KVCR’s Funding Crisis Revealed at Inland Film Festival Mixer, Creatives Rally Behind Public Media
3 min read
Photos by Manny Sandoval: KVCR Executive Director Connie Leyva addresses Inland Film Festival attendees about looming federal funding cuts and the station’s commitment to preserving local content.
During the Inland Film Festival Summer Mixer & Community Celebration on July 23, held inside KVCR’s state-of-the-art TV studio, KVCR Executive Director and former State Senator Connie Leyva delivered sobering news: the station is set to lose more than half a million dollars in annual federal funding.
“You’ve all heard the wonderful Trump Administration has eliminated our federal funding. We get that through the California Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation will cease to exist in September,” Leyva told a room of filmmakers, creatives, and community leaders from across the Inland Empire and beyond.
“What we would receive from the corporation was about $550,000 each year, and that is money equivalent to eight full-time positions here at KVCR,” she said. “No one is going to be laid off. We are going to make sure we keep everyone that we have. But, it will hurt us in creating local content.”
KVCR, a PBS affiliate based on the San Bernardino Valley College campus, received two Emmy® Awards in June 2025 for The Warehouse Empire and Inland Edition. The station is also home to Learn With Me, a bilingual children’s education series created in partnership with local educators, Footsteps 2 Brilliance, and the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools.
While Leyva’s statement underscored serious challenges ahead, her transparency ignited a wave of support from the creative community in attendance. Rather than dampening the celebration, her remarks galvanized filmmakers, artists, and advocates to rally behind KVCR and reaffirm the importance of sustaining public media in the Inland Empire.
The mixer—co-hosted by Arts Connection and the Inland Film Festival—ultimately served as a testament to the resilience and vitality of the region’s creative economy.
“We’re here to support and empower all creatives across the county,” said Alejandro Gutierrez Chavez, Executive Director of Arts Connection. “The film festival was a project supported through Creative Corps, a workforce development program from the state of California. Through partnerships with the Inland Empire Community Foundation, the Riverside Arts Council, and others, we brought over $4.7 million to artists and creatives across the Inland Empire.”
Gutierrez Chavez added that these investments have created more than 600 creative jobs and directly supported partners like KVCR, which he described as “a champion of the Inland Empire.”
The July 23 mixer invited guests to network through playful challenges, such as pitching their favorite Inland Empire news story as a feature film. The gathering highlighted the connections between filmmakers, public institutions, and media platforms—all working to tell stories rooted in local experience.
The Inland Film Festival, officially launched in April 2024 through a San Bernardino City initiative and originally spearheaded by The Garcia Center for the Arts, is designed to amplify homegrown voices, build creative workforce pipelines, and showcase the cultural fabric of the region. The inaugural festival garnered more than 250 film submissions and over 2,500 attendees.
Over the past year, the festival has hosted a range of workshops, including screenwriting, pre-production, editing, and on-set fundamentals—all led by local professionals in San Bernardino.
Awards at this year’s festival will include the Thrive Filmmaker Award, the Inland Empire Filmmaker Award, and audience and category-based recognitions ranging from Best Documentary to Best Student Film.
As KVCR faces uncertain financial footing, festival organizers emphasized the importance of continued investment in regional storytelling. Leyva’s remarks underscored what many attendees already understood: that sustaining public media and the arts is essential to ensuring that Inland Empire stories don’t just get told—they get heard.The 2025 festival, which is open to the public, will be held on September 13 and 14. For more information about the festival, visit filmfreeway.com/inlandfilmfest.
