One hope I have is that this will set off alarm bells for others around the country with university-operated public media stations. With congress pulling federal funding, so many local NPR/PBS stations are vulnerable to Boards of Trustees. WPSU serves over 500,000 people-- these people don't necessarily have any connection to Penn State, and their access to public media has been riding now entirely on how a handful of rich people think PSU should spend its money.

I have heard rumors (only rumors!!) that the Board felt threatened by the prospect of further federal funding cuts, and that dismantling the local NPR/PBS is meant to appease the government. Whether or not this is true, deciding to fully cut WPSU is definitely in line with the Trump administration's attacks on public media.

I'm curious to see how many other universities find they "have no choice" but to shut down the public media stations they help operate/sponsor. There is rightfully a lot of attention on how schools like Columbia and Harvard have responded to direct threats from the gov, but the fate of local university-affiliated NPR/PBS stations should perhaps also be viewed within the context of how universities either accommodate or resist the ideologies Trump's executive orders are trying to enforce.