The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB; stylized in all lowercase as cpb) was an American non-profit corporation created under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 to promote and help support public broadcasting in the United States. The corporation's mission was to ensure universal access to non-commercial, high-quality educational, cultural, and other content and telecommunications services.
The CPB received annual funding from Congress from 1967 to 2025. By law, more than 70 percent of its annual funding was directly allocated to locally owned public radio and television stations (more than 1,500 as of 2025), including PBS and NPR stations. In particular, CPB funding was a key part of small and rural public media station budgets.
Following the Trump administration's elimination and reallocation of federal funding for the organization, the CPB announced on August 1, 2025, that it would cease operations sometime in January 2026. Most of its staff departed following the end of the fiscal year on September 30, 2025; a small team remained until January to "focus on compliance, fiscal distributions, and resolution of long-term financial obligations." On January 5, 2026, the CPB board of directors voted to dissolve the corporation entirely.
Funding and operations The CPB's annual budget was composed almost entirely of an annual appropriation from Congress plus interest on those funds. Under the establishing law, no more than 5% of the appropriation would be used for administrative expenses. CPB allocated the funds to content development, community services, and other local station and system needs.
, its operating budget included US$535million of federal appropriation and $10million in interest revenue. Its budgeted expenses were as follows:
$267.83million for direct grants to local public television stations; $96.78million for television programming grants; $83.33million for direct grants to local public radio stations; $28.63million for the Radio National Program Production and Acquisition $9.58million for the Radio Program Fund $32.10million for system support $26.75million for administration
Public broadcasting stations from the CPB were funded by a combination of private donations from listeners and viewers, foundations and corporations, as well as government sources from 1967 to 2025. Funding for public television in 2013 came in roughly equal parts from government (at all levels) and the private sector.
Stations that received CPB funds were required to meet certain standards, including open meetings, open financial records, a community advisory board, equal employment opportunity, and public lists of donors and political activities.
A 2007 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report and 2025 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report both found that public broadcasting stations in smaller and rural media markets had a greater dependence on federal funding. In 2023, rural stations received 45% of the CPB appropriation, while CPB grants accounted for at least 25% of station revenue for at least half of rural stations and more than 50% of revenue for some stations. A 2011 FCC report noted that less than one-fourth of funds disbursed through grants by the CPB to public broadcasters were used for programming while the overwhelming majority was used for support of station infrastructure.
After administrative costs and system support programs, the 2025 CRS report noted that the entire federal appropriation to the CPB was used to provide grants to qualifying public broadcasting stations and program producers. The Public Broadcasting Act prohibits the CPB from owning or operating stations, and from producing, scheduling, or distributing programming. As PBS and NPR were incorporated as station-owned membership organizations, PBS and NPR received only a small fraction of their total revenue from the CPB directly, with 16% and 1% respectively of their total revenue coming directly from all federal sources in total and the majority coming from member stations, distribution revenue and services, corporate underwriting and institutional support, and individual contributions. PBS and NPR member stations are owned and operated by colleges and universities, public school districts, other private non-profit corporations, or state government agencies. Along with the 2007 GAO report about public television specifically, the 2025 CRS report noted that while NPR was authorized to produce programming for its member stations, programming included in the PBS National Programming Service (NPS) was not produced by PBS itself but by its member stations, external production companies, and independent producers, and PBS and NPR member stations retain ultimate editorial control over which programming from the NPS and NPR they wish to broadcast.
Public television stations participate in the Emergency Alert System (which includes Amber alerts) and the pilot program for the Digital Emergency Alert System. The CPB was the sole eligible recipient of funding through the Next Generation Warning System Grant Program within the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System.
During the second Trump administration, federal funding for the CPB was eliminated with the passage of the Rescissions Act of 2025, and the corporation shut down operations by January 2026.
History
Establishment The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created on November 7, 1967, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 (PBA). The new organization initially collaborated with the National Educational Television network (NET), which would later be replaced by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Ward Chamberlin Jr. was the first operating officer. On March 27, 1968, it was registered as a nonprofit corporation in the District of Columbia. In 1969, the CPB talked to private groups to start PBS, an entity intended by the CPB to circumvent controversies engendered by certain NET public affairs programs that aired in the late 1960s and which faced criticism from politically conservative public figures, potentially threatening the future viability of PBS, CPB and their collaboration. President Nixon was well known for his dislike of PBS and CPB, and wanted to kill congressional funding for them.
On February 26, 1970, the CPB formed National Public Radio (NPR), a network of public-radio stations that began operating the following year. Unlike PBS, NPR produces and distributes programming. In 1971, CPB and Ford Foundation formed a news-organizing production company, National Public Affairs Center for Television (NPACT) (originally National Public Affairs Broadcast Center), which supplies news programming for national distribution, with studios and productions based out of WETA-TV in Washington DC. In 1972, NPACT was merged into the DC station WETA-TV.
History 1974–2002 In 1974, another collaboration between public television stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Ford Foundation began supplying the National Station Program Cooperative used to fund television programming for PBS. After two years, governance arrangements changed again, with public television stations taking most control and CPB and Ford holding reduced stakes and cash (called unrestricted general program grants).
In 1977, public television stations took full control of the Station Program Cooperative, allowing it to fund programs fully. This left CPB used to fund programs for PBS, for smaller amounts. In 1979, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting decided to restructure itself, forming two units, the Management Services Division, and The Program Fund, used to fund programs for PBS.
In 1990, it was restructured, allowing CPB to handle funding for most of their program supply to PBS in a major capacity again, for the 1991-1992 television season.
Public interest programming Under the Public Broadcasting Act, the congressional declaration of policy stated that it was in the public interest for the CPB to facilitate the development of educational, cultural, and other programming not provided by commercial broadcasters, as well as programming for audiences that were unserved or underserved by commercial broadcasters. The House and Senate reports that accompanied the PBA as a bill suggested that such programming was not provided by commercial broadcasters due to market failure, and that by providing seed funding through federal grants administered by the CPB, public broadcasters would contribute to a better-informed citizenry through high-quality national and local programming.
Under the Radio Act of 1927 and the Communications Act of 1934, Congress had established that broadcast licensees did not own the radio frequency assigned to them, and that the radio spectrum as a whole belonged to the public; and, as such, broadcasters could be and were required to serve the public interest in order to receive a license. In 1929, the Federal Radio Commission issued a regulatory ruling that held that broadcasters were expected to provide a balanced program schedule, which schedule would include programming for "education and instruction, important public events, discussions of public questions … and news".
In 1939, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required all radio stations to locate their main offices and studios in the community they were licensed to serve. In 1946, the FCC issued its Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees report that recommended that stations produce programming of local interest and to determine such programming through a community ascertainment process.
In 1949, the FCC promulgated the fairness doctrine which required broadcasters to present programming that covered controversial issues of public importance with the opportunity for contrasting viewpoints to be aired. In 1960, the FCC issued a policy statement that listed 14 categories of programming considered necessary for a station to be operating in the public interest, including: educational programs; public affairs programs; and news programs. However, out of more than 100,000 broadcast license renewal applications from 1934 through 2011, the FCC only rejected four renewal applications in total for failure to meet the public interest programming obligations — it last did so in 1980, and had done so only once before the PBA was passed. Also, a 1979 General Accounting Office (GAO) report estimated that even though the FCC only took preliminary action on 2 to 3 percent of the approximately 5,000 fairness doctrine complaints it received annually (with a total of only 15 to 20 complaints per year resulting in any adverse findings for licensees), many broadcasters would avoid presenting controversial public issues altogether in order to avoid sanctions or risk losing their licenses.