Work in Progress: Paula Kerger

She runs PBS — and she’s fighting to save it. Paula Kerger, the longest-serving president in PBS history, sounds the alarm on what’s at stake as public broadcasting faces unprecedented cuts. From Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood to PBS NewsHour, she makes a passionate case for truth and why democracy itself depends on access to trusted information. 

Learn how you can take action at https://protectmypublicmedia.org

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to work in progress. High
wib smarties, welcome back to this week's work in progress.
I have to say I am having the most excited

(00:21):
sort of nerd alert alarm going off in my brain
right now because I'm interviewing one of my brain crushes today,
who is a hero to public service, who centers the
good of the people and early childhood development in everything
that she does. She is just too pure for this world,

(00:42):
but manages to also be such a fighter and such
an inspiration y'all. Today we are joined by Paula Kerger,
the President and CEO of PBS. This is the woman
responsible for Sesame Street. This is the woman responds for
community care, and since two thousand and six, she has

(01:05):
transformed PBS into a multi platform media institution that reaches
over eighty percent of US households. And by the way,
has no responsibility to an investor, to an owner, to
anybody trying to shape what they say or how they
say it. Her responsibility is to us, to the American people,

(01:29):
to the kids in this country who PBS works to
ensure are ready to go to school. I mean, come on,
what is better than this? And Paula herself is known
for being incredibly dedicated to American community, while fiercely defending
each and every local station and that educational programming I

(01:50):
mentioned that is critical to communities nationwide. I think she's
so special because she was shaped by her grandfather's work
in Baltimore Public Radio. She had a childhood curiosity that
always centered on public service, and she's grown into this
adult who I admire so much, honestly, who I hope
to grow up to be like, who manages to blend

(02:12):
strategic leadership with such a deeply human touch guys in
trying times. Paula is the kind of person who we
should look to for cultural relevancy, for educational devotion, and
for community storytelling, because she is making sure that all
of those things remain accessible to all, even when she's

(02:37):
literally under attack by the President of the United States.
She is a gem and I am so honored that
she's here. So I'm going to stop talking and we're
going to dive in with Paula Kirker. How are you.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
I'm fine, Saphia. It's lovely to meet you.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
It is so nice to be with you. I just
I'm such an enormous fan of all you do. I'm
so grateful for your your fight and your dedication to
you know, public service, and I'm thrilled you're here.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Oh, thank you, and I so appreciate you giving me
this opportunity, you know, want to meet you and to
talk to you, but also you know, to be able
to have this conversation with you in front of all
the people that follow you, you know, and it's it's
a it's a great opportunity. I'm really grateful.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Well, thank you. Gosh, that's really really kind. It's it's
interesting when you get to meet one of your heroes
and they thank you. You're like, old, what's happening here?
You know? I just have to say, and I'm sure
to your point about all of our friends listening at home,
I'm sure they'll be nodding along. Public service and the

(04:01):
way that that extends into community advocacy. I think can
make or break a society, particularly when we're talking about
our free press, and a free press that has chosen
as media has been more and more corporatized, if you will,

(04:27):
a free press that's chosen to stick to doctrines of fairness,
to not sell itself for explicit profit. To not lie
to or mislead its constituency feels to me more important
than ever. And to watch NPR and PBS being attacked

(04:50):
in the way that they are because they are organizations
that mandate truly non partisan an accurate truth to be
told feels terrifying. And that's how it feels to me
as an observer. So I just want to say, for

(05:11):
you on the inside, thank you for continuing to take
time out of your day to come and have conversations
like this one while you are literally fighting fascism and
trying to ensure that folks like us citizens continued having
access to the truth.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
There's a lot in what you were just talking about,
and you can even walk back even beyond the role
of media, and we should talk about that, you know,
what mete in our society, but also let's talk about
what does it mean to be a citizen. You know,
next year will mark the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary
of the Declaration of Independence. And you know, this country

(05:55):
was was really an experiment when democracy was created. Idea
of not a not a king, not a you know,
sort of a monarchy or any of the other structures
that existed before. But this idea that we would all
have voice. Now it's taken many years to evolve what

(06:16):
all means. The word all means, right, But part of
what it means to be in a democracy is to
be active and engaged. You know, you are very much
engaged in a number of issues, and I think that
people don't always realize. You know, Civics isn't taught. It's
starting to creep back now, but you know, Civics isn't

(06:39):
necessarily taught in schools. People don't really understand what it means.
And I always like in it to one of my
personal heroes, Fred Rogers, and it's about what does it
mean to be a good neighbor? Right? How do we
look out for each other? How do we come together
and make decisions that are not just for ourselves but
for our communities? And I think I have aspirations about

(07:02):
building the communities in which we want to live and
that we all play a role, and part of that
is being involved. And you know, I've had the privilege
through my entire professional career to work for various nonprofit organizations.
I always have felt really lucky that early on I
found the opportunity to work in an organization where not

(07:24):
only I was, you know, I didn't even think you
could actually have a job doing the kind of stuff
that I did. I just, you know, I thought you volunteered.
I was in I grew up in a family where
we were active in a lot of things. But all
of us have a role, you know. I talked to
a lot of young people as they're either graduating from
I've done some commencement speeches and so forth, and it's

(07:44):
like when you think about your life, it's all these
different pieces, right. There are friends, you know, all the
things we do with ourselves and our health. There's our
professional life. There's the community service piece, yes, and we
all need to pay attention to that, and it can
be anything from mentoring a child to becoming actively involved

(08:05):
in political work, to helping to clean up parks, to
serve on nonprofit boards, to support local arts organizations. There
are all little pieces to help a neighbor, there are
all these little pieces of that. That's really what it
means to be part of a community. And I think
it's what means to be part of a democracy. And

(08:25):
of that, you know, if we think about our democracy
is also where you were going around an informed citizenry,
and that was always if you go back to Thomas Jefferson,
that was always contemplated is that an informed citizenry was
going to be profoundly important as if we the people

(08:45):
were going to be governing this country. And so, you know,
so that means a robust press, that means having a
media outlets where we can find information. And now we're
an envine where there is information coming as from so
many different places and helping people discern you know, fact

(09:08):
from fiction. With the explosion of AI, the possibilities of
some things being you know, people misunderstanding or being deliberately misled.
I think the risk of that increases tremendously, and I
think in this whole array there has to be a

(09:28):
space for thoughtful dialogue and for information that you can trust.
And when PPS was created, you know, about sixty years ago,
the commercial marketplace that exploded with lots of different media possibilities,
and there was there was really good stuff in early television,
early radio, but there was a recognition by the way

(09:50):
the first woman FCC commissioner, a woman by the name
of FRIEDA Hennick, she has this idea that this powerful
media would be able to do a lot of things,
but Marketplace wasn't going to always be able to deal
with the citizen part, and that she felt was really
important that there would be a space for public media

(10:10):
where our customer is really in the interest and our
work is really in the interest of the public, not
necessarily an advertiser. And that's actually how you know, we
first began, and so at a time when there were
a couple stations and then us was very clear. But
I think even in this environment, you know, people are

(10:31):
looking for where do you go for information you can trust?
And hopefully brand means something that was sort of a
long dialogue, but anyway, it was a little bit No,
I love it what you set up for me.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
I love it. My partner, you know, on a personal note,
is always like, honey, you got to get and I'm like, no, no, no,
but I can't. I can't give you the full context
without these fourteen details that will then bring us back
to where I started. Yeah, and we laugh about it,
but you know, you said something that really touched me
and and it leads me to what is normally my

(11:01):
first question for people. I skipped it because I wanted
to give you all of the compliments and flowers you deserve,
and there are certainly more. But when you touched on
mister Rogers and the profundity of what Fred Rogers meant,
of what that show meant, of what modeling being a

(11:24):
good neighbor meant for early childhood development and also frankly,
for social change. You know, you see a lot since
the Internet is the Internet, a lot of people will say, well,
it didn't used to be this way, and not everybody
was always trying to shove an opinion down your throat
or be woke or be this or be that. And

(11:44):
you think about the fact that mister Rogers sat on
a television series during fights over segregation and put his
bare feet in a kiddie pool with the postal man
on his television show who happened to be a Black man,
and what that meant to America at the time, that
these two friends sat down and shared a space that

(12:07):
was in our country segregated and had a lovely conversation
and reminded people of what it means to be a neighbor.
And I think about my own childhood watching that show
and falling so in love with mission. I think that
you know, by the time I was eight I was

(12:27):
begging my mom to pick me up early from school
so I could have my butt in the seat in
front of the TV by three pm for Oprah to start.
Another person really trying to remind us of what community
is in a broadcast space. What was your childhood like?
You touched on the fact that you grew up in
a service family, But you know, I'm thinking about my

(12:49):
own sort of eight year old self learning from these
spaces that you have advocated for, and I wonder what
your life was like around eight or nine and how
just you were of your neighborhood as it were.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah, it's you know, I grew up outside of Baltimore,
and I grew up in an area that was largely rural,
and so for me, I spent you know, I was
thinking about this in the summertime, because I would, you know,
as soon as the sun was up, I was outside
and I don't think I had shoes on the entire summer,
you know, And I loved being outside. We I love nature,

(13:27):
I love animals, and you know, we had like woods
behind our house. I'd go down in the stream and
you know, dig for crayfish and all that kind of stuff.
And but because of where I lived, there weren't a
lot of kids. There were few, but there weren't really
that many kids. So it wasn't that whole neighborhood thing
where like kids were like in gangs on their bikes

(13:48):
like riding everywhere I did. I didn't know that there
were there were suburbs that were not that far from me,
but it was far enough. There were no sidewalks, we
had we had paved roads. I don't want sure you know,
it was it wasn't that role, but it was. It
was a different environment. And for me, the connection to
many things was TV. So I like, we didn't watch

(14:11):
TV all throughout the day, but you know, at night
I saw a lot of stuff that I experienced because
I saw it on TV. So my early memories was
as a little girl sitting very close to the TV
set watching old Lucy reruns. So that's sort of how
like I thought women were, you know, because when you
think about like the role of women, you know, I

(14:33):
mean she was, you know, she was zany and unbelievably
creative and all this, but she was always aspiring to
do something more, you know, that was part of it.
And then my next role model was Mary Tyler Moore,
because she was a woman right that struck out on
her own. She happened to go into media and she

(14:55):
she had a career and that was really what you know,
she had her friends and all of that, but it
was it was very different than a lot of the
things that I saw. I had other experiences that you
know that I mean, I love I love the arts,
I love dance. I saw dance on TV. I didn't
you know, we you know, eventually maybe we would occasionally

(15:15):
go into Baltimore and we would you know, go to
see things and so forth. But it was it was,
you know, it was a connection to a lot of people,
and me it still is for many people. It just
connects them. And Fred is an interesting person to talk
about because you know, before Fred Rogers and before Sesame Street,

(15:36):
children's television was usually it was like the weather man
from the station who would like put on a clown
suit and they'd run cartoons. That's what kid's television was.
And Fred thought, wow, this could be a teaching tool.
So this is how he built mister Rogers. And he
spoke slow, and he spoke quietly. You had to lean

(15:57):
in a little bit to hear him. And he would
look into the camera and he would tell kids. I know,
he told your little seven year old self, I like
you just the way you are a lot of kids
that was really profound. So in addition to that beautiful
scene that you talked about with the swimming pool and

(16:18):
the postman and the two of them sitting together very
quiet gesture, he you know, he also told children that
they were important and he encouraged them in a way
that was just beautiful. He also understood things about how
kids learn. So if you remember from those Mister Rogers episodes,
he always wove in songs and so a lot sometimes,

(16:43):
you know, grown ups forty to fifty years old will
sing some of the songs they know, and it's how
you remember things that, by the way, we've learned and
continue to weave in all of our kids shows. So
Daniel Piker's Neighborhood, which is our most popular show on PBS,
was created by someone who had been an intern for
Fred and that decided to reinvent Fred because you know,

(17:06):
once Fred passed, there isn't another Fred Rogers. I can't
tell you how many people send headshots saying I can
be the next Fred Rogers. There isn't another Fred, but
you can reinvent it in an imaginary world. And so
that's what Daniel Podger's neighborhood and all those lessons, all
the structure of how mister Rogers was organized, is played
out again in that show and other shows. It's the lesson,

(17:28):
it's the kindness. It's those lessons, not just the numbers
and the letters, but how we deal with one another,
how the music disforce is the message.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
It's beautiful, indeed, And now a word from our sponsors
who make this show possible. Before I respond to that,
I just have to say I love that you brought
up Mary Tyler Moore. I always tell people when they

(17:58):
ask how I being an actor who also went to
journalism school and is obsessed with, you know, public service
and political science, I tell them because I was raised
by Mary Tyler Moore, Oprah Winfrey and Candicsbergen is Murphy Brown.
Those were my idols, you know, And and to your point,
television can be such a powerful tool to show you

(18:22):
what you can be, especially you know, whether you're a woman,
a person of color, anyone who changes the kind of
status quo assumption as Fred did, as you know, Candice
did as Oprah did. It's so powerful. Yes, and I

(18:45):
know you've had such a long career in media. But
before we get into you know the importance of PBS,
the importance of teaching children and not just to be clear,
there's plenty of kids content, but a lot of kids'
content is designed to keep them coming back. It's junk food.
It's not whole, nutritious food for the mind. You know

(19:09):
what you do at PBS, what mister Rogers began, what
Sesame Street continued, and what anyone who takes up the
mantle of that legacy does is to your point, to
make sure we are creating for children in a way
that empowers them, that teaches them empathy, that models kindness,
that lets them know they have value. You can't do

(19:33):
that in an unboxing video on YouTube, frankly, and so
before we get into some of you know, the real
I would say, moral power of centering the mental health
and well being of a child. I'm actually really curious
if you can help us cut through all the noise

(19:55):
and understand in like the most simple terms, what really
is PBS and how is it funded? Because there's a
lot of nonsense obviously coming from the political party that
wants to cut all our public service so that they
can launch the next depression and then let all their
rich friends buy up our assets for pennies on the

(20:17):
dollar and be even richer. Like that doesn't make any
sense in the grand scheme of you know, the American budget.
But I think what would help people make sense of
it all is to know A what is it that
you do? And B how does it get paid for? Okay?
And like I do mean in Layman's terms for us.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yes, yeah, yeah, So I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about
the what is it by first bridging off of what
we were just talking about, which is kids, because then
we can talk about what we do for everyone else,
everyone who's over five, right, yes, like us just shy, Yeah,
we're just shy of over five. We we we focus

(20:59):
a lot of our work for children on the youngest
because we know that, you know, through the legacy of
Sesame Street as well as Fred Rogers and others, that
we have an opportunity to reach kids when they're young.
We're very focused on the fact that half of the
children in this country do not attend formal preak and
so we have children in this country that have a

(21:20):
lot of advantages and have a lot of opportunities to
see and experience things, and we have other children that
are more limited. And so the whole idea behind the
programming that we've created, even going back to the very beginning,
was to try to reach some of those kids. And
so even if you don't have the opportunity to be
in a formal school setting, to give those children exposure

(21:42):
to the basic skills they need to succeed the first
time they enter school, both in terms of you know,
as I said before, basic letter and numbers, but also
some social emotional skills and so forth, so that they
can begin to, you know, really have a thirst for learning,
a love for learning. That's what all of our children's

(22:04):
programs are built on. They're all tested against basic curriculum
that kids seem to master before they enter school. They're
fun to watch because kids control the dial, so if
you don't like it, you're not going to watch. But
we also do a lot of measurements around our children
actually learning, and we actually go back and do longitudinal

(22:26):
studies too. We just did one the first generation of
kids that were watching Daniel Tiger that I talked about
and like what did they take away and how did
that change their lives and impact their lives. So that's
the business that we're in. Children's programming is really interesting
right now because a lot of the big streaming services,
I would say, with the exception of Disney, which is
very much in the kids business, have really backed away

(22:48):
some from kids' content. So where kids are ending a
lot of time as YouTube and there are some good
things on YouTube, and there's a lot of things that
are not appropriate for kids on YouTube, and increasingly content
is being produced by AI and so it is you know,
it is you refer to as junk foods. Some of
it is you know, does not have the educational rigor

(23:11):
that the work that we produce. We're in a different business,
you know. We happen to use souls as everyone else.
But our goal at the end of the day is
to make sure that kids are prepared to go to school.
If you're if you're another country producer, your goal may
be just to make sure that kids are watching the
next clip and the next clip, and that you know,
it's created that that circle for them so that it

(23:32):
just keeps them glued. But you got to think if
you're a parent, What is your child actually seeing? What
are they experience? Is this helping their brains develop? Is
this helping them see a wider world? So that's what
we do for kids. It's also what we do for
the rest of the audience that we attempt to serve.
You know, we're a variety service. We have the news

(23:52):
and we have documentaries. We have a very big interest
in science, you know, through series like Nature and Nova.
We do a lot lot of productions in partnership with
the BBC, the beautiful David Attenborough productions and so forth.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
They're so gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
You're very fortunate to have worked with Ken Burns for
many years. He has a big series coming up on
the American Revolution. This is why it can speak so
knowledgeably about when our country has founded, because I've learned
so much from Ken as we've been working on this
project together. We also bring the arts, you know, and
there's you know, there's all the competition shows, but to

(24:28):
bring theater and opera and dan and just the Austin
city limits, I mean, just wide array of programming content
and all of it is intended to give people access.
There are a lot of people in this country. As
I was as a kid that just didn't have the
opportunity to see a lot of performance. To give people

(24:51):
that don't have the economic means to buy tickets to
a Broadway show and so forth the access to see
those things and to hopefully help people just feel inspired.
I mean, that's part of what we do at PBS.
And so the way that we're funded is we have
for years and when Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act,

(25:15):
he envisioned this public private partnership. He envisioned that the
federal government would put some money in it. Ends up,
it was fifteen percent of the budget for public media.
That means all of our stations NPBS together fifteen percent,
and that money would mostly went to our stations. And
so if you are in la or if you're in

(25:37):
New York and you're a big city, those stations the
percentage of our budget that their budget that came from
the federal government was probably less than ten percent. It
was maybe eight or nine percent. For some small stations
in rural parts of the country, the part of the
federal the part of their budget that was federal dollars
was as much as fifty percent. And so I worked

(25:59):
really hard in the many years that I've now been
in this job to really make sure that legislators understand
is the money that you're providing is not coming to Washington.
It's not going to New York. It's going to Peoria.
It's going to Granite Falls, Minnesota. It's going to Cookville, Tennessee.
It's going to Nashville and Austin and everything.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yes, it's going to parts of Alaska where no one
has any other media acts.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Correct. And so what was always expected in this partnership
is that there would be some government money and then
each station would then do their job in trying to
rally their community around funding their station. So we often
think on PBS, thank you to viewers like you. That's
actually where the largest amount of money comes into public broadcasting.

(26:48):
So in this moment, the public site has been pulled
out and pulled out in a way that has been
very difficult for us to manage because we were always
given an advance appropriation, so the government would decide two
years out what moneys would come into public broadcasting. Because
you know you've been in TV for all this TV

(27:09):
production is expensive, it takes a long time, and so
it was put in place so that we knew at
the beginning of every year that we would have the
money for that year, and we also knew it would
be coming for the next year, so we could properly plan.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
You have to know what you're working with, otherwise how
are you supposed to do a job correct?

Speaker 2 (27:29):
That money was all eliminated. It was pulled out just
weeks ago. We have two months to figure this out,
and there were a lot of commitments that were made
when Congress met. This happened both on the House side
and the Senate side, and they said, well, we're just
getting rid of this advanced money. We will deal with
you in the appropriations process. Guess what worship a proporations

(27:50):
process began to move forward two weeks ago. No money
for us. Of course, we have no money now coming
out of the federal government. So I have been working
with some foundations to try to get quick money the
libratory stations so that they actually have a little bit
of running room so they can figure out what their

(28:12):
clients are for the future. But I am just really
very disappointing that something that has worked well for sixty
years yes, suddenly gone well, and something.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
That feels really important to discuss is the ratio we're
talking about here. You know, to go from a million
dollars to a billion dollars is an insane exponential multiplication.

(28:45):
To then imagine going from a billion dollars in any
level of the budget to a trillion dollars is unimaginable
for most people. Our current government is giving a one
point three trillion dollar tax cut to the wealthiest people
in the nation while defunding public services for everyone else.

(29:09):
And what's so frustrating to me is the Department of
Education budget that PBS was getting, which was just eliminated,
was twenty three million dollars. It's not even a blip
on the radar in the grand scheme of what we
pay for of what we do. It feels like the

(29:31):
kind of moral loss for no fiscal gain, akin to
US cutting USAID that's less than one percent of America's
entire budget to invest in our soft power around the
world and to be good global neighbors. And so we
are eviscerating all the things that actually make this country

(29:55):
great so that we seem more like the kings that
you reference in the beginning of this conversation, which is
antithetical to the founding of the country in the first place.
And so you know, when folks at home are like, god,
you know you you really seem to hate the right,
it's like, well, I hate anything that's on American actually,

(30:16):
and this is this is really antithetical to who we are,
and I feel like it is my duty. As you said,
you referenced, I suppose earlier that I'm you know, I'm lucky.
I've got a platform because of my day job, and
because I've got the day job I do, I can
also protest the government and certain agencies in a way

(30:38):
that people who work inside of it aren't allowed to.
And so I do feel like it's really a responsibility
for me. And I have to say a little thank
you to the folks at home, you know, Paula, My
fans know me, like the people who listen to this show,
the people who show up to organize for elections and
community service and to build schools with me. They are dedicated,

(31:02):
wonderful people. So I hope that they, you know, always
feel like when I'm expressing my frustration with attacks on
you know, our country and frankly attacks on our children,
like the attack on PBS, is I hope they know,
like we got to hit the streets for this. How
can people help you? Because look, I saw the great

(31:24):
for context. Just today an article came out in The
New York Times about how there are some grate philanthropists
who are helping you raise this stop gap money to
hopefully stop the doom loop of these stations will shutter,
and then if they shutter, others will shutter. It'll be
this horrible domino effect for an informed populace. You know,

(31:47):
I love seeing names like the Ford Foundation and Pivotal Ventures.
I don't have that kind of money. Nobody I know
has that kind of money. What can the average person
do right now to support you to supports Like if
somebody's got five or ten dollars to spare, where do
they send it?

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, it's hugely meaningful. So, I mean we have been
built on I mean I always refer to us as
the most American and the most democratic of organizations because
we have been built on support from our communities. It's
all those five dollars contributions. So this is this money
that you're referencing, which has been raised by a few

(32:26):
foundations and others, is just trying to give some of
the most vulnerable stations a little bit of runway. But
I'm you know, a lot of people used to think, oh, well,
you're government funded, You're fine, or they think, well, you know,
I turn on my TV set, or you know, I
turn on my computer and I see you, and I
see all creatures great and small, and I see all
the things that I love and so forth, and you're

(32:47):
always there. Well, this is actually a really critical moment
if you actually care about the fact that you know,
this is a media service that is absolutely focused on
your kids succeeding. If this is a service that you
rely on for your news or the things that you
care about, you need your support and every dollar counts,

(33:09):
So support your local station. You can also also go online.
We have a foundation, PBS Foundation. You can also go
there and make a contribution to PBS itself. Everyone teases
us about our fundraising dives and sending you a mug
or whatever.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
I like my mugs.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
Me to me, I've always believed because you know, look,
I have been in this job for a while, and
we have one hundred and seventy nine separate licensees. We're
in every state. When I first took the job, I
had worked in our station in New York, and I
had been the station manager there, and when I took
the job at PBS, I thought, you know, I know

(33:49):
a fair amount about public television, but I knew it
from my lens of running that station. And so I thought,
and you know, some people think New York is an
island and off of the coast in North America. You know,
it's like a little different than you know other places.
And so I thought, you know, I want to learn more.
If I want to do this job, well, I'm going
to travel around the country and I'm going to meet

(34:11):
as many people as I can, not just the people
that run the stations. I wanted to meet the people
that counted on those stations. I wanted to talk to teachers,
I wanted to talk to different community leaders and so forth,
and so into every state. I have seen a lot
of stations in many communities that I visited. Our local
stations are the last remaining locally owned, operated, and governed.

(34:37):
Media companies say there aren't local TV or radio stations.
A lot of them are owned somewhere else. Some of
them are programmed somewhere else. Yes, that's the properlations are
run by people that live in the community that care
about those communities and that are looking at what they do.
And I'll speak just for television because that's what I run.

(34:58):
They're looking at what they're telling vision station can do
to both tell the story of that community but also
to bring people together. And all of those stations are
supported by lots of contributions, and so this is really
a moment. So we'd love to be one of those
viewers like you that we think on our air all
the time and just it's an easy thing to do.

(35:18):
Step up. A lot of our stations also look for volunteers.
Our stations do a lot of work in schools and
so that you know you can send a contribution, you
can get involved, and that will make a huge difference.
I am not getting up on the government funding we're
going to be dressing on this. We should, but we
also have to make sure that we are keeping these

(35:40):
beautiful stations strong and relevant and important, because, as you
were saying at the very beginning of this podcast, the
need for information that you can trust is more important
than ever, and that what we are relentlessly focused on
is making sure that we're producing information that people can
trust as they make the decisions, their communities, yes, their families,

(36:02):
and for themselves.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
And now a word from our sponsors. One of the
things that feels important to highlight here as well is
the information not limiting information for people, particularly in their

(36:26):
local geographies, is incredibly important. And you know, if you've
got a say, Sinclair Media, that has a clear bias
that limits the free speech of its employees and programs
the same stories to run nationally, that harms the people
in those communities because they don't know what's happening next door,

(36:50):
they don't know what's happening around the corner. They might
not be able to organize to save a volunteer firehouse
or save a hospital in the town over if it's
the closest one to them. And there's also the reality
that a lot of these stations are the emergency alert
stations for people as well. I got a whole lot

(37:12):
of flack when this recision's package happened and I heard
that your funding was cut because it was just, I
don't know, maybe ten days or two weeks after that
horrific tragedy. It can't mystic that is in a county
that didn't upgrade its emergency system when it was given
the funds to do so by the federal government because
President Biden was the president at the time, and they

(37:34):
said they didn't want any Democratic money. And to me,
refusing to show up for your country and your neighbors,
regardless of how they vote in either direction, by the way,
feels criminal and just had proved deadly. And I said,
you know, how could we do this after this horrible

(37:55):
tragedy has just happened. And by the way, you know,
you've just seen this massive, horrific flooding in Tennessee. We
had just watched this awful devastation throughout Tornado Alley like
people weren't getting emergency alerts and people were dying. And
the number of people who said that's not how anyone
gets their alerts anymore struck me, Paula, because I thought, oh,

(38:19):
we're really entrenched in this moment of infighting in our
own country where people think, well, if I don't do
it that way, no one does it that way. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
There's a misunderstanding though, of the role that we play.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yes, so I wanted to ask you about that to
help us he that it's not.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
That you're getting your information from your TV set. We
are actually feeding the information you're getting through your phone. Yes,
we are. Because of ours network, right, we can push
out one to many. So anyone that has been in
a crisis. I was in New York nine to eleven.
You know that cell phones, you know, cell phone service

(38:56):
becomes overworked and it's uninhapable to sustain the volume of activity.
And that the power about the work that we do
is because broadcast is one to many, we can push
a lot of content out. Yes, so we run a
service that that pushes that content out to the public
but also to first responders. And so we we were

(39:19):
knit in as the backup infrastructure for our emergency alert
system for the country. So it's getting your information from NPR.
And this actually, this discussion happened on the on the
it was either the House of the Senate floor, because
the Senate floor, I think because at the time of
the vote there was a tsunami warning in Alaska. Yes,

(39:40):
it was the radio stations that were pushing out that information.
And you know, someone on the House floor said, well,
I'm not listening to NPR, so I wouldn't have gotten
it anyway. That wasn't that wasn't how the information pushed
out it was also getting pushed out to your phones,
which you probably would have seen, and that's the member
was doing. She she held up her phone and she said,
I'm getting these older it's on my phone. And it

(40:01):
wasn't because she was tuned to NPR. It's because it
was being pushed out to her because.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
By public broadcasting.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Broadcasting. Yeah, so you know, we're going to try to
keep the the you know, so we are working to
keep the infrastructure solid. I worry if we start to
lose some stations, which we we likely will, they'll be
parts of the country that won't be covered. And part

(40:28):
of what the federal government was investing in the federal
government has invested this over the years is you know,
some of our stations were looking to upgrade equipment to
make sure they had the wad of software and all
that stuff, and so all that money got pulled and
now there's a hole back and forth about well, maybe
that money shouldn't go to public broadcasting at all. I mean,

(40:49):
it doesn't make any sense. It has nothing to do
with anything that we're broadcasting or anything that we're doing
as a media company. It is an infrastructure. We are
a public service company, and so to you know, suddenly
be looking at you know, well, maybe we should look
at another solution. Why wouldn't you use the solution that
you have and for a small amount of money you

(41:10):
can just keep it going.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Yes, that works incredibly well refficient.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Do you know how much per person the investment in
public media in this country is. It's a dollar sixty
six a year. What is the investment in public media
from each citizen? A dollar sixty six a year. And
what we again have tried to do is to take

(41:36):
whatever as I said, you know it. You know, we
use a lot of it to lift up stations in smaller, rural,
poorer communities that could use the support. Everybody gets a
little base of support, and then we try to be
as entrepreneurial as we can in raising additional money alongside
of it in order to create a service that meets
the needs of the public. We partner with a lot

(41:58):
of media organizations. You know, everybody knows of our partnerships
with organizations like the BBC. We partner within HK in Japan.
We partner with other media companies. I'm partnering with Amazon.
I partner with anybody that where we can put the
resources together to bring forward a robust schedule of programming

(42:19):
that we think meets the interests of the people that
watch us. And we are we have always been in
a different position than everyone else. Is again why I
say we're in a profoundly different business we just use
the same tools. Is that I don't have to worry
about how I am satisfying our advertisers. Y worry about
is I look at what is missing from the broadcast landscape,

(42:43):
and then this is what we bring forward, and we
hope that we do a good enough job that the
public believes that it's important and they support us and
what we're doing. You know, many of our local stations,
they're the ones that are doing candidate debates, they do
town halls, yes to all of this stuff. Well, you know,
it's important.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
It is important, and one of the things I think
is really crucial to repeat for our listeners, just like
you were able to shoot down the myth that people
aren't getting their emergency alerts from public broadcast just because
they're not listening to NPR. It's incredibly important. You know,

(43:27):
This idea that it's all a conspiracy has really permeated
our culture. Right, Everyone's like, oh, well, the government's a conspiracy,
and medicines a conspiracy. No. No, private corporations that have
only a duty to please their shareholders rather than to
take care of public health. Like, guys, there's your conspiracy.

(43:51):
They're not prioritizing your wellness. They're not prioritizing the safety
of your family. They're not prioritizing clean air and clean water.
They're prioritize returns. And what you just said, Paula, I
want to shout from the rooftops, PBS centers the wellness
of the American people, not shareholders, and it makes it

(44:14):
the most rare and precious thing that we have to protect.
And my hope is that through our conversation people will
want to, you know, read the articles that we will
link in our show notes. That are all the things
I was reading to prep for today, because the more
we understand what this really is, what it really means,

(44:35):
and how dangerous these threats are to us, not just
to NPR, that will I think motivate people. And I'm curious,
you know again, because it's easy in a country of
three hundred and thirty two million people to say, well,
I don't know anybody who's had that problem so you
think the problem doesn't exist, but like one town over,

(44:56):
everybody's got that problem. So when you talk about this
wonderful public broadcast tour that you did when you when
you took the presidency, what are a couple of anecdotes
or stories that stand out to you that you learned
about your own company moving across the country. You know,

(45:19):
I would love to enlighten people with Oh I might
not know Mary from Pacoima, but I heard her story
on this podcast and that really shifted my understanding of
the landscape. So if you have like maybe two or
three of those, I would love.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
To hear you. I you know, and I always believe that. Look,
everything in life is storytelling, right, you know this refoundling well,
and you know, I mean if you you know, And
I think that's the way to understand us is through
the lens of how people relate to us. Television is
a really intimate medium. Think about where do you Where

(45:55):
are you when you watch television? Yes, you know, you
might be in your living room or your kitchen, you
might be in your bed, exactly right. And so I
think people have a different relationship with us. A lot
of times when I was traveling around, and I still
do some travel. I stopped a little bit around COVID,
and I haven't traveled so much since then, but I've been.

(46:16):
As I said, I'd already been all over the country.
I've been almost to every station. And what I learned
in those in those experience is people would tell me
these profound stories about their lives and their families, lives
and how we touch them, you know, people that had
children on the autism spectrum. There's something about our programming,
and particularly about the programs that we produce that use

(46:37):
puppets and so forth, that breaks through a different place
in kids' brains. In fact, last year, we launched a
new series called Carl the Collector, and Carl, who is
the lead character, is on the spectrum and there's a
there's a whole group of children around him that are
new or divergent, and how they come together as a
community hugely powerful. I cannot tell you how important the

(47:00):
series has been for so many We've had people come
to us and say, we've been struggling with how to
talk to my child about the fact that he has autism,
and he's been watching Carl and he said to us, Mom,
I'm just like Carl am I autimism. I mean, how
profound is that for that family. When I first took

(47:24):
the job, I went to Nebraska and I went to
a reception and there were a lot of people that
were involved with the station there, and this guy came
up to me. He had traveled, he said, I traveled
two and a half hours to come to this event.
He said, because I wanted to meet you. And he said,
you're the you know you're now running PBS. I said yes,
And he said, well, I wanted to shake your hand,

(47:44):
and I wanted to look you in the eye, and
I want to make sure that you remember me. He said,
I am raising my children on the ranch where I
was raised. And he said, we're in a real part
of the state. And he said, I worried a lot
that my kids would not have access to everything that
would allow them to live, you know, great lives, he said,
but we have you. And he said, I just need

(48:07):
you to know that we count on you and you
need to do the best possible job for us. And
he said, so, he said, I can. I can imagine
you've got a difficult job, but I hope that if
you're ever tempted to go a different path or to
take a shortcut that you think about me, and you
think about my kids and everything that you mean to us.

(48:29):
And again, these are really powerful stories, people whose lives.
We did a video profile of a young guy growing
up in New York City, Okay, so a place where
he's surrounded by like a lot of stuff, and this
kid was a street dancer. He's home one night, he's
like flipping through somehow stumbles onto a rerun of a

(48:57):
program that we had aired on Great Performance that had
Barishnikov in it. And he had never seen he had
never seen ballet before. He had never seen anything like
that before. This kid enrolled high school for performing arts,
became a dancer, became a principal dancer for the San
Francisco Ballet. That's how we found it because we were
taping Swan Lake. He was dancing in it. And you

(49:18):
know what he does now, he's a teacher. He's teachable.
It's dance. So credible experience on media that changed his
life changed, you know, obviously touched all the audiences that
saw him over the years, but more profoundly, he's touching
the lives of all these kids who are now learning
from him. The idea of doing anything like this had

(49:41):
never occurred to him into that experience.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
And that's the miraculous ripple effect for good that I
believe in. When we create for good, when we center
for good, I will be a defender of PBS for
the rest of my life because I believe in you
as a as an organization for good. I'm curious who

(50:08):
are our allies in this fight to keep the lights on?
Because listen, I think the ACLU made a great point.
There is a wonderful argument to be made here that
the current administration's attack on public broadcasting is an attack
on free speech because they desire to alter the speech
of what is broadcast. And I hope that that works.

(50:33):
But I am not an attorney who's at the ACLU.
I want to know who are who are the allies
we should be supporting, Who should we be writing to,
who should we be thinking, who should we be boycotting?
Tell us where to pull up because my people are ready. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
So, I mean, the one thing I will say up
until this period is we've actually also always had bipartisan support.
There are a lot of people from both sides of
the aisle that have always supported us. I think we're
in a very unusual time right now, and I think
that if people want to continue, you know, we started,

(51:10):
we started this effort called Protect my Public Media, and
you know, people can sign up. I think you can
still sign up because we're, as I said, we're giving up.
There will be there will be another moment where we
will try to galvanize people to reach out to legislators.
And I think that it's important for everyone to reach
out to your legislator and just remind them how important

(51:32):
this is, because this is where this is where it
is profoundly important for people to understand that their voices
are heard. Prior to this vote, we literally had millions
of of calls and texts and emails going up to
kill and I think there there are some that believe, well,

(51:54):
we've gone through this moment and now people are going
to go off into their lives and do their own
special thing. I think we just have to keep this
up because you believe that, you know that we will
have a moment where we can put this back on
the table, and it should be. I mean, we're gonna
work really hard. We're gonna try to keep things glue together.
This effort that you mentioned with these different foundations, this

(52:16):
is just gonna This is bridge that's what it's called.
It's a bridge fund to try to get us to
that next place. I'm hoping what this is going to
bridge us into is not just giving stations a little
bit more time to try to figure out how they
can manage without the money. But hopefully if we can
get some of that money put back in, it'll make
a profound difference. I mean, the workers is we pull

(52:39):
in allow us to be able to do more. So
in the coming year, We've got like great programming come up.
I've already mentioned Ken's series on the American Revolution that
was created a few years ago. I mean, it was
finished a year ago, and now we're broadcast in November.
As we weep excite. It is magnificent. It is so

(53:00):
beautiful it is.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
And we need it now.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
And we need to understand where we came from. We
need to understand that it was really messy at the beginning.
It's not this idea that we have of how our
country came together. It was really a messy. It's messy now.
But if we care about our democracy, we have to
come together, and part of that is understanding how did
this all start? It was improbable, it shouldn't have happened,

(53:26):
that we shouldn't have been successful in forging this democracy.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
But we were, We were.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
And it is it continues to be fragile unless we
all take a role in preserving it. And so again,
as you galvanize all of the people that are listening
to you to support public media and tell them to
get involved in their communities, because that's make the difference.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
And now a word from our wonderful sponsors. You know,
it strikes me because I feel very fired up, and
I think you get fired up when you feel equal
parts motivated to solve a problem and imbued with hope.

(54:18):
You are under unprecedented attack under the PBS umbrella, and
yet you are ready for the fight, you, Paula, and
I imagine you're leading your team this way. You seem
to be retaining hope, retaining optimism. How do you do
that right now? Or is it because you're a genuinely

(54:39):
optimistic person who knows we'll get through this, or is
it because of belief in your team? Or I guess
maybe a mix of all these things. How do you stay.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
So up because I believe in what we do. I
believe that it is right and it's important. And I've
had the real, the unbelievable privilege of being able to
talk to people across the country who said, and we
believe it too. And all of the responses that I

(55:12):
have gotten in you know, the last weeks of people
saying we're we're behind you, that just lifts that lifts
you up. And I think we are in a moment
in this country where people are craving hope and inspiration
and that's that is who we are and that is

(55:32):
what we do. I believe in this country. I believe
in the people in this country, and I believe that
people will come together and that's what that's why and
you and you cannot because you know, Sophia, what's the alternative.
You're going to go into your bed and put the
covers over your head. No way, nothing good ever happens
by that. It comes by having a conviction of purpose,

(55:55):
believing in what you do, and in just trying to
galvanize support for and I think that the response that
we have gotten thus far and continue to get. Our
stations are getting contributions from people that you know, they've
never heard from before. I mean, this is movement, and
so really riding on that crest of positivity and hope

(56:17):
and belief is what's going to carry us forward.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
I love it. I love it. I feel that I
feel very ready. I want to look up my local
PBS station up here and figure out how I can
go volunteer. What are what are some of the things
that were I to do that I might find as
volunteer opportunities.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
Well, each station is a little different. Some stations do
a lot of community events and they are looking for
people to be engaged. Some people at some stations, as
I said, are very active in schools and they look
for people to help connect. So yeah, so talk to
your local station and see what they're doing and what
they might need. And obviously country abutions help. Some stations

(57:01):
actually have people going door to door and asking people
for contributions. Some, I mean there's just a lot. Some
stations are still having volunteers in their studio, you know
all of that. I mean, it's it's I think that
each station, I mean, this is the thing that people
don't understand. We're not a network. So every station is
individually owned and operating their own thing. And that's actually

(57:24):
What is pretty cool about PBS is because when you
travel around and each station is you know, we we
air a lot of the same programming but different you know,
stations you know produce some of their own programming, but
their own stories sort are happening within their own communities,
and it's it's so there's a there is. It is
very intensely local and so you know, so I just

(57:48):
encourage everyone to connect to your local station.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Well great, maybe we can, maybe we can start a
little community campaign for that.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
How great would that be?

Speaker 1 (57:57):
I know you are obviously holding so much. I mean,
you are working for the nation, you are fighting back.
It's quite a David and Goliath fight, as it strikes
me as a story. I'm curious though, for you, you know,
when you when you're not writing for the you know,

(58:19):
the future of America, just in your own life, Paula,
what what's on the horizon, what excites you? What what
feels like your work in progress? And that could be
personal or professional, certainly, but as you all center public good,
I also want to know how you center yourself.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
Yeah, it's you know, look, I think for all of
us that you know, lead organizations and particularly during periods
like this. It is you have to be very deliberate
in the personal right because you are, and particularly for
you know, I'll just speak for myself right now. I mean,

(59:01):
there's a lot on my shoulders going into the going
into the vote, and it has been a it has
been quite a period since January. I mean, I I
was called, as you know, I was called to testify
in front of Margie Taylor Green's committee and sort of
getting ready for that, and you know, just really being

(59:23):
very much in the forefront of a lot of what
we were doing. Every day, I just focused on, you know,
what was sitting right in front of me and right now,
you know, you know, once the vote happened, then just
really figuring out how can we stabilize our system, how
can we can begin to bring resources in I right now,

(59:43):
I'm very focused on trying to raise money for the
News Hour, for example, because you know, as for the
monies that I have lost, there are you know, all
of our producers are having to make hard choices, but
the news hour that has to be on the air
every night, so we've got about a ten million dollar
gap there. So I've been really working to try to

(01:00:04):
close that. So anybody wants to make a contribution News Hour,
you can contact me. But anyway, I just I do
think that for myself, what I've been trying to do
is actually harken back to that eight year old You know,
when I'm home, I have I have a home in
the country. I live in the country. Actually it's not

(01:00:25):
I have a home that is where. That is my
home in the country. I have two dogs. I love.
I love being out early in the morning. I have
the Merlin app on my phone. I love to turn
it on and you know, sort of spot I'm very
interested in science and nature. I sit on the Natural
History board here and I'm just very engaged in a

(01:00:47):
lot of things around science and nature. And I love
to look up put all the devices away when I
don't need them. I only keep my phone for the
Merlin app and then I stick it in my pocket.
I try not to look at anything, even if it's buzzing,
and I just try to sort of connect back. And
I think this were a lot of us actually find strength,
is I connect back to those things that really meant

(01:01:07):
a lot to me when I was a kid. I'm
not barefoot the whole summer like I was when I
was a kid, but I very much that was very
much of the grounding for me when I was young,
and so I try to come back that a little bit.
And I'm not doing such a great job, you know,
I know that, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
Things are a little hard right now.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
But things are a little hard, but you know, but
I do try to get my walk on in the
morning with the dogs, with the you know, and look
up and just listen.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
I have started actually to tell myself when all of
this feels overwhelming, I will literally speak out loud to
myself alone in the room and go, okay, honey, you
got gout and touch grass, Yeah, five minutes outside. It
really to your point, it's it's so important, and I'm

(01:01:54):
I'm glad to know that you are still centering those
experiences as often as you can in the midst of
your very honorable fight.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Yeah, it matters, and it just reminds us that we're
all part of something far bigger than each of us individually.
Right Just look up, look at the pattern of the
leaves in the sky, you know, just think about trees
in particular, you know, quite powerful, you know, so many
of them have existed far before we were born. We

(01:02:25):
were there. We're part of this whole interconnectedness and our
time on this earth is pretty finite, and we have
one chance for this. I'm going to garble Mary Oliver,
but this one beautiful life, and what are we going
to do with it?

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
You're one wild and precious life.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
Wild and precious life. How are we going to seize it?
So that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
That's it. Thank you so much, Paula. I just adore
you and I'm so glad we've connected.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Yeah, this has been really great, Cyphia. Thank you, Thank
you so much for the same