Vineyard-based music channel WMVY, better known as MVY, is fundraising with extra urgency this fall after losing its annual support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has provided about a tenth of its revenue since the 42-year-old station went nonprofit in 2014.

Station manager PJ Finn told the Gazette that the nonprofit corporation had pledged nearly $200,000 to MVY for 2025, to be awarded in November, before the federal government revoked and ended its funding this summer as part of the Rescissions Act of 2025.

“They want to defund things like NPR [National Public Radio], but the real-world effect is that it causes problems for small, independent local public radio stations,” Mr. Finn said.

The loss represents about 10 per cent of MVY’s $2 million annual budget, he said.

“It was considered part of our income in 2025 [and] without it, we’re $200,000 behind where we should be,” Mr. Finn said.

Station manager PJ Finn.

Ray Ewing

Station manager PJ Finn.

Ray Ewing

The station’s nearest off-Island neighbor, news-oriented WCAI in Woods Hole, also has been hit by federal funding cuts, laying off news director Steve Junker in June as part of a larger reduction in staff at its parent station, NPR affiliate WGBH in Boston. Unlike GBH, however, MVY plans not to let anyone go, Mr. Finn told the Gazette.

“At this point, laying people off is not on the table [and] changing programming is not on the table. We will look for other places we can cut some costs,” he said.

Known as a community service grant, the annual Corporation for Public Broadcasting contribution was intended to support local programming and calculated to match 10 per cent of the station’s fund-raising for the previous year, Mr Finn said.

“We could very easily and very cheaply be a radio station that just has syndicated content, but the grant made it easy for us to really represent the Vineyard on the radio and we want to continue that,” he said.

At present, he said, MVY runs just one syndicated show, the Putamayo World Music Hour. All other programming originates from station personnel, including the weekly Vineyard Current public affairs show on Sunday mornings.

Mr. Finn said MVY will seek to make up the 2025 loss in federal support during its annual October fund drive on the air.

This week, he said, the station also launched a special drive — similar to a capital campaign — with a $600,000 goal, in order to bridge the funding gap over the next few years.

Initial responses have been positive, Mr. Finn said.

“I think people really understand what’s happening, and [that] this is a concrete way you can help,” he said.

Public radio veteran Sam Fleming, a member of the MVY board of directors, told the Gazette he believes the station can not only make up for the funding loss, but grow even stronger with the support of its listeners and underwriters.

“One of the benefits of MVY is that it’s an independent station that hasn’t had to depend on a university system or a state government to subsidize it,” he said. “Thank goodness MVY has such a loyal audience.”

Along with its 88.7 FM signal from the Vineyard and a repeater station in Rhode Island at 96.5 FM, MVY reaches worldwide with its internet stream.

A crowdsourced map of Europe on the station’s Facebook page shows people tuning across the continent, from Ireland to Greece, with the densest concentration in the British Isles and Netherlands, many others in Western Europe and at least one in Lebanon.

The station weathered a true fiscal crisis in 2013, after public radio station WBUR purchased its previous signal from WMVY owner Aritaur Communications, which had operated it as a for-profit business.

To stay on the air, MVY had 60 days to raise $600,000 and met the goal with a day to spare with donations from listeners in all 50 states and 15 countries.