Trump’s war on public media, with PBS CEO Paula Kerger

0:07Welcome to another episode of the Mixed Signals podcast from us here at Semaphore Media where we are talking to all of the most interesting and consequential people shaping our new media age. I'm Max Tawney. I am the media editor here at Semaphore. And with me, as always, is our editor-in-chief. He's also my boss. I could be fired by this man. It's Ben Smith. How's it going, Ben? Good. We need to talk more at the end of the show. Yeah, right. Exactly. Well, the person we'll be speaking to before this ominous meeting that Ben has just talked about is Paula Kerger. She is the CEO of PBS. Now, usually Paula is a figure who does not necessarily want to be out there in the media all the time talking about things.

0:51And PBS generally has been a pretty sleepy organization. But this year, all of that changed when the federal government and the Trump administration decided to claw back funding from PBS and restrict funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS and NPR. This was a really, really big deal for people who grew up watching PBS. Just as a full disclosure for our listeners, you know, my parents would plop me down in front of the television to watch PBS. We didn't watch other stuff, but that was always okay. Ben, in preparing for the show, we talked a little bit. It seems like you did not grow up and your kids did not grow up with that kind of relationship with PBS.

1:30So you're coming in here a little bit more skeptically. Yeah, I suppose that's true. My parents were like more extreme and didn't let me watch TV at all. They considered even PBS. sort of, you know, potentially corrupting. So Ben, you were not particularly shocked when Trump and Republicans decided to get rid of this funding. And in some ways, you kind of think, and I'm putting words in your mouth, that this was kind of something maybe that needed to happen. You know, I guess I do think that in this era of proliferating media, it is a little hard to make the case for government funding of media.

2:00I don't want to be too much of a bad cop here. Fair enough, fair enough. I'm sorry. Ben, I don't want to box you in as the bad cop here, and I get to be all weepy and sympathetic. But we actually have Paula waiting for us. And we do have a lot of questions about the value of public media in 2025 and the future of funding for PBS and NPR. But she's a lot better equipped to answer those questions. So we'll bring her in right after this.

2:30Hi, I'm Joshua Espania, VP of Marketing at Google. and you might assume I have all the answers when it comes to marketing. The truth, I'm just as curious to learn, discover the answers to everything as everyone else. We are living through a total reset of our marketing industry. The old maps don't work, which means we get to chart a new path forward. It's dynamic, it's fast-paced, and honestly, there's never been a more exciting time to be in marketing. That is why we've started a new podcast. Frontier CMO. It's from Think With Google, and I promise it's not just a bunch of corporate waffle. I'm sitting down with people who really know what's going on.

3:14CMOs, creators, technologists, the lot. And we're having a proper, unfiltered chat about what's working, and quite frankly, what isn't. These are your notes from the Frontier. So do me a favor. Search for Frontier CMO wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us and subscribe on YouTube.

3:42Paula, thank you so much for joining us. Can you just walk us through a little bit what the latest is in terms of how the funding stands? Because obviously people were paying attention earlier this year, but if you could just let us know what the latest is. Yeah, it's been an interesting year. If you want, I can walk you through the year in about three minutes or three hours, whatever you want. It's a podcast. We can go as long as you want. It's been quite an adventure. So we started the year actually in January with a letter from Brendan Carr saying that he thinks we're running advertisements.

4:11And if we are, he was going to Congress to see that we'd be defunded. It's not exactly the kind of letter you would expect from the chair of the FCC. That was actually followed some weeks later with actually a formal letter of inquiry asking to look at all of our information over the last three years, which we've sent and we're now waiting to hear back. So that was like the first thing. Then behind that might have been the Marjorie Taylor Greene letter inviting me to testify at her Doge hearing. The title of the hearing is Un-American Airwaves Holding the CEOs of PBS and NPR to Account. Following that was the effort to eliminate the Democratic appointed members of the CPB board, Corporation for Public Broadcasting Board.

4:54Remember that that organization is set up to administer federal funding. Most of that money, of course, 70 % of that money goes directly to radio and television stations. A small amount goes to us, a smaller amount to NPR, and then they help pay for some of the infrastructure. Following that was the executive order that basically said that any federal funds to public television or public radio, PBS or NPR, would be illegal, and that no organization that receives federal funds could use any of those money to buy anything from us. The day after that executive order, we lost the funding for all of our kids' content.

5:32That was under a grant program out of the Department of Education called Ready to Learn. And that was immediate pens down. You can spend no more dollars. And we had to cease everything. There were a couple other things in the way, but I decided that this would be the Reader's Digest abbreviated version of the last year. House vote, we lost. We thought we had the votes. And then at the 11th hour, we didn't. Senate vote even more painful. We thought we had the votes. That was in July. And so since July, we've been working to figure out how to make sure that particularly our vulnerable stations across the country who are even more heavily reliant on federal funding make it through this period.

6:12If you remember the Newt Gingrich contract with America, that was a three-year glide path that would have taken us to zero funding. This was basically a three-month glide path. And some of our stations, in aggregate it's about 15 percent of their funding comes from the federal government. That's bad. But some of our stations, particularly in small rural communities, it's as much as half of their funding. And for them it's existential. And so we've been working really hard to get some funds put aside so that, you know, they can figure out what a longer term plan is if, in fact, the federal funding doesn't come back.

6:42I have not given up hope for that. And we can talk about that, too. You've been fighting these fights and managing this political process, not quite since Gingrich, but quite a while since the Bush administration. Does this generation of Republicans, are they different? Do they hate you more? It's funny. We've always had bipartisan support. I mean, even people like Barry Goldwater going way back, they supported public broadcasting. I mean, this is where Bill Buckley had his home on firing line. And so, you know, there have definitely been moments, probably before Gingrich, it was Richard Nixon that had really made a run at trying to defund us.

7:20And many people remember a very famous testimony by Fred Rogers, who made the case of why this is important in what we do, and particularly the work that we do for kids. I've thought about this a lot. I actually did not believe that we would be defunded even in this round because I've spent a lot of time since I've been in this job traveling around and spending time in communities across the country. You know, I've been in a lot of small communities. I know how important those stations are. I also know this is a place where a lot of legislators appear for these are the stations that usually give them airtime for debates and town halls and so forth.

7:56And they're very much a fabric of the community. I would say what's different this time is what we're seeing across a lot of other parts of decisions that are being made, which is a real determination to stay together and to follow the lead of the White House. And that is different than anything that we've seen before. I had really hoped that ultimately when votes would happen for our funding that legislators would remember their local stations. And in this case, they did not. It's interesting because you mentioned the Marjorie Taylor Greene Doge hearings from earlier this year. And as you were saying that, I was thinking about this journey that she has been on recently, where she's obviously clashed with the White House and with Trump on a few different matters.

8:38And I'm really curious, I wonder if you think that the coalition that wanted to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, if that coalition is going to stay together, or if you think you can peel back some of the Republicans who voted against you guys earlier this year. This is why I think that there may be a possibility here, because since we were defunded, a few things happened that surprised me a bit. One is there were legislators that said, wait a minute, wait, what? This Corporation for Public Broadcasting is going to go out of business? It's like, well, didn't you understand that if you were not funding it, it probably wasn't going to exist?

9:17The other were the number of people that said, wait a minute, what? This means my local station? And I think that somehow, and I really don't understand this because we've spent a lot of time, mostly our stations actually, have spent a lot of time making sure that legislators understand where the money that they're putting aside for public broadcasting goes. Look, I never make an assumption we're going to be funded. There are a lot of hard choices that legislators have to make about where to put federal money. And I always feel like we have to earn it every year, and I always feel like we should never make the assumption that people understand what we are and what we do and how it fits into the scheme of everything else they're balancing.

9:57But what did shock me is the number of the people that just seemed so surprised that this was going to put so many stations at risk. So that's where I'm really focusing my efforts working with so many of our stations to try to make that case because I do feel it's a compelling one. I mean, you look at what some of these stations are doing. You know, all of our stations, most people are not aware that we're the backup system for the emergency alert for the country. That means not just for individuals that are hearing about emergencies, but it also is how information is fed to first responders. You know, there are many people in this country that rely on it over the air.

10:34This is what you're cutting off. I guess it seems to me risky to ally yourself so closely to what is just obviously a dying technology. Like, I'm glad they do emergency alerts over the air, but gosh, I don't know a lot of people who watch over the air anymore, and that may be my own urban bias. Are you arguing that 50 years from now, it's super important that we have over-the-air broadcasts? It just feels like a dying technology. I'm arguing right now there are a lot of people that rely on over-the-air. And there are a lot of people that it may be for geographic reasons or it may be for economic reasons that are really very much beholden to over-the-air.

11:08And, you know, if you live in a city and if you live around a lot of people that spend all of their time or a lot of their time consuming media from different digital platforms, and we have a robust presence there, too. So I'm not suggesting that, you know, we are just locked into broadcast as our sole purpose. But what I am saying is that you're talking about a lot of people that always get left behind. And I think in this moment when people are getting hammered on so many other levels, whether that's access to food and access to other services, health care, to also cut off information feels like not a great idea.

11:46And so I think that part of the infrastructure that I'm talking about also in being the backup for emergency alert is also how information is pushed out. So even in places that have a lot of digital technology, you know what happens if you're in a place that has an emergency. And those systems get overwhelmed very quickly. And to get information pushed out to a lot of people, a one-to-many technology is a really good solution. And it's a built structure. And shouldn't we be supporting it at least in the short term? That does sound in a way like an argument that PBS is sort of an important part of the past and of the present, but not of the future.

12:24How do you think about that? Well, it's not just the technology, it's the content we produce, right? You know, I spend a lot of time looking at what other people do on different platforms. And let's give one example, because I just referenced it a minute ago, which is kids' content. If you are deeply focused on what's happening in kids' media right now, you should be concerned. A lot of the streamers don't really need much kids' content, unless you're Disney. You really don't need a lot to keep your subscription base going. You can have a couple shows that work for you and nobody subscribes to an HBO, for example, to get kids content.

12:59K-pop Demon Hunters was a pretty big phenomenon. Yeah, that's a different kind of programming, right? And what's happened is a lot of kids have been pushed to YouTube. And a lot of YouTube content is, I'm not saying all, but there is a lot of content that kids are consuming. in fact, some of the most popular, benign at best, and sometimes not really safe for kids. I always use this analogy. We use the same tools. We're just not in the same business. Ultimately, my success is not going to be judged by how much I'm returning to a shareholder. Our work is judged based on how we are meeting the needs of the public that's not been met in other places.

13:37I mean, I hate always defining ourselves as we're what others are not, but But a lot of other organizations don't exist for the same reasons we do, which is to, in the case of kids, making sure that first time they enter school, you know, half the kids in this country are not in formal pre-K. So the first time kids enter school, we want them to have at least a chance of being on the same level of kids that have access to more content. And so whether that is the content we produce that provides basic skills, it's getting kids excited about learning. It's also helping them deal with their emotions.

14:08This is what Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood is about, which is based on Fred Rogers. No one else is doing this. And so what's happening is the marketplace is drying up. A lot of people that are kids producers are moving on to other things because it is much harder now to produce this kind of content. And we can be satisfied that we have content driven by algorithm, which is what our kids are being exposed to, or we can make a decision that we also are investing in a public service, which is PBS. Well, we have to take a short break, but we'll have a lot more with Paula Kerger right after this.

14:51In this week's branded segment from Think with Google, I spoke with Google's VP of Marketing, Josh Spanier, about what he saw at CES. So Josh, you were at CES at the beginning of this year. Why does that event matter for CMOs? So CES gives us a real view into how people are going to be living their lives and spending their money in two, five, even 10 years time. I know from the outside, it looks like a giant toy show. There's smart rings and foldable laundry robots and flying cars. But I was chatting with Shelley Palmer, who I interviewed for my new podcast. He's an AI visionary and tech leader.

15:30And he swears by, and I agree with him, that the ability to see patterns amongst all the gadgets is actually really, really compelling for near term and into the future. So what did you learn from that conversation? Well, the gadgets aren't really the thing. Stuff gets announced. Some of it launches. Some of it doesn't launch. What you're really looking for are business model changes, the new paradigms that are emerging. So two that I saw and we spoke about, one is around agentic commerce. Google announced during CES and just after CES a whole bunch of partnerships with Shopify, with Walmart, with Target around agentic commerce.

16:09Super interesting building the new protocols for machines doing the shopping for you where appropriate. And then separately, I also saw a lot of expansion of what you might call intelligent ecosystems. These are technologies from different companies coming together, meshing together to enable you to do more interesting and engaging things. And again, with Google and Gemini leading the way. They're really fascinating forerunners of where we're all going to be in the near and medium term. And where can people listen to the whole thing? You can listen to my conversation with Shelley Palmer in my new podcast, Frontier CMO, on YouTube or wherever you download podcasts.

16:48Or you can sign up for my weekly newsletter over on LinkedIn. Great. Thanks, Josh.

17:04you mentioned how much of the animosity to pbs right now comes from the top comes from trump and i guess i hadn't known this but i'm sure you're familiar with it that sesame street waged a long war on donald trump from like the 80s to the early 2000s there's a character named named Ronald Grump, who was planning to demolish Sesame Street and create a Grump Tower. He claimed he owned all the trash. Grump's the name Ronald Grump, and I'm a grouch builder. I make places for grouches to live. Yeah, I've heard of you. Why, you're the grouch who built a swamp in a day when nobody else could do it. That's me.

17:41I guess I wonder, in this very strange personalized moment, do you worry that's part of the problem? He holds a grudge. Like, I don't know this for a fact. I think he kind of enjoyed being people, even when they're poked fun of me, perhaps a little bit, enjoy being a character on Sesame Street. I mean, wouldn't you? This hasn't come up in any of the discussions around you should be defunded because of Donald Grump. But I do think that when you look at, you know, the range of things that we produce, deeply committed to science in particular at a time when I think our country really would benefit from more exposure to science and science literacy.

18:18We're very interested in history. We're right at the beginning of the rollout of Ken Burns' new series on the American Revolution. He's been working on this for 10 years. I mean, again, coming back to the point why PBS, no media organization is going to wait 10 years for a documentary to be produced. So we had Ken on the show just a few weeks ago. It was a really interesting episode. And he's been out there as a spokesperson for PBS and for public media. Most of the attention that Ken Burns has been getting as a part of the press tour around the American Revolution has been the comments that he's been making about the importance of public media.

18:52I'm really curious if you've heard from any big donors, philanthropic organizations, or members of Congress even in response to some of these kind of calls. What has him being out there as a spokesperson done for PBS? He has very strong supporters from all sides of the aisle. He's been everywhere over the last months with this film. Part of what he always does is use this as a film as a way to get people thinking about and talking about the issues that he's trying to lay out in front of us. We did a screening on Capitol Hill, and it was interesting. There were so many people from both sides of the aisle, including people that voted to defund us, that were there, that were riveted by what he had to say.

19:35His funders, by the way, are also similar to what I just described. He has funders across the political spectrum that support his work. And so I am hopeful that in addition to the fact that people are suddenly, I think, realizing, oh, this is going to affect the station that's in my own backyard, I think that when you have a project like this and with a filmmaker like Ken, that hopefully, again, it will cause people to think again about the decisions that were made and potentially help us to put some resources back. Paul, I'm curious to go back to what you were saying before about the screening at the Capitol.

20:12And, you know, there's a lot of people who voted for the rescission who are there and who are enjoying this content. And when you see those members who are there, do you go up, you know, remind them and say, hey, you know, we helped pay for this. This is what the value of this thing is. What do you do in that situation? I say, you know, how do we get this back on track? Because most of them have been in their communities and I talk to them specifically about what their local stations do. And I think that all of this is the ultimate education, you know, helping people make well-informed decisions.

20:40That's what we do. And I think in the case of, you know, members of Congress, there were people that had voted against us that said, we just don't want you to be forward funded. We want to make sure that we deal with you on the budget process. Now, when we got to the budget process, some said, well, we just defunded you. Why would we put money in? It's like, remember what you said before. So I think it's going to just be a real effort. And then ultimately, I mean, look, leading up to the vote, I know that millions of people reached out to legislators. I know it. They sent calls, they sent emails and texts and so forth.

21:14And I just – ultimately, legislators are responsible to their constituents. And I think they do care about that and just making sure that if this is meaningful to their constituents that they're reminded of it. Do you think part of the answer is more conservative programming? No. I think – look, I take to heart our responsibility to show a diversity of viewpoint. And look, I don't have to tell you all this because you live in the middle of it. It is harder and harder to do that. People tend to gravitate towards those media outlets and a lot of times podcasts where they know they're going to reach their base, their core.

21:52And they're not as willing to put themselves out there and to be in a place where they are not speaking to those who agree with everything they say. I'm interested in hearing different perspectives. My gosh, how are we going to move forward as a country if we don't try to understand each other? I want to understand why people think radically different than I do. And I think the rest of the country would benefit from that too. So being able to make sure that we are trying to bring forward different perspectives, I think, is part of what we do. The other thing that's important to remember is only about 10 % of our work is news and public affairs.

22:28Most of what we do is kids. I've already talked about some of our documentaries and science and history. You also recently aired a documentary called The Last 500 Meters by a director, Michael Pack, kind of a MAGA activist. Steve Bannon invited me to the screening a few weeks ago of that. And at the screening, Pack said that PBS had kept that documentary on the shelf for 17 years because in his view, you believed it was too pro-military. And that basically this year, in a scramble to mollify right-wingers, you guys put it on air. Is that a correct interpretation? No, it's not true. I mean, when the program was delivered, and actually, I think if you saw the screening, you did not see what we broadcasted.

23:09That beheading scene was not in the broadcast. It was very gory. And it was very gory. And we also were between different program directors. She had some concerns about the program and it just got shelved. And, you know, to be honest, it got forgotten. And he would periodically remind me. And the show then became older. And I don't make program decisions. I want to be clear about that. But, you know, we had talked about whether we should air it, and it felt like it was like an older series. It's still relevant. And Michael and Gina, his wife, who runs his production company, came back to us last year, and they said, we really think you should look at the film.

23:47We took a fresh look at it and said, you know what? It is an older film. It now, I think, after the benefit of some time, makes sense to air it, and we aired it around Veterans Day. We've taken other films from Michael Pack. So it's not like we were afraid to have work from him on our air. We should be doing that. We should be looking for programming that comes from lots of different places. You mentioned the BBC earlier and they have their differences in their funding and they have the kind of public fee that everybody kind of transparently pays for. Obviously, they're in a pretty interesting and remarkable situation over there right now over a series of issues.