An Op-Ed by Craig Fugate
Former Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Trustee, America’s Public Television Stations
Here’s the bottom line: local public broadcasting stations save lives. That’s not a slogan. It’s a fact.
When I led FEMA, one of the biggest challenges we faced during disasters was getting accurate, timely information to the public — especially when everything else was failing. Cell networks go down. Power grids fail. But local public broadcasting stations stay on the air. And they’re often the only lifeline communities have.
Public media isn’t just about educational programs and documentaries. It’s about infrastructure. It’s about having a trusted voice and a signal that reaches nearly every household in America — especially in rural areas where there may be no local news station and where cell coverage is spotty at best.
These stations serve as critical components of our national emergency communications backbone. Many are the primary hubs for the Emergency Alert System in their states. They carry AMBER Alerts. They support severe weather warnings. And they’re part of the technology FEMA and others use to push Wireless Emergency Alerts to your phone. That system doesn’t work without public broadcasting.
And that’s just the national picture.
At the state and local level, public broadcasting stations are stepping up with real innovation:
- In California, they’ve helped cut earthquake alert times from 30 seconds to less than 3.
- In Tennessee, they’ve partnered with the state to build a dedicated emergency communications network.
- In Florida and South Carolina, public media runs round-the-clock storm updates, making sure residents get lifesaving information when it matters most.
This is public safety in action—not theory. These are boots-on-the-ground, people-on-the-air efforts that make the difference between timely evacuations and missed warnings.
And they only happen because Congress has invested in public media through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Now, that funding is at risk. A proposed rescissions package would eliminate it.
If that happens, many local public broadcasting stations could go dark. And if they go dark, so do emergency alerts for millions of Americans. That’s not just bad policy — it’s dangerous.
When we talk about readiness and resilience, we can’t leave public broadcasting out of the equation. It’s not a “nice-to-have.” It’s mission critical.
I’ve spent my career in emergency management. I don’t deal in hypotheticals. I deal in what works—and public broadcasting works.
Congress should reject this dangerous proposal. Keep the funding. Keep the signal on. Keep saving lives.