CPB closure leaves documentary filmmakers searching for funding

Bash said her community is now trying to figure out how to make up for the funding shortfall. “There’s going more international with your funding models,” she said. “And of course, there’s the streamers.”

Leaning into streaming

Goldberg said GBH already works with Amazon and aims to develop more relationships with streamers like Netflix, as well as expand its offerings on platforms such as YouTube.

“I’m personally very invested in ensuring that storytelling  through documentaries continues to find an audience,” said Angela Courtin, YouTube’s vice president of sports and entertainment marketing. Courtin said the platform provides analytics and other resources to help creators of all kinds figure out how to expand their reach, though it doesn’t currently pay for content. (Popular creators can earn revenue through such mechanisms as YouTube’s Partner Program and brand deals.)

Streaming platform Tubi does occasionally produce or co-produce documentaries, such as When Black Women Go Missing, a 2024 co-production with Vice about the disproportionately high number of Black, female missing persons. It also sometimes acquires streaming rights, as it did in 2023 for Satan Wants You, a film about satanic cults.

“It has been on the one level, a hit driven business,” said Adam Lewinson, Tubi’s chief content officer. Lewinson said Tubi is set up to accommodate not just documentaries likely to appeal to big audiences, but also niche titles by indie filmmakers that attract deep fandoms. Tubi mostly hosts movies in this latter category on its site – thereby helping films find audiences – but isn’t generally financing this work. “For many documentarians, if you say, ‘Are you looking to recoup your investment, or do you want your story to be seen by as many people as possible?’ The answer is always both. But ultimately they’ll lean toward, ‘We just want our content to be seen.'”

The challenges of the open marketplace

ITVS received 86% of its funding from CPB. Lozano said her non-profit has directly invested more than $44 million in documentaries over the past five years. Owing to the difficult funding landscape, ITVS laid off roughly 20% of its staff in June. Lozano expects roughly 10 films to lose out on funding this year — a big cut from the up to 40 feature and short documentaries the group typically supports annually.

The basics of Internet connectivity are also an issue around streaming for many people, especially those who live in small, rural communities. “What about audiences who aren’t connected to fast broadband, or live in Internet deserts?” said filmmaker Jessica Edwards, whose documentaries include the 2015 profile Mavis! about singer Mavis Staples. “Many folks rely on free, over-the-air programming not just for news and weather but for a diversity of storytelling. What replaces that? More paywalls? It’s an equity issue as much as an artistic one.”

But for people like Mike Gonzalez, who’ve fought for decades to stop the flow of federal dollars into public media, there’s no reason why these films should get special treatment in the form of federal dollars.

Looking elsewhere

Given the realities of the marketplace, some documentarians are working to attract more funding from traditional sources such as corporations, foundations and individual donors.

Meanwhile, some groups, such as the International Documentary Association (IDA), are working to recoup some of the lost federal funds. “ IDA is trying to pursue more strategic litigation to see how we can get the support to challenge some of the actions that have been taken at the federal level,” said Dominic Willsdon, the IDA’s executive director.

Mourning the loss

Underpinning all of this new strategizing is a tremendous sense of grief.

“ Removing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting out of the media landscape means the world becomes much more impoverished, and the stories that get told will be much more anodyne,” said Robb Moss, a documentary filmmaker and professor in Harvard University’s  department of art, film and visual studies.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris described the loss of federal support for documentaries as a major blow to free speech. “Worrisome to anybody who values an independent media, who values the First Amendment, who values freedom of expression,” the Fog of War and The Thin Blue Line director said. “The pursuit of truth is not a political issue. It’s a moral imperative that’s now being questioned daily.”