By Amanda Lillie, staff writer

If Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have their way, KSMQ television in Austin could lose all of its federal funding by 2013.

Last month, when the House voted to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides money to public radio and television stations, no Republicans stepped forward to defend it. Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, introduced similar legislation in the Senate last week.

“The CPB funding is a large part of what rural television stations use for operations,” Debbie Eddy, KSMQ development director, said. “It would affect us dramatically.”

The CPB is receiving $430 million in the current fiscal year and will get $445 million in fiscal 2012. That funding is then doled out to public radio and television stations.

Eddy said the funding cuts wouldn’t be implemented until 2013, which would allow KSMQ to make budget adjustments before the cuts hit.

“We would look to increase revenue streams as much as we possibly could,” Eddy said. “We would have to step up our efforts. The ultimate worst possible conclusion would be to close our doors and not be on the air anymore.”

However, a funding slash would hit public television harder than radio. By law, 75 percent of CPB’s grant money must go to TV stations.

Cutting funding for CPB will meet fierce resistance in the Democratic-controlled Senate, however, and President Barack Obama favors continued support. White House spokesman Jay Carney noted that both Democratic and Republican presidents have supported such funding in the past.

Debate over federal funding for public broadcasting has heated up in recent weeks due to controversy surrounding NPR.

NPR’s president and CEO Vivian Schiller resigned last Wednesday in an effort to limit the damage from hidden camera footage of a fellow executive deriding the tea party movement as “seriously racist.” Conservatives called the video proof that the network is biased and undeserving of federal funds, adding fuel to the already controversial debate.

The video showed two conservative activists posing as members of a fake Muslim group at a lunch meeting with NPR’s top fundraiser, Ron Schiller, who is not related to Vivian Schiller and who also resigned. The men offered NPR a $5 million donation and engaged in a wide-ranging discussion about tea party Republicans, pro-Israel bias in the media and anti-intellectualism.

“The current Republican Party is not really the Republican Party. It’s been hijacked by this group that is … not just Islamophobic but, really, xenophobic,” Ron Schiller said in the video, referring to the Tea Party movement. “They believe in sort of white, middle America, gun-toting — it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”

He also said NPR “would be better off in the long run without federal funding.”

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.