SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Public radio and television stations across the country are assessing their futures after Congress voted to eliminate all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the next two years. CPB distributes federal money to more than 1,500 noncommercial TV and radio stations across the country. Experts warn that small and rural stations may be devastated or knocked off the air entirely. Mitch Teich is the general manager of North Country Public Radio, an NPR member station in Canton, New York, near the Canadian border. Mitch, thanks so much for being with us.
MITCH TEICH, BYLINE: Thank you so much for asking.
SIMON: How much of your station budget will you lose on October 1?
TEICH: Between 12% and 15%.
SIMON: What'll that do?
TEICH: It will make it a lot more complicated to do the things that we have done for 57 years. We rely on federal funding to buy programming from a variety of sources, whether it's NPR or one of the other distributors. And without the money to pay for those programs, the money will have to come from another part of our budget.
SIMON: When you say, have to come from another part of your budget, I don't want to be obscure. You mean programs, personnel.
TEICH: Yeah, absolutely, whether it's our local programming and reporting or it's the maintenance of our 34 transmitters and translators across the region or it's our personnel.
SIMON: I have to ask. You've got local shows - Northern Light, North Words, The Howl. Can you keep them all on the air?
TEICH: That is our goal. We have never had a bloated staff, if you will, so everybody does more than one thing. But it's going to be a challenge to do everything here.
SIMON: Now, North Country Public Radio serves an audience that's across northern New York and western Vermont. In your judgment, what do you give those communities?
TEICH: We give those communities really a sense of community. We have been one of the very few organizations that serves people around the region and gives them something to gather around. Let me give you an example. You mentioned The Howl a moment ago. It's an event that we do at bars and restaurants across the North Country. People from around the community get together. And they use a prompt and have to tell a true story in less than 5 minutes, without notes. It's a great chance for people to get together in these small towns and villages and kind of share each other's company.
And I was at a Howl event in a little town called Keeseville, New York, which is a town - I don't even know how many people live there, but probably no more than a thousand. And I went to that event, and then I drove back home to the little town of Potsdam, which is not far from where our offices are here. And I drove through places like Ellenburg, New York, and Malone, New York, and Dickinson Center, New York. And I'll forgive you for not knowing about any of those places because they're barely more than blips on a map. And if people in those places had to rely on broadcasters who were in it to make a profit to serve them, they would have no service at all.
We have been broadcasting across the North Country for 57 years because it's the right thing to do, and it's the way to tell people about the communities in which they live. And it's a way for us to share the story of the North Country with the rest of the world. And I think both of those are incredibly valuable public services that don't exist when you're just turning to your cellphone for a headline from an app that comes from heaven knows where.
SIMON: How do you meet the argument some people have made that public radio is biased?
TEICH: I have been in public radio now, God help me, since 1994. And one thing that I can say through my career in both journalism and management is that we bend over backwards to make sure that we aren't biased. And, you know, I'm happy to have debates about individual stories that people might have a complaint about. But I would say, by and large, the vast majority - and by which I mean the vast, vast majority - of the stories that we do at NCPR and stations across the system do really are there to promote the free flow of information that people need to make informed decisions.
SIMON: Mitch, you've been around the system, to Arizona, New York, Iowa - reporter, producer, news director, talk show host, now general manager. Can it survive?
TEICH: I think it absolutely can survive. The sense of mission I think it's given all of us - I've been in touch with other member stations, listeners, donors. The sense of shared mission to make sure that it does survive is as strong as I have experienced it in my three-plus decades in this business. And that really makes me - I don't feel good right now, but I certainly feel better than I would otherwise.
SIMON: Mitch Teich is general manager of North Country Public Radio in northern New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
TEICH: Scott, it's been an honor. Thanks so much.
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