President Donald Trump’s request for Congress to cut $9.4 billion in spending on foreign aid and public broadcasting appears to put Colorado public media at a potential loss of more than $4.5 million in annual funding.

The measure was narrowly approved in the U.S. House on June 12.

Colorado Public Radio and Rocky Mountain Public Broadcasting Service are the state’s largest, nonprofit public broadcasting services. CPR averages approximately 1.9 million monthly listeners, and Rocky Mountain PBS averages 3 million monthly viewers, according to the organization’s presidents.

If Trump’s NPR and PBS Act passes, CPR and Rocky Mountain PBS could lose 10% of their annual budgets, with CPR losing $1.5 million, and Rocky Mountain PBS losing $3 million annually.

KRCC, Colorado Springs’ National Public Radio member talk and news network, operates under CPR. If this bill passes, KRCC could lose $168,000 annually, approximately 10% of their budget of $1.65 million, said CPR President Stewart Vanderwilt.

At this time, it is unclear how these funding cuts could impact programming.

“(If this bill passes), everyone’s programming will be affected. Every station in the country will have to determine how they are going to absorb a loss of funding that could range from 5% to sometimes over 60% to 70%,” Vanderwilt said.

“We don’t know how we would potentially absorb such a loss.”

Amanda Mountain, CEO and president of Rocky Mountain PBS, says if this bill passes, smaller, independent broadcasting networks that serve less-populated areas will face the greatest impact.

“There are over 20 public media organizations serving Coloradans, many of which are very small, in small communities, and are often the only source of local news in that community. Some of these smaller organizations have as much as 50% of their budget coming from federal support,” Mountain said.

KCME, Colorado Springs’ classical music and jazz radio station, operates independently with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. If Trump’s bill passes, the station could lose 10% of its $1 million annual budget, according to General Manager Stephanie Horton.

“Since we learned about (the potential cut), we have been reaching out to our listeners and encouraging them to sign up for Protect My Public Media,” Horton said, referring to a national action committee opposed to the funding cuts. “The No. 1 thing for us is advocacy right now.”

KCME has faced financial challenges before, Horton said, such as the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the station was able to receive more grants from CPB as the pandemic lessened in severity, allowing the station to invest leftover funds.

With that, Horton says KCME should be able to operate normally, relying on investment proceeds to make up for the 10% funding cut.

Vanderwilt said many independent stations will not be able to operate as normally as KCME will, especially in less-populated areas.

“For example, the station in Alamosa in the San Luis Valley serves a large area that is not highly populated. Their potential to be able to raise money and replace the loss of a grant is a lot less than in Denver, where there is a really large population,” Vanderwilt said.

The Alamosa station, KRZA, serves an area of over 1,200 miles, and has an annual budget of $300,000, station manager Gerald Rodriguez said. CPB makes up 40%, roughly $120,000 of this budget. Rodriguez said if this bill passes, it would force the station to cut programming significantly and staff by at least half.

“We are a very rural area and our audience doesn’t have a lot of money to donate — without CPB, we would have to make drastic cuts,” Rodriguez said.

People in these rural areas rely on local public broadcast networks for emergency notifications, weather and traffic updates, but also for state, national and international news, according to Vanderwilt.

“You can’t replace local information with an internet feed of national news from outside of your community,” he said.

Trump’s slash to public broadcast and foreign aid funding comes after his remarks about foreign aid being “wasteful,” and PBS being a “radical left disaster.”

Mountain says PBS’ viewership suggests otherwise.

“Americans disagree. PBS is one of the most trusted brands in the country. Traditionally, we have bipartisan support in Congress, but also bipartisan audiences that want to get away from the noise of cable television.

“Our audience is roughly a third registered Republican, a third registered independent and a third registered Democrat. Our data shows that people of all political persuasions are turning to public media.”

An White House executive order from May 1 calls for the CPB to defund PBS and NPR. It states, “Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”

Since the corporation did not voluntarily cut funding to PBS and NPR, Trump then called upon lawmakers to cut $1.1 billion in annual funding from the CPB.

The House vote was 214-212, with only four Republicans and all 208 Democrats voting against it.

If the bill is passed by the Senate, it will eliminate $1.1 billion in already-approved broadcast funding for stations nationwide.