I've heard this "debunked" many times before, but I looked it up this time for our local public radio [0]. Looking at this report for my state it looks like it's coming up on 29% government funds (state funds and CPB)! Listener and business support add up to about 50%. About 22% looks like it's basically income (proceeds on ticket sales, etc).

I'm not a total public radio hater or anything, but this definitely makes me take the idea that public radio is mostly listener supported a lot less seriously in the bigger scheme of things. Public radio fans can try to talk me down. I'd like to know where I'm wrong.

[0] https://www.wpr.org/sites/default/files/annualreport2021_fin...

Edit: ... and I do know there is a distinction between the national entity and the member stations. It's just that tracing it up further feels like a shell game. Maybe all the other states are different and have way more donations, but I have no idea. I'm already confused about how many of WPR's "in kind" funding from the UW-system are state/federal funds and even if any of the state funds are from federal aid.