Many Americans were shocked at Congress’ recent approval of a Trump-backed bill that will cut $1.1 billion for public broadcasting, but Alabama Public Television leadership said they were able to predict the move due to “bias problems” at NPR and PBS.

In a recent interview with Capital Journal, APTV Executive Director Wayne Reid and Network Director of External Affairs Jack Williams said that they had been on a “crusade” to fix what they alleged was biased coverage from the two nationally funded networks.

“Ever since I came on and we would go to national meetings, one of the things we took to the leadership at NPR and at PBS at every meeting that we went to is we have biased issues and we have bias problems,” Reid told host Todd Stacy.

“And it’s whether they’re in their echo chamber up in New York or Washington, and they kind of listen to each other and say, ‘no, we’re not.’ But the problem is, there was a lot of states that would say there’s problems that we need to get fixed.”

“And we have pushed that from the state level of Alabama and a lot of other states for several years now, since I’ve been here,” Reid continued.

“And Jack started that crusade even before I did.”

Williams added that the two had “cobbled together at least eight, and I think it grew to 12 or 14 state networks that have expressed deep dissatisfaction with how NewsHour programming has been done in Washington Week.”

“I brought this up directly to the CEO of PBS and CEO of NPR in a panel discussion in February, in Washington, D.C.,” he said.

“I’ve had conversations with the chairman of the Board for NPR and the chairman of the board for PBS. And I’ve seen both CEOs this week say, ‘there’s no bias.’”

Reid told AL.com that APT will lose just over $2.8 million in restricted and unrestricted grant funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is about 13% of the total annual budget.

The cuts are expected to hit several public radio stations in Alabama, with Huntsville’s WLRH anticipating losing $155,000 of their annual budget, or 13% of operating costs, as AL.com’s Scott Turner recently reported.

“While this presents a challenge to WLRH and hundreds of stations nationwide, smaller and more rural stations could go dark…permanently,” the official WLRH account posted to LinkedIn on Saturday.

While Williams claimed that APT’s programming is more state focused and less biased than NPR or PBS, he said that state programming will continue to be impacted until NPR and PBS leadership address their “bias problems.”

“I think as long as they double down on that [arguing that the stations are unbiased], it’s going to make it more difficult for us to work with the federal government in the future,” he told Stacy.