning from speaking on the air.
On Aug. 19, several major philanthropic organizations said they would commit almost $37 million to help keep local public media stations afloat. Their focus is on stations that have received 30% or more of their funding from the CPB.
KSUT receives 20% of their funds from the government, and they’re not sure whether they’ll see any of that money.
“I’m cautiously hopeful that we will receive some of that support,” says Ms. Graham.
Even though KSUT doesn’t have immediate plans to cut programming, the funding cuts could damage their broadcasting ability. Early this year, KSUT was awarded a $500,000 grant – administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency through the CPB – to update the technology that enables emergency alerts. But they never received any of the money. After six months of uncertainty regarding the funds because of a separate issue with FEMA, Congress passed a bill rescinding funding for the CPB, which then informed Ms. Graham that KSUT would have to spend any allotted funds by Sept. 30.
The station paid $46,000 to buy a needed transmitter and other equipment. Three days later, the CPB told the station it would not be able to reimburse them before the shutdown, and warned them not to purchase any new equipment.
Much of KSUT’s broadcasting equipment is over 20 years old and requires updates. The day before Ms. Graham spoke to the Monitor, a short power outage had knocked them off the air temporarily. Part of the promised grant money would have gone toward backup equipment that could have prevented this kind of outage.
The funds could have also allowed them to purchase the technology to monitor equipment remotely – something that’s crucial in mountainous Colorado, where snowy winters or summers heavy with wildfires can make it impossible to access tower sites year-round.
Ms. Graham says their approach has relied heavily on “duct tape and glue” as they try to keep their equipment running.
Local listeners weigh in
Priscilla Precious Collins, a member of what’s known as the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, says KSUT is “one of the pillar sources of information in our community.” She recalls how the radio was “crucial” in spreading information to tribal communities during the pandemic, such as how to keep tribal elders safe.
Caitlin Babcock/The Christian Science Monitor
Ms. Collins, who now is getting her doctorate of public health in Denver, is sometimes invited onto the station to talk about substance abuse, recovery, and peer support.
“Outside of KSUT, who else is doing that for our community?” she asks. “Who else is talking about those topics?”
On a baking hot morning in Durango, one of the biggest towns served by KSUT, 20 local listeners assemble in the dining room of a downtown hotel to share their thoughts on local radio.
“I was a schoolteacher for 37 years, and I listened to KSUT going to school and coming home,” says Sweetie Marbury, a former mayor who organized the group. “It’s a window to the world for us that live in mountain towns.”
“Wildfires are a new thing to me,” says the Rev. Jamie Boyce, who moved to Durango last year and appreciates the local fire coverage.
Moni Grushkin turns to NPR programming, which KSUT broadcasts during parts of the day, when she wants to seek out neutral news.
Although “neutral” isn’t a word everyone agrees on.
“Being in a rural area, I hear the liberal,” says Ellen Stein, the opinion editor for local paper The Durango Herald, about NPR News. “And it’s even with the choices of the questions that are asked, the stories that are covered.”
Sidny Zink, another former mayor, wonders if the CPB shutdown was entirely a bad thing.
“I give monthly to KSUT. I appreciate it being here,” she says. “But should the public be paying for it?”
Coverage in news deserts
A 2023 study conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School found that most local public radio stations serve areas where community members say there’s not enough news to meet their needs – areas that are essentially news deserts. It also found that the biggest reason these stations don’t provide more news coverage is lack of funding.
Amid the upheaval in the public radio landscape, KSUT presses on with building community ties.
On a recent morning, the KSUT broadcast pauses. “We have a very sad announcement,” says Ms. Graham, the executive director. She tells listeners that one of the station’s DJs has unexpectedly passed away. The next group of songs will be a tribute to this individual.
A listener writes in that afternoon. “I send my deepest condolences to you and to everyone there at KSUT,” she writes, “as I know it is not just a business.” In this woman’s 49 years of listening to KSUT, she says the station has been a “lifeboat in an angry sea.”
