Trusted, Valued, Essential: Why PBS is Here to Stay, With or Without Federal Funding
Summary
This fireside chat at SXSW 2026 features Paula Kerger, the longest-serving president and CEO in PBS history (20 years), in conversation with Evan Smith, managing director for events at The Atlantic. The session directly confronts the political and financial crisis facing PBS following Congress's elimination of dedicated federal funding for public broadcasting in the summer of 2025. The session opens with a rebuttal of the executive order signed by President Trump on May 1st, 2025, which accused PBS and NPR of failing to provide 'fair, accurate, or unbiased' news, and alleged that 'government funding of news media is corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.' Kerger categorically defends PBS's editorial standards, noting the organization employs a public editor and conducts a rigorous review of editorial standards every five years. She points out that only about 10% of PBS content is news, with flagship programs NewsHour and Frontline designed to present facts without conflating opinion with journalism — a model she argues is validated by the fact that liberals think it's too conservative and conservatives think it's too liberal.
Kerger provides a detailed account of the sequence of events leading to the defunding: the 'UnAmerican Airwaves' hearing before Marjorie Taylor Green's DOGE committee in March 2025, the executive order in May, the elimination of the Ready to Learn program through the Department of Education, and ultimately Congress's vote in July to claw back two years of appropriated funds totaling approximately $200 million. She contextualizes the impact: while that figure represents about 6-7% of funding for large market stations like New York's WNET, it constitutes roughly 50% of funding for small rural stations like the one serving Appalachia in Cookeville, Tennessee. The session also addresses FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's threatening statements on social media warning broadcasters that they could lose licenses over coverage of the war in Iran, which Kerger characterizes as legally hollow but capable of creating a chilling effect, particularly on commercially vulnerable media organizations contemplating FCC-regulated mergers.
A significant portion of the conversation is devoted to the Arkansas PBS crisis — an emblematic case where the state commission (appointed by the governor) voted in December 2025 to leave PBS by June 30, 2026. Kerger recounts attending the commission meeting herself, where over 100 community members spoke passionately in support of PBS. The commission agreed to pause and seek public comment, and two former Arkansas first ladies — one Democrat, one Republican — stepped up to form 'Friends of Arkansas PBS.' Kerger highlights this as the broader lesson: communities, when informed about the situation, consistently choose to step up. Viewer contributions have not only maintained but grown since the defunding began, contradicting the assumption that public enthusiasm would wane like interest in a natural disaster. She notes the Public Media Bridge Fund was established to provide emergency funding to stations where federal dollars represented more than 25% of their budget.
The latter part of the conversation covers PBS's structural identity as a federated cooperative of independently owned and operated local stations, its digital evolution (including a YouTube channel generating billions of streams and a series called 'Weathered' built around a meteorologist), and revenue strategy going forward (streaming partnerships with Amazon, Netflix, and others, plus efficiency consolidation in overlapping markets). Kerger also addresses the children's content crisis — noting that most commercial networks have abandoned their kids' schedules, most children are now on YouTube watching content like Mr. Beast that was never designed for preschoolers, and over half of American children are not in formal preschool. She frames equitable access to quality children's content as one of PBS's most urgent missions. Throughout, she pushes back firmly on the notion that a single billionaire donor could or should replace federal funding, arguing that PBS's strength comes from being a system of the people funded by small contributions from millions of households.
Key Takeaways
- •PBS lost approximately $200 million in federal appropriations — equivalent to less than $1.60 per American per year, or roughly the cost of a Starbucks coffee — when Congress clawed back two years of already-appropriated public broadcasting funds in summer 2025.
- •The funding cut's impact is highly unequal: for large market stations like WNET in New York it represented ~6-7% of budget, but for small rural stations like Cookeville, Tennessee (serving Appalachia) it was roughly 50% of their total funding.
- •Only about 10% of PBS content is news programming; the core of PBS output is education, science, arts, and children's content — making the 'state media' framing from critics a significant mischaracterization.
- •FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's threat to revoke broadcast licenses over news coverage of the Iran war is legally unenforceable in the short term (license renewals are years away and removal requires an extremely cumbersome process), but it has a documented chilling effect on organizations that need FCC approval for mergers.
- •Since the defunding, viewer contributions to PBS stations have not only spiked but continued to grow — defying the 'natural disaster' pattern where public attention and donations fade after initial outrage.
- •The Arkansas PBS crisis exemplifies the systemic risk: the state commission voted to leave PBS by June 30, 2026, but a spontaneous community response — including bipartisan support from two former first ladies — is now working to reverse that decision.
- •Kerger opposes the 'find a billionaire' solution to replace federal funding, arguing that PBS's democratic legitimacy and editorial independence come specifically from being funded by a broad base of small contributions rather than concentrated wealth.
- •Over half of American children are not enrolled in formal preschool; PBS children's programming (Sesame Street, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, etc.) represents one of the only scaled, research-backed interventions to close early learning gaps — a mission commercial streamers have largely abandoned.
Transcript
[applause] Good afternoon. I am Evan Smith, managing director for events at the Atlantic. I want to welcome you to South by Southwest and to this featured session with Paula Ker, president and CEO of PBS, the public broadcasting service, the nation's largest non-commercial media organization. She has had that job for 20 years. In fact, her 20th anniversary was this past Friday. That's longer than anyone in PBS history, though I suspect the last year probably felt even longer than that. On her wa...
