Federal, local tax money to city’s two PBS affiliates is separate from state taxpayer aid to PBS Wisconsin in rest of state
Federal taxpayers will save at least $2 million in grant money to Milwaukee PBS alone if the U.S. Senate approves a $1.1 billion defunding of public broadcasting.
Milwaukee PBS, which includes television stations WMVS (Channel 10) and WMVT (Channel 36), has kept a low profile since the House last week narrowly passed the taking back of a two-year appropriation to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes much of its funding to local TV and radio stations.
The $2 million to Milwaukee PBS is part of a total of $8.5 million a year in federal grants to Wisconsin public broadcasting as a whole that Republican leadership in the Wisconsin Legislature has said they will not replace.
They also, however, have not indicated whether they will follow the federal lead and cut existing state taxpayer funding.
Milwaukee PBS is unusual in that it does not receive any state funding. Madison politicians do give $8.6 million in state taxpayer dollars to other public broadcasting entities that fall under the auspices of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, however.
UW-Madison has oversight of Wisconsin Public Media outlets, including Wisconsin Public Radio and PBS Wisconsin, called Wisconsin Public Television until 2019.
Milwaukee PBS, meanwhile, is operated by Milwaukee Area Technical College, which started a television production program in 1952 and in 1954 added telecasting and TV technician training programs.
At the time, the Ford Foundation was trying to grow a network of affiliates for its Educational Television and Radio Center, which produced educational and academic programming.
WMVS-TV in 1957 joined what would soon become National Educational Television, the precursor to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). According to its website, Milwaukee Public Schools and the city’s Catholic archdiocese eagerly signed on for the programming. Just six years later, MATC got a second license for WMVT-TV.
Today, PBS Wisconsin, the television arm of WPM, operates six stations around its flagship WHA-TV in Madison. Milwaukee PBS operates the other two public television stations in the state.
WPM’s Wisconsin Public Radio operates 18 news and 21 music stations around the state. WUWM in Milwaukee is independently licensed and operated by the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
An analysis of Milwaukee PBS, MATC and federal budget documents suggests viewers are generally supportive of public television in the Milwaukee area.
Memberships and subscriptions alone account for 37.4 percent of the broadcaster’s $14.5 million total revenue generated in 2024. Major donors contributed another $1.4 million.
MATC added $3.7 million to its overall tax levy to service Milwaukee PBS’ debt, and it planned to issue another $3.4 million in bonding for PBS’ 13 percent share of the school’s overall $26 million capital equipment budget, according to the budget.
While public broadcasting operations in Milwaukee and Madison are relatively stable in the wake of federal cuts, smaller, more rural radio station operators have complained that their dependence on federal and state funding is greater than in urban Wisconsin.
Many of Wisconsin Public Radio’s news and music stations broadcast across northern Wisconsin. The biggest of these, WXPR in Rhinelander, got $155,000, or 18.5 percent of its $837,000 total revenue, from its federal grant in 2024, according to its Corporation for Public Broadcasting filing.
“There is no doubt that (losing funding) would impact every aspect of our operations,” Jessie Dick, WXPR’s CEO, told a reporter for its parent company, Wisconsin Public Radio, last week. “There’s really not a whole lot we can cut as far as staffing goes. We run a pretty lean operation.”
The U.S. House of Representatives approved the broadcasting cuts in a mostly partisan 214-212 vote (all Wisconsin Republicans voted for the cuts; the Democrats voted against them).
The Senate has until July 18 to vote on the cuts. No date for the vote has been scheduled.
Debbie Hamlett, Milwaukee PBS’ vice president and general manager, declined to discuss the cuts or the potential impact on future budgets with the Badger Institute. However, Hamlett disclosed that “we have no plans for any layoffs.”
Mark Lisheron is the Managing Editor of the Badger Institute.
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