PBS president on political attacks: ‘This is different than past battles’

New Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr launched an investigation into whether PBS was breaking its corporate underwriting guidelines. President Donald Trump then tried to fire two Democratic board members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes $500 million a year to public broadcasters nationwide. (CPB has sued.)

Trump earlier this month signed an executive order directing CPB to stop funding PBS and NPR, alleging “bias” in their journalism, although CPB is under Congressional purview.

PBS, which is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, also lost a Department of Education grant for $23 million that helps fund kids’ programming, resulting in 25% of its PBS Kids staff being furloughed.

So Kerger is playing defense and hoping ground-up support from the public contacting their legislators will make a difference.

“I’m an optimist,” she said. “But this is different from past battles.”

PBS, established with bipartisan support in 1969, has created award-winning programming over the years, from “Sesame Street” and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” to “Masterpiece Theatre” and “Downton Abbey” as well as “Frontline” documentaries and “PBS NewsHour.”

Here are excerpts of AJC’s discussion with Kerger, edited for space and clarity:

AJC: How healthy is PBS, irrespective of what the current administration is doing now?

Kerger: We hold our own. It’s like the period when cable exploded and all these cable channels started. They were originally copies of PBS: A & E, Bravo, the Learning Channel. It held on for a little while, but reality creeped in. Now it’s ‘Law & Order’ repeats. This is why we were created. Commercial media could do a lot but there’d be market failure. There are things that are important for civil discourse or as a public good the marketplace wouldn’t be able to sustain. What is happening now with streaming is somewhat similar. There was a moment kids’ content was everywhere. There were documentaries being bought up at festivals. Not so much anymore. And if you are anybody but Disney, you don’t even need kids’ programming.

Credit: TNS

Credit: TNS

AJC: What happened with Max (now HBO Max) and ‘Sesame Street’?

Kerger: We had this deal where Max acquired ‘Sesame Street’ and we were able to get the series for free for a period of time because they actually paid for the production but it didn’t work economically for them. You don’t subscribe to HBO Max for ‘Sesame Street.’

AJC: How is the new Netflix arrangement going to work for ‘Sesame Street’?

Kerger: Great. We will get everything same day, same time. (Max had first access to new run ‘Sesame Street’ episodes.) We are sharing resources. This is the private/public partnership that Lyndon Johnson described a long time ago (when he created PBS). Our mission is always making everything accessible and free.

AJC: How do you keep the PBS brand strong?

Kerger: The brand matters. We pay attention to what stories are not being well told, that the journalism has integrity. Look at ‘Frontline.’ Investigative journalism has gotten so expensive and there’s risk attached to it. Frontline’ is our most important program. It was before and it definitely is now. Everyone has moved out of that space and these are the stories that do need to be told.

AJC: How are you handling the shift from traditional TV viewing to streaming?

Kerger: Our audience in broadcast has declined as it has for everyone else while the digital audience is way up. We are experimenting in places like YouTube. We have a bunch of YouTube creators at this convention. There’s a lot we can do on YouTube that is different from broadcast and usually complementary.

AJC: What’s a good example?

Kerger: We have a woman named Maiya May, who is from Atlanta. She does the series ‘Weathered’ which is helping people understand climate and climate change. She just did a piece on the California wildfires. She can turn things around quickly because that is how she is accustomed to working. Some of the work she’s done has also translated into broadcast.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

AJC: How are you adjusting to cutbacks by the government like that grant for kids’ programming?

Kerger: We have had a robust kids schedule, but that’s become more complicated. The grant is not the sole funder of our content, but it provides seed funding for new programs and research on the programs we produce. Our goal isn’t just to make them interesting for kids to watch but that when kids are watching, they’re taking away core skills they need. All of our kids’ programs are focused on kids who are not in formal pre-K programs. Half the kids in America are not in formal pre-K. Studies show kids who are behind stay behind. I’m hoping that the government funding can be reinstated at some point. We are in it for the long haul. We work a couple of years out so we have things in the pipeline. I’m not saying this is an emergency at the moment but if we don’t focus on it, we’re going to have a problem.

AJC: How do CPB’s issues impact you?

Kerger: A bit of the money comes to us and it’s a challenge if we lose that money, but I’m more concerned about the local stations. We have stations that get 40% of their funding from CPB.

AJC: It’s more like 10% for the Atlanta stations WABE and GPB.

Kerger: It wouldn’t be a walk in the park for them, but they have enough support to sustain themselves. We have stations in rural areas where I argue public TV plays an outsize role. There are areas where there are true news deserts outside of their public media stations. Those could be in big trouble.

AJC: Clarify for me the relationship between PBS and the local stations.

Kerger: People think PBS is a network, but we’re not. None of the stations report to me. I report to them. They create the content and we distribute it. ‘PBS NewsHour,’ for example, is produced by our Washington D.C. station WETA. We give them national distribution.

Credit: TNS

Credit: TNS

AJC: What was it like speaking at that congressional hearing Marjorie Taylor Greene held in March about PBS and NPR?

Kerger: I don’t usually get called up to the Hill so it was a unique experience. I appreciated the opportunity to answer questions and set the record straight. The title of the hearing was ‘Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable.’ We did the best that we could. Within three days of the hearing, the Republican members of the committee sent a letter saying we should be defunded. There was nothing in the letter that reflected anything that was discussed in the hearing.

AJC: It was like a preordained letter.

Kerger: It seemed to have been written before the hearing. To me, that summed up the experience.

AJC: You spoke to your local PBS stations at the convention. What was the best applause line?

Kerger: ‘There’s nothing more American than PBS.’ That was the theme of the speech. People cheered!