Popular Lexington radio host to step down as WUKY, WEKU navigate funding cuts
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- DeBraun Thomas steps down from WUKY amid public media funding reductions.
- WUKY and WEKU face budget losses of 13% and 15% after NPR funding cuts.
- Thomas plans music return and continued social justice advocacy in Lexington.
After a 13 year stint at WUKY that began with an internship and ended with hosting the station’s flagship program “Rock & Roots,” one of the local NPR affiliate’s most recognizable on-air personalities is stepping down from his role.
DeBraun Thomas, who began hosting “Rock & Roots” in 2019, announced during the show on July 21 that he’d be stepping away from his full-time role as the morning host at the station at month’s end. During his more than a dozen years there Thomas not only became WUKY’s first-ever Black on-air radio personality, but he also hosted a weekly “Local Music Mondays” segment as well as “The Crunkadelic Funk Show,” a program he first launched as a student on UK’s student-run station WRFL in 2009 and will continue operating on WUKY beyond him stepping down next week.
“The way that I’ve been an unapologetically Black man on the radio, I hope that I can at least send a message to anyone who’s listening that your stories matter and that you can have a tremendous impact on other people,” Thomas says. “Sometimes people don’t know that things are possible until they can see it for themselves, so while I am the first, I hope that I am not the last. I hope I am one of many different kinds of people to be able to make a positive change at the station and in our community.”
Funding Cuts’ Impact On Local Media
Thomas’ decision comes during a tumultuous time for public media following last week’s congressional vote to rescind over a billion dollars in funding for NPR and PBS. Although his decision was made prior to those cuts becoming official, Thomas said they were a factor.
WUKY general manager Bryan Lane says the station is set to lose $145,000 — or about 13 percent — of its funding, adding that they’re “currently evaluating several options to address shortcomings with no definitive plans for the future currently in place.”
Another nearby NPR affiliate, WEKU, is set to lose $240,000 — equal to 15 percent of its annual budget. According to Thomas, funding public media is critical to ensuring communities — particularly rural ones — stay well connected, well informed and well represented.
“While I don’t always have faith in institutions, I will always have faith in the power of the people,” Thomas says. “I have watched time and time again how listeners have shown up for us during pledge drives or to support us when funding for public media is being threatened. I hope that even though I won’t be here anymore that people continue to support WUKY and other public media stations in Kentucky because it’s vital to us getting to tell our own stories since nobody is going to tell them for us.”
What’s Next For Thomas?
In his radio absence Thomas plans to return with a renewed focus to his music and the John Lewis-inspired “good trouble” that consumed much of his life pre-pandemic. Those two sides of Thomas have long been intertwined, with his debut 2015 album “All My Colors Are Blind” touching on that symbiotic relationship directly. Following its release Thomas was promptly sidelined by a broken hand before getting involved in the “Take Back Cheapside” movement that successfully ended in the removal of Confederate statues at downtown Lexington’s Cheapside Park — now known as Henry A. Tandy Centennial Park.
In addition to ushering in positive change in the community, the work with “Take Back Cheapside” also resulted in a barrage of violence and death threats that left Thomas hesitant to perform in public. Then once those tensions subsided and he was ready to play the pandemic hit, putting yet another barrier between him and returning to his biggest passion.
“I’m genuinely looking forward to having the opportunity, space and capacity to really focus on music again,” Thomas says. “It’s taken me a long time to feel like I could really be on a stage and give myself completely to the moment without looking over my shoulder.
“You can’t necessarily serve other people if you’re pouring from an empty cup,” he says. “This is an opportunity for me to be able to do something I love and start a new chapter. We’re living in a time where we have to take care of the things important to us, which sometimes means making really hard decisions like this one.”
Also featuring prominently in Thomas’ new era will be social justice work. Since “Take Back Cheapside” he has stayed busy in the arena with things like UK’s Digital Access Project — which is working to catalog the records of enslaved people in Fayette County — and the Equal Justice Initiative to bring narrative-based historical markers to town at the sites of racial terror lynchings.
“It’s been great being involved in all these collaborative efforts. The work will never stop,” Thomas says. “There’s multiple ways to approach healing from these kinds of things. My hope is that people are inspired to make change in their communities because it doesn’t require a super power, it just requires you taking that first step for yourself.”
Gatton Park Grand Opening Celebration
What: Concert featuring DeBraun Thomas, Tee Dee Young, Joslyn & The Sweet Compression, Vinyl Richie, Devine Carama and Mama Said String Band, among others
Where: Gatton Park On The Town Branch, 795 Manchester St
When: Aug. 23 at 12 p.m.
Online: Facebook.com
This story was originally published July 25, 2025 at 4:55 AM.