On Thursday night (July 17), the U.S. House of Representatives voted to allow President Donald Trump to claw back $9 billion in federal funds, including $1.1 billion to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds the country’s more than 1,500 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) stations. The money had already been allocated to CPB for the next two budget years, but the bill cancels funds the CPB had expected to receive and that the stations were counting on. The Senate approved the rescissions on Wednesday (July 16).
The action has wide-ranging, potentially devastating effects, including on the arts programs PBS and NPR produce, including Austin City Limits (ACL). The longest-running music program in TV history is coming off its 50th anniversary and for half a century has provided a vital and vigorous home for live performance, featuring music from all genres — Foo Fighters, Bonnie Raitt, Ray Charles, Coldplay, Billie Eilish, Pearl Jam, Dolly Parton, Kendrick Lamar and hundreds more.
“This is a kick in the gut, and it really does hurt,” says Terry Lickona, who has served as ACL’s executive producer since 1979. “This comes as a blow, not just for Austin City Limits, of course, but it’s a dark day for public media almost 60 years since [President Lyndon B. Johnson] signed public broadcasting into law.” (Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 in November of that year, creating the CPB, which gave “a stronger voice to educational radio and television by providing new funds for broadcast facilities,” Johnson said. “We want most of all to enrich man’s spirit. That is the purpose of this act.”)
Willie Nelson, who performed on the first episode of ACL in 1974, tells Billboard, “Austin City Limits and PBS were and are an essential part of education, understanding, curiosity and empathy, which are the essentials and building blocks of humanity.”
Austin’s local PBS station, known as Austin PBS, produces, funds and owns ACL. The station is expected to lose $3 million from the cuts, Lickona says.
It’s too soon to know how much of that loss of $3 million in federal funding will directly affect ACL, and the equation is further clouded by the fact that PBS Austin and ACL share many staffers. “But what’s important now, more than ever, is we are going to have to lean and lean hard on the support of people who’ve come to depend on our show,” says Lickona, who vows ACL will go on. “We’ve going to have to get that money from somewhere else.” (On average, PBS stations receive around 15% of their annual budgets from federal funding, according to the New York Times, with some stations in rural communities with fewer donor opportunities relying on the federal dollars for a much higher percentage.)
Lickona estimates that 25% of ACL’s operating budget relies on federal funding. For the 51st season, which is already underway, the budget is around $4 million. This amount represents 20 artist tapings — funneled into 13 episodes —with a budget of around $200,000 per taping, which means ACL will likely need to make up at least $1 million.
This season is already at a budget deficit of $350,000, says Lickona, who has been looking for more underwriters to make up the shortfall. The task is made slightly more difficult because PBS limits the number of national underwriters a show can have, a rule Lickona hopes that PBS will consider changing, considering the federal funding loss.
Lickona is daunted but not deterred. “Nothing lasts 50 years without a lot of struggle and a lot of challenges, financial, political and otherwise,” he says. “We will carry on somehow, because too many people depend on Austin City Limits for these 50 years.”
In addition to funding from corporate and individual donors, ACL also receives money from a licensing agreement with Live Nation for the Austin City Limits festival and, starting last year, funds from the Texas Film Commission. Lickona is unsure what will happen with the state funding following the federal change. “We can’t count on anything as far as that state money goes,” he says.
For now, Lickona says there will be no major changes to ACL and its schedule. “There are no immediate plans to cut back or alter the program in any way, but we will need the continuous support of music lovers and sponsors now more than ever, as well as the support of artists, labels, publicists and managements to stand with us as they have for 50 years,” he says.
Some artists are already stepping up. Before the cuts were announced, Jason Isbell was slated to play an Aug. 21 private fundraiser for Austin PBS, and Lickona is hoping more will help raise funds. “We have done a lot to benefit artists’ careers over the years, and they totally get it and appreciate it, and I think we’re going to have to call upon their support,” he says.
Reba McEntire was among those who spoke out against the cuts prior to the Senate vote. On July 11, she posted to Instagram, “From my appearances on Austin City Limits in 1987 to South Pacific from Carnegie Hall in 2006, I’ve had a long relationship with PBS,” before calling on people to check out protectmypublicmedia.com to “help keep PBS delivering the incredible programming we all love so much.”
Lickona doesn’t see ACL pairing with a streaming or cable outlet as PBS stalwart Sesame Street, which in 2015 partnered with HBO, and now Netflix, to premiere episodes before they ran on PBS. “Imagine me walking into the offices back in the day or even today of one of the commercial television networks or streaming services and pitching the idea for a weekly music show that one week might have Kendrick Lamar and the next Dolly Parton and the week after that Samara Joy,” he says. “It’s such an eclectic mix of all different artists, some well-known, some totally obscure and avant-garde. PBS is the only place that a show like ours could exist. We never could have survived in any sort of commercial environment where it’s more about the ratings and revenue.”
As for what Lickona would say to the lawmakers and the current administration that voted for the public broadcasting cuts, he simply says, “They don’t get it…They don’t understand the value that PBS, NPR and public media continue to serve like they have for almost 60 years. Even with a show like Austin City Limits, it goes so far beyond just providing a showcase for music from week to week.” On a broader scale, he mentions the numerous communities, many of them rural, where people don’t have access to or can’t afford subscription streaming services and other paid media.
“I remember Alan Jackson telling me that he grew up in some rural town in Georgia where they didn’t have any sort of cable TV, and he watched Austin City Limits and saw George Jones and Willie Nelson and people like that, and that inspired him to want to become a country singer,” Lickona continues. “The impact that shows like Sesame Street and the nature programming and public affairs programming have had…It just says to me that the people in Washington, from the White House through Congress, just don’t get it. They don’t understand the value that so many other millions of people have understood and benefited from for all these years.”