Public media stations in rural America say emergency-alert funding is in jeopardy

Public media stations in rural America say emergency-alert funding is in jeopardy

Michael Copley

August 28, 2025 / 2:26 pm

When a deadly landslide tore through part of Wrangell, Alaska, in 2023, there was only one place people there could go for information. "We're on an island, and there's one road, and everybody that lived south of that road lost everything — they lost their electricity, internet, television, phones," says Cindy Sweat, the general manager of KSTK, the community's public broadcaster. What was left, Sweat says, was the radio.

Months later, KSTK was awarded up to $90,000 in federal funding to improve that critical alert system. The money came from the Next Generation Warning System grant program, which Congress created in 2022 to reimburse the cost of replacin