And So It Begins....

A public television station serving 1.5 million people across a large swath of central and northern Pennsylvania is slated to go dark, becoming one of the first major PBS affiliates to announce its closure following years of political pressure on public broadcasting.

Penn State University’s Board of Trustees voted Thursday to reject a sale of its station, WPSU, to Philadelphia’s larger public media network, WHYY. Instead of completing the deal, the university plans to shut the station down entirely by June 30, 2026, sparking an outcry from community members who see it as the loss of a vital public asset.

The closure marks a significant blow for public media advocates. It comes after the Trump administration repeatedly proposed eliminating all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. While Congress never enacted those cuts, the efforts created deep financial uncertainty for many public stations, particularly smaller, rural, and university-operated affiliates like WPSU.