Allegheny Mountain Radio Braves Storm Of Federal Cuts

This conversation originally aired in the Sept. 7, 2025 episode of Inside Appalachia.

Allegheny Mountain Radio is facing the loss of nearly two-thirds of its budget from federal cuts.

In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act that established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). For nearly 60 years, the CPB has supported educational television and radio programming across the country. Including television shows for children like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, documentaries like Ken Burns’ Civil War, and radio shows like Inside Appalachia. 

In September of this year, the CPB will shut down. That’s a result of a Republican-led clawback of already approved funds by Congress. The funding cuts will mostly affect NPR and PBS affiliate stations. West Virginia Public Broadcasting (WVPB) will lose $1.6 million between its radio and television operations this year. 

Smaller stations are being hit just as hard — including stations like Allegheny Mountain Radio, on the Virginia-West Virginia border. 

Scott Smith is Allegheny Mountain Radio’s general manager. He spoke with Inside Appalachia Host Mason Adams.

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

Adams: Allegheny Mountain Radio is the first name on the list of affiliate stations that carry Inside Appalachia. But for those that aren’t as familiar, can you share a little bit about the station, where you’re located and what makes y’all a little different from other public radio stations?

Smith: We are a cooperative of radio stations. We are located in the Appalachian Mountains. We’re right on the Virginia-West Virginia border, and we actually have stations in both of those states. Our first station — the mother station, if you will — was WVMR, which is in Dunmore, West Virginia. It started its operations in 1991. In 1996, we added two more physical locations in Virginia: WVLS, which is in Monterey, Virginia, and WCHG, which is in Hot Springs, Virginia. 

The way our system is set up, we can broadcast from any one of the three stations, and that broadcast is mirrored or repeated on the other two, so it’s usually one unified signal. The biggest exception to that usually comes in high school fall football season. We split up the network so the folks in Pocahontas [County] can hear the Warriors game, and the people in Bath County can hear the Chargers game. What makes us unique, I think, is, first of all, we exist in an area where cell coverage is spotty at best and non-existent at worst. There are just very small pockets in the three counties that we are located in where cell service is available. 

To put a little bit extra on top of that, our population tends to skew a bit older, and they are people who are perhaps more inclined to turn to traditional media sources, rather than the new ways of getting information. So, they might turn on their radio dial quicker than they would grab their smartphone to find out what’s going on, get their news, their entertainment, their school closures, their weather forecasts, their emergency alerts. Heck, we even do “lost and found” pet notices. I read a found pet notice several years ago for an emu that was wandering around Highland County. So, we are hyper-local, and we serve communities that perhaps are a bit different just because of our rural location and the folks that make it up. 

Adams: Congress passed a bill to clawback a little over a billion dollars in funding for public radio and television. How’s that affected y’all there at Allegheny Mountain Radio?

Smith: Well, it obviously affects us very much in terms of the future and who we are and what we do moving forward. Any given year, as a rule of thumb, we would get 60% to 65% of our income from community service grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Obviously, those are now no longer an option. So now we are grappling with how we move ahead, having lost 60% to 65% of our income. Fortunately, we do have a reserve that we are able to draw on for the time being, so we can continue operations exactly as is. We haven’t called for any changes of location or reduction of personnel. We are keeping on just exactly the way we have been for the foreseeable future. 

But the foreseeable future isn’t forever, and when you’re drawing on reserves, that is obviously not a sustainable business model moving forward. So what we’re going to do is, first of all, look where we can cut costs while still maintaining our core mission and services that we do. We’ll look to expand our other streams of revenue, which are private donations and underwriting, and we’ll look for other funding sources that we can hopefully use to mitigate some of the loss. We’re absolutely not giving up and rolling over because we’re all very passionate about what we do. We’re all very dedicated to what we do. Nobody works or volunteers here at Allegheny Mountain Radio for the money, I can assure you of that. We do it because we are very proud of the services that we give to our listeners and our communities, and we intend to keep that up well.

Adams: What’s the mood there like? And I’m thinking both in terms of inside the station and staff morale, but also among your listeners. What are you hearing from them?

Smith: Since this has happened and since our story has broken nationwide, if you will, I really never thought I would utter the words “Allegheny Mountain Radio” and “viral” in the same sentence, but it’s kind of become a situation like that. As one news organization picked it up and did a story, others picked it up and followed up, and that’s still going on. Obviously, I’m talking to you here on Inside Appalachia. The same way the response both locally and nationwide has been, it’s been something that it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around. The support has poured in, both in terms of sharing our story on public media to raise awareness, in terms of messages of support, and in terms of financial support. 

You can’t receive the amount of good vibes and support that we have gotten and not let it harden your resolve to keep on doing what you’re doing. It’s very moving, it’s very motivating and it’s very validating in a way that I find hard to put into words. I can talk about the importance of Allegheny Mountain Radio all day long, but unless someone hears that, and unless someone agrees with that, then it’s just me talking. When someone hears and agrees with that and sends a message of support, or sends some financial support, that is absolute validation at its highest level that drives you to keep doing what you’re doing.

Adams: Scott, as a native of the Allegheny Highlands with a lot of family in your coverage area. I appreciate what Allegheny Mountain Radio does. Thank you for speaking with us here on Inside Appalachia.

Smith: Absolutely, Mason. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to get the message out about Allegheny Mountain Radio, who we are, and what we do. To sum it up with something I’ve said so much recently, I ought to either put it on a business card or maybe a new tattoo: We’re still here and we’re going to keep doing exactly what we do until we absolutely cannot do that anymore.