PBS Lost a Billion Dollars. Now what? With CEO Paula Kerger

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From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels with Peter Kafka. That is me. I'm also Chief Correspondent at Business Insider. And today we are talking about media. and the government and what happens when the government stops funding the media which is another way of saying i'm talking to paula kirka the ceo of pbs as all of you know pbs and npr lost a big chunk of funding this summer

And now the effect of those cuts are starting to materialize. The good news for people who care about public television is that PBS and its stations seem to be weathering the loss of 15% of their collective funding reasonably well. For now. Paula Kerger says she has a plan to replace some of that missing money. And she's still a little bit hopeful she can convince Congress to give her organization more of their funding back someday.

But as we discuss, I think it's fair to ask whether the federal government should be funding media at all. I was raised on PBS and NPR. I think they are great. But I think... Dependency on government money comes with all kinds of consequences, and we are seeing some of them play out right now. Paula Kerger obviously feels differently, so let's hear from her. Paula Kerger, thanks for joining me.

It's great to be with you, Peter. Peter and Paul, it's like we were meant to be together. We just need one more member of our folk band. The last time you and I were together not performing, we were on stage at the Code Conference. It was 2019. Donald Trump was president. You guys were facing the questions you always face about whether or not your federal funding would get taken away. You managed to stave that off. No longer.

As anyone listening to this knows, I think you guys have lost a billion dollars collectively, you and NPR, in funding. And you've warned this could be an extinction level event for at least some parts of the PBS ecosystem. So tell me where we are today, minus that money. How are things going?

Yeah, so it's a billion dollars. That's over two years. So we were advance-funded. over a two-year period. So Congress, in a bipartisan way, for the prior to... legislative sessions had appropriated money for PBS and NPR. Where that money is earmarked is largely for local stations. When LBJ had this idea of this public media system,

for this country, he recognized that there would be parts of the country that would be challenged to have their own public media organizations. He knew a bit about media because his family's business was in radio. And he looked across the pond at the BBC and thought,

this is something that this country needed. And so in signing the enabling legislation, he was very mindful of building what he saw here, which was uniquely American, building on our... you know, spirit of de Tocqueville and volunteerism and all of that. to create something that was a public-private partnership. So the lion's share of the money that the federal government appropriated was to stations. For some stations, it's a relatively small portion of their budget.

but particularly in rural parts of the country, where I always say we have an outsized influence and importance. It's as much as 30-40. And in the case of Eureka, California, 56% of their budget comes from the federal government. So for those organizations... A rescission that gave stations basically three months' notice that that money would not be coming, it's been a fairly significant issue. So what does that mean in practical terms for the stations that are missing that funding?

For you guys at the sort of corporate level. So if you let me just ramble for a couple of minutes for the stations, you know, as soon as the monies were rescinded. This summer, a small group of us began working quite quickly to try to put together some resources for the stations that would be most at risk. And we define that as stations that receive more than 30% of their...

funding from the federal government. And the idea was to create a bridge fund. It's being run by an organization called the Public Media Company. So they're the ones that actually stepped up and said, we would like to be helpful in trying to organize this. So we began working closely together and identified that if we could raise $100 million over two years, That would give a number of stations a longer runway or a longer glide path to try to figure out how they could become sustainable.

And so that is is very much underway. You may have seen recently John Oliver participated in that effort. He did in his last show of the season, did an auction and one of the actually the most valuable thing he. auctioned off was a Bob Ross painting that went for over a million dollars, and that went into the Public Media Bridge Fund. So there's that. You want to raise $100. How much have you raised so far towards that goal? So I think they've raised now close to $65 million.

So enough to at least fund the first round. They're going to make the first announcements next week, actually. And so that immediately puts some money into the pockets of stations. It also is providing some support. for their planning. as they look to the future and giving them some, you know, we've been also working across all of our public television stations and trying to help them think about new business models. Some of that could end up being, you know, stations.

that come together in the state of Texas, for example. You have a couple very large stations in Dallas and in Houston and in Austin, and then some smaller stations in places like Corpus Christi. and Lubbock and so forth. And so they're really coming together as a statewide effort. And they're trying to share some back office facilities and also some work together and looking at things like sponsorship across the state.

creating some content across the state. So I think that's like one model of some things that some of our stations are looking at. So Congress took this big chunk of money away from you this summer and said you've got. basically three months to get it together. Those three months have come and gone. You haven't replaced all that money yet. You're working on this basically sort of a bridge financing.

minus that money, which hasn't been replaced yet, are there tangible effects either internally at the stations and or in terms of what people are used to watching as anyone's viewing changed? Right. So, you know, so the... Impact at the local station level, and this is what we're watching very carefully, is whether stations will have to shutter if they can't figure out a plan. And fortunately, there was one station, you know, there's a station that operates out of Penn State.

that the university announced that they were no longer going to be able to sustain the station. It appears that station is going to be supported by the station in Philadelphia. So that is one that could have gone dark. So we haven't seen stations yet go off the proverbial cliff. But again, we're watching it very carefully, and I would not be surprised if some stations...

whether they get some of this bridge funding or not, realize that it's going to be a bridge too far. So we're really trying to pay attention to that and making sure that at least there's some service in those communities if, in fact, there's no local station. The other thing is around the funding. of content.

So we've made some shifts because suddenly you've got a significant amount of money that's come off the table. I've been most focused on NewsHour because that's a nightly news operation. You have to make sure that that is funded. They have also made some cuts in order to sustain the core news hour service. And so you've probably seen that the weekend news hour, which was started up, I don't know, about eight years ago, is actually going to sunset in, I think, at the end of December.

and they are replacing it with two roundtable Washington Week-like shows, one based on looking at international news issues and the other focused on science, technology, and health. I would say both of those topics... not as well covered in the media. And, you know, to be candid, we're not the place people come for breaking news. So being able to have those that can be produced and broadcast on the weekends, I think, is...

It felt like a good decision and a good compromise. So that's a change that's happening because of the funding or the lack of funding. But it's also something that you might have done anyway, eventually. Let's focus this money on this instead of that.

And so the other thing is, obviously, we produce a lot of, we bring forward a lot of documentaries and a lot of documentary series. So looking at each series and seeing if, well, can we, you know, shave a few episodes? Can we, in the case of American... They have a really deep library of a lot of content that hasn't been seen.

for a while. And in 2026, as we look at the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, they have a lot of presidential biographies and so forth. So we're looking at that. The other thing that we're trying to do is really get a good fix on whether there isn't some opportunities to bring back some of this money. And I don't want you to think that...

you know, I'm living in another planet or, you know, in Alice in Wonderland kind of existence. But what I do see is a number of legislators who I've been talking to since July when we were defunded. that didn't quite realize it was their local station that was going to be impacted. If we could get back some money for them, I think it would make the rest of this easier to figure out. That would take an act of Congress, like Congress passing a bill. It would take a budget for this year.

So I am I have not given up on the possibility that there could be some money. And again, where I'm most concerned, because a lot of our stations are doing good work raising money locally. People have recognized because people always look confused about it. Right. Where does your money come from? Does it come from the government or does it come from.

You know, wherever. And so this at least people realize, oh, that's what viewers like you means. And so we have had some good success with fundraising. And so, you know, some stations are doing OK. But again. I want to make sure that we're not losing stations in places like Cookville, Tennessee, which is in a part of Appalachia that is...

not well covered by media at all. Or in Alaska, where we have both a lot of television and radio stations that are the only broadcast media. There aren't networks there. So being able to fill some of those gaps, I think, will be really critically important. So let's say in the, you said Allison, I would say Pollyanna, whatever phrase you want to use. Pollyanna is good, too.

get Congress to see the error of its ways and to sort of go against Donald Trump's wishes because he put forth an executive order saying essentially defund public media, which is separate from what they did, but it's the same thing. And you get some or maybe all of the money back. How do you think about running PBS differently?

If if that were to happen, would you make a permanent change or to go, oh, this is a weird blip. We're going to move on. Well, look, we're you know, look, I don't need to tell you because this is how you spend your life is media has changed so profoundly. You know, and again, thinking back to when we were sitting on a stage at Code. And, you know, and what I think around this defunding event is it's accelerated a lot of...

decisions and discussions that we've already been engaged in. We have, over the last years, been deliberately working to push our content out on multiple places where people are looking for work like ours. We have a very good relationship with YouTube, particularly YouTube TV. That was the first... significant deal we did that made sure that our content was accessible to people who were cord cutters or cord nevers or whatever you want to call them.

But we also have been aggressive in building out our presence on apps and building out our presence on other platforms, using both current content as well as making... deeper and better use of some of our library content. And all of this is really... you know, again, continue on a path we're on. I don't know what media is going to look like five years from now. I do believe that broadcast television and you may think.

You've called me a Pollyanna. Now you can call me a Luddite. But I do believe there is a continuing role for broadcast. It's one to many. In parts of the country, it is the only way that it's accessible. One of the things we tried to talk about during the whole defunding discussion is that... We do a lot of work with Homeland Security around emergency preparedness. And that's not just telling you that a hurricane is coming. We're also pushing content out to first responders.

And we're using it using our broadcast spectrum because that doesn't melt down. when there is high demand, which is what happens when there is an emergency. So, I mean, I do think that, you know, just sort of this balancing of what do we think about as a legacy media organization along with... how we're connecting to people wherever they are looking for content is really important.

And if the money doesn't come back during this version of the Trump administration and then we move to a future where maybe it comes back depending on who's in the White House. How do you think about that? Do you have to sort of permanently give up some stuff that was core and important to you?

So how I think about it is, and maybe this now will make you take back that Pollyanna thing, is that I think we have to plan the money is not coming back. But I think we work very hard to try to get it back. I think if we plan the money is not coming back and we build a strong foundation. for how we operate moving forward. If we get any piece of the money back, that makes us even stronger. Again, I feel where the...

the biggest impact is going to be is in some smaller communities around the country. And I would hate to see that because these are communities that are not well served by media anyway. And I think there's always been this belief that because of... you know, various digital media organizations that somehow that need is going to be filled, but it hasn't really worked out that way. And so I do think that it will be a great loss.

And the problem is with broadcast licenses, it's not like a newspaper or a digital operation that if something collapses, then someone can come back into the market. Once a broadcast license is gone, once it's been sold, it's gone. And even in the markets where...

non-broadcast licensed news organizations have left, right? There's a market failure that they're not being replaced with anything right now. They're not being replaced with anything. And at a time when I think, you know, access to information that you can trust. is of such critical importance.

And especially on issues that are facing local communities. I mean, you think about all the decisions that are being made at the school board level. You think about all the decisions that are being made at City Hall. And if no one is covering those stories, you know, I think the consequence is pretty significant. You know, we're just coming off of the broadcast of Ken Burns' amazing series on the American Revolution.

And he started working on this project. close to 10 years ago. I remember sitting down with him at the very beginning when he was starting to wrestle through and we'd looked at the calendar together and he said, you know what, I'm thinking about this. for the fall of 2025. That'll put us in front of 2026 when everyone will be... I remember bicentennial minutes. I don't know where you were in 1976. I was a kid, but I do remember the...

bicentennial minutes and all that stuff. And it just felt like a huge opportunity for us. Now, as I look at this moment that we're in, where we're really... I think, wrestling hard with who are we and what does it mean to be an American. And, you know, if you can look back to those, you know, those beginning years and decades, boy, it was messy and it was so improbable. And this idea of a democracy that, you know, that for every reason should not have worked, but somehow did.

Being able to look at a moment like this, which, by the way, was broadcast and streamed, I can't tell you what the audience is because we're still trying to accumulate all the data and figure out. But it's certainly from the early numbers that we have, looking at just some of the platforms, definitely the most streamed project we have ever done.

This is a 12-hour series on the American Revolution, which is, you know, by nature of, you know, the time period and, you know, certainly Ken's way of producing. You know, not just oil paintings, but a lot of visuals, a lot of maps. It's an extraordinary series. I mean, this is what we do well. But it's not just the fact that, you know, he had 10 years to pull this together to find those little stories from people that are not the boldface names, but whose experiences.

really make it very clear what that moment in our history felt like. Our stations all across the country did work around it. They did screenings in their communities. Ken visited a... a bunch of cities. He traveled for a year. I think he did every podcast. Did he do your podcast? If he didn't... That kind of stings that you brought that up. I've heard him on several podcasts. But he didn't do yours. I did him with Vietnam years ago.

Because you know what? It's going to broadcast again in 2026. But for me, looking at this series, it just feels like. This is the kind of thing that we do. It is different from what anyone else does. We created content for classrooms. We created these opportunities and communities to bring people together. We did a lot of work on college campuses, getting kids and so forth together. I mean, this is what a public media service does. We'll be right back with Paula Kerger.

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And we're back. Let me talk about the idea of public media, because I think, like you said, people are still confused about how it works in this country. And I think some of them imagine it's like the BBC where it's... completely government funded, or they think of authoritarian states that have government controlled media. This is somewhat government funded.

Right. But it's supposed to be have editorial independence from the government. But we're sort of seeing the limits of that editorial independence. Right. We Donald Trump. fired or tried to fire three of the board members from CPB, the sort of umbrella group that distributes this money. At their behest, you guys have removed your DEI programs. Why does it make sense to have government involved in any component of media funding in 2025? Well, I mean, they aren't funding, you know, there is no...

There is no government intervention into our content. I mean, we did. But he's already changing the way you guys operate, right? Not exactly. I mean, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, that is. the one area where they have tried to exert some influence, but that's in court. That's not settled law yet. There was the executive order.

that made it illegal for any federal money to come into PBS or to NPR. We are, you know, we've sued there. And so that is still an open case. Which is separate from Congress moving on its own to take the money away. Yes. We did. That preceded the rescission. So, I mean, I could give you my my year in review if you want, because I don't want to do the year in review, but I want to get to the idea of it seems like because I know you're going to make.

case for why why there's public media should exist period why the government should be involved to some degree but this what we're talking about sort of to me highlights the downside of of taking money from the government however you want to phrase it

if you allow it to influence your content. But I do think that, and if you look at series like Frontline, for example, you know, which I think is not just... You know, people always ask me what they think the softball question is like, what's your favorite show on PBS? It's like, well, I'm not exactly going to answer that, but I will tell you what I think the most important series is, and it's Frontline, because...

There are so few news organizations that are in investigative business anymore. There are a lot of series that used to do it that are now doing a lot of true crime. But this does focus on the big issues of the time and is unflinching. in the way that it does it. You know, one of the casualties of the cutback in funding is we used to, and for many, many years,

received funding out of the Department of Education that funded a lot of the early childhood work that we do back when Sesame Street was created, back when Fred Rogers was a young man and had this great idea that television could be more than, you know, entertainment. It could be education. educational, people quickly realized that, you know, for all the kids that are not in any kind of formal pre-K, which even today, half the kids in this country are not in formal pre-K.

And they are trying to compete with kids that get devices at the age of two. How do you sort of level the playing field and at least give kids... the opportunity to be exposed with concepts and ideas that will enable them to be successful, not just in school, but later on in life. This is what free...

public television offers. And so... Again, I guess you could, I mean, as you've heard a million times from people who are opposed to this, well, they're not teaching my values or the values that I think are important. And I can just imagine a world where... a Trump administration or who knows what's going to succeed that, you know, public media has a completely different framing and concept and means something different. And you were talking about the historical.

precedent for this. So this was started by LBJ, right? In 1967, we had three broadcast stations, there's obviously no internet, lots of gaps in terms of kids programming. Very different world today, right? A million places to get kids programming. And you can say, well, a lot of it's no good or it's trash or it's YouTube. But there's a lot, you know, I've raised kids in this era. There's a lot of good kids programming. Some of it's PBS, but a lot of it isn't. There's a million.

places to get all kinds of information, news, etc. It seems like this is an anachronism. You're going to tell me why I'm wrong, but I can't make that feeling. Yeah, I am going to tell you why you're wrong. And kids is a great example. So if you spend...

You know, there are some good kids series. I'm not going to say we're the only place for educational kids content. I, you know, our content is deeply tested. This is actually where I was going with the federal example. What the federal government helped us do was to do all the testing.

We knew that the programs that we were distributing weren't just fun and engaging, but the kids were actually walking away with facts and concepts. You know, there's a whole generation of kids that grew up on Sesame Street, but also have grown up on newer series like Daniel Tiger. neighborhood. And we've done some longitudinal studies and kids at the age of 14, 15 can still remember the lessons that they learned as watching. And so I think that we've been in this business a long time.

focused on education, not on entertainment, though, to reach the kids, it has to be entertaining. So it's sort of the flip side of what everyone else is doing. I always say that... We're in a different business than a lot of commercial media. We just happen to use the same tools. And in kids right now, where kids are spending most of their time is YouTube. There are some good things on YouTube, but there is a lot of stuff that is generated through AI.

is driven by algorithms and is benign, mostly. Not always. And there's real crap, right? But there's tons of crap and there's lots of bad alternatives, but there is good stuff available for parents that want to do the work to sift through it. And, you know, I grew up in the 70s and I was plunked in front of a black and white television. and mostly watch PBS. And my parents felt like they'd done a good job of raising me, and you could be the judge of that. But you just have way more options now.

You do have way more options, but, you know, it's almost on steroids what we saw at the beginning of the cable. explosion where there was a lot of stuff, but there was a lot of stuff that wasn't great. And so I'm not suggesting that, again, we're the only place for a lot of stuff. but we have a brand that means something. We put a rigor behind the content that we produce, and there is a value to it. We just produced a series called Carl the Collector, the key character in the series.

is autistic. If I could share with you the letters and emails... just overwhelming response we have had to this series from families who have struggled to find content like this where their kids can see themselves. This is what we do. And we have a series that we are launching. in the spring called Phoebe and Jay. The two key characters live in an apartment building that was a former hotel. It is low-income housing, and it is, they see... There are a lot of kids that just do not see

aspect of their lives portrayed anywhere else. We did a series with Al Roker that has premiered this fall called Weather Hunters. We do a lot of work on science for kids. We'll be right back, but first a word from a sponsor. The cost of electricity in the U.S. is skyrocketing. Why? Is the data center boom to blame? We're in this industry that's in this radical growth phase and we don't actually know exactly how it's going to shake out.

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How much does the political environment we're in today, where things that seemed not that long ago to be common sense, we all kind of agreed on, now we can't agree on basic facts, now stuff that we used to think.

many of us used to think was sort of standard, like we believe in having people come to this country is now a political debate. How much does that affect the programming choices you guys make to say, listen, maybe what's important in this country has shifted and we should shift with it and or...

Look, a lot of this stuff will fly in coastal areas or some communities, but in a lot of places, this stuff won't, you know, showing what low-income housing like will be considered as some sort of political affront or statement. Do you guys think through that? What we're trying to do is to make sure that we bring forward a lot of different perspectives. So one of the things that people don't understand about us, in addition to the funding piece,

is where does our programming come from? Most of it comes from our local stations. And so, you know, if you look again across media, you see that there are lots of stories that do not come forward. You know, we did a series a couple years ago with our station in Arkansas, two years ago with our station in Arkansas called Southern Storytellers. And it is, you know, a...

just, I think, a beautiful representation of the rich, you know, artistic history from the South. And I'm talking about songwriters as well as novelists and poets and screenwriters and so forth. all coming to us from a production team in Arkansas. which I would, again, challenge you to say, you know, where have you seen? So let's stipulate that all this programming is valuable, serves a need, is filling some market failures, and we are better off as a country if we have this than without it.

What's a better way to fund this operation than where we're at now, where you're hoping to sway members of Congress to give you money back that you already promised and you're looking at going through this again next year or two years from now? So, again, let me just clarify. The federal funding is, if you look at the entire economics of public media, it's about 15 percent.

So, you know, where does the money come from? A lot of it comes from philanthropy. A lot of it comes from viewers like you. We do have a business relationship with Amazon that helps us fund a lot of it actually helps us bring a lot of. drama forward, and a lot of that is co-productions that we do with other broadcasters. And not just the BBC. We're very interested in bringing over a lot of series and so forth from, you know, from other countries and from other media organizations.

We also look very carefully at... you know, co-production arrangements here. And I think that when you ask me, how are you going to do this moving forward? Again, I told you, you know, a few minutes ago, I'm not giving up on the federal money again because of our local stations. I'm not assuming it. And I do think that some mix of earned revenue and philanthropic revenue.

and some, you know, some strategic partnerships with other media organizations, that's actually how you can build this out. And, you know, we're a relatively small media organization at a time when... And everything has been consolidated into, you know, much larger institutions. And I think there is a place for organizations like us who are smaller and more nimble. Are you committed to free?

Being the sort of underlying component for all this, I wasn't 100 percent sure I'd be able to watch the Ken Burns documentary from your website here in New York. And of course I can for free. Of course you can. I'd pay for it, right? Or either individually or bundled through my Netflix or whatever. I mean, do you ever think about maybe, all right, look, like sort of means testing availability. If you have the capacity to pay for this, you should kick in.

Well, we, you know, what we've done with some of the, with our programming is, you know, in years past, You know, you could watch something on broadcast or you could buy a DVD. And so it's that blend of having things that are available for free for everyone for a period of time. And then also looking for opportunities to bring. And if you're a member of your local station, you know that you have access to a very broad library.

figuring out the different buckets of where we can bring resources in for older content. We have fast channels that we've launched. You know, and so I think it's a little bit of a puzzle how you put all the pieces together. But I think there are revenue opportunities in different places, and we should try to figure that out and also make sure that we have. things that are available for free for everyone as well. And that's, again, the...

That's the bit of the puzzle, which, frankly, we were in before the federal funding debate. It's just heightened our interest in trying to figure out.

what the optimum mix of all this looks like so that we can ensure that we can continue to produce great programming that meets the needs of the public. Last question for you. Let's say a benevolent billionaire or two. Maybe they're listening to this podcast as I speak. So, you know what? I've convinced Paula, convince me we're writing a check. We're going to fund you for a decade.

You no longer have to worry about Marjorie Taylor Greene or anybody else in Congress. What does years of runway give you if you had that today? What's a big swing you'd take? I mean, for me, the big swing would be, by the way, I'm not sure if someone funded us for 10 years, that's necessarily a good idea either, because one of the things that has made us who we are... is that we've largely been funded on lots of small contributions. We are the most democratic.

of media organizations. Actually, what bristled with the Marjorie Taylor Greene hearing was the title of that hearing was Un-American Airwaves, holding the CEOs of PBS and NPR to account. And I, you know, I'm happy to have animated conversation with anyone like. you and I are having. And you're asking all the right questions as you're really pushing us to be clear on how we see our path forward with funding, without funding. But the point of...

What I think has always made us strong and what has always made us accountable is the fact that, you know, for years, people have written us checks for something they get for free. You only support the organizations that you believe in. that you think are providing value and that you trust. And so I do think that making sure that whatever our funding scenario is moving forward, that...

people feel bought in and they feel like they own it. This is media for everyone and people should feel like they have a piece of it. That said, as we look forward, if we were not worrying about finances all the time. I would love to see us go deeper in the work that we do for kids because I see the impact that that has had over the years. And I see the talent of our team and how they are relentlessly focused on trying to figure out how to continue to use.

emerging technology for the benefit of kids and to do it in a safe way. And I think technology, you know, even AI, as it develops out, has really deep possibilities in education. but you have to be really very careful and very clear around it's not open AI. It is structured so that there are the guardrails that, you know, that kids are protected, but they have the opportunity to be engaged in a way that, again,

passive media experience. I'd love to see us invest more in news and public affairs. I think it's important. I'm proud of the work we do. I've already talked about Frontline. If I had a big amount of money, I would plunk a big piece of it. right there. I do think that the work that we do in science in this moment in particular is profoundly important. Our roots go back deep.

not just series like Nova and Nature, but you go back to series like Cosmos and stuff. Why do science matter? Why do people need to be better informed? Again, this is what we do. And so much of the work we do then drags into the classroom because we deliver all this free content via broadband that's used in schools. used by homeschoolers, and to be able to accelerate all of that to me would be extraordinary. I'm trying to imagine Carl Sagan in a Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

And I'm going to do that offline. Paula Kerger, you have a very busy schedule. You got a lot to do. Thank you for taking time to talk to us. Thank you, Peter. And somewhere we'll find Mary. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks again to Paula Kerger. Nice to see her again. Thanks to Charlotte Silver who produces and edits this show. Thanks to our sponsors who bring it to you for free. See you next week.