Well documented and well said - points that my wife, Janet, and I have been saying to public media clients going back 15 years. I also was "the digital guy" at various newspapers who was told that the Internet was the new CB radio, that all the inserts were going to come back by Christmas and that if I broke news on the website before the newspaper was delivered at 7 a.m. the next day that I would not be allowed in news meetings. (That one got me barred from The Sacramento Bee news meetings.)
Your piece also makes me wonder - one day after Press Forward announced its $22mm grants, many of which are to small startups with very little audience - why philanthropy doesn't lean into news organizations that already have large audiences but face shifting economics. But then, as my wife told Jay Rosen when he scolded foundations at a Block By Block conference about where they "should" spend their money, "No one ever profited by telling a funder how she should spend her money." So be it.
That said, my main concern is not about Ken Burns, but about public safety. Public media runs emergency alert frequencies such as Florida Public Radio Emergency Network (FPREN) across the country, which are vital communication lines during natural disasters. We are now in hurricane season, FEMA has been gutted and services such as FPREN are in jeopardy. That trio is a catastrophic combination, and two of those are unforced errors.
Thanks, Rusty. It may be true that there is no profit in suggesting what funders should do, but my own view (and implictly yours, I think) is funders get far too littlle input on their decisions rather than too much-- mostly because they almost never geuninely ask. Second Rough Draft occasionally tries to do its small part to redress that balance a bit.
Such a vital piece, Dick—thank you for pulling no punches. The question isn’t just whether public broadcasting is struggling—it’s whether the institutions around it are willing to reimagine what public service actually demands right now.
I’ve been wrestling with a related concern from the education side. Last month, I wrote an op-ed for The Philadelphia Inquirer titled:
“As STEM faces a funding crisis, we’re dismantling public broadcasting — our best educational safety net.”
At a time when science literacy, civic education, and access to trusted information are collapsing in many communities, gutting PBS and NPR is more than a media problem. It’s a public infrastructure crisis.
I dunno - I kind of stopped here - "You would think it obvious that the very public vote of no confidence in an ostensibly quasi-public institution by the people’s elected representatives—no matter how much you or I may disagree with them—would be enough to indicate the need for some new industry leadership." That's nuts. Was there a vote of "no confidence" in health care for 14 million people, or in life saving interventions globally that will lead to the death of millions? No - as is quickly crystallizing, it's the fever dream of authoritarians and racists turning our country into a pariah. Yes to new leadership and creative solutions - but "no confidence?" Nah
I'm sorry, but when an institution ostenbly operating on behalf of the broad national public is specificallly defunded, after 58 years, by the duly elected representatives of the people, I think we need to reckon with that.
I agree with you that they are making a terrible mistake. But in this instance they are doing it entirely through democratic means. I beg people who care about public broadcasting-- as I do-- to grapple more honestly with how we have gotten here, and what it says about the way the system has been managed, as we chart the best way forward.
This is a sharply articulated piece. You’ve laid out the stakes with clarity and urgency. This truly isn’t just a reversal, and I appreciate your framing of the current crisis as a pivotal opportunity rather than a nostalgic campaign to restore what was. Your call for coherence and reinvention over piecemeal fixes hits home, and I find myself nodding along with the emphasis on public engagement that stretches beyond the traditional donor base.
That said, I wonder if we’re underestimating the potential of smaller, decentralized efforts. Local podcasts, micro-newsrooms, or community-driven audio experiments could be part of the reinvention you’re calling for. While a unified strategy is ideal, I think there’s also power in creative fragmentation. Perhaps letting new forms evolve organically, then connecting the dots.
I’ve been thinking through these ideas in my own way too, especially from the personal angle of how public media shaped me growing up. I ended up writing a piece that leans more into memory and feeling, but it’s driven by the same urgency.
Good points all. Many regional affiliates are already exploring streaming alternatives of existing programming and adding new programs to their streaming library. But - and this is a big But - I completely disagree with your premise for the current defunding. There was absolutely no very public or overwhelming rejection of the current offerings in public media. The rescission of public support was wholly orchestrated by the one person in charge, and his motive was wholly rooted in retribution and revenge. Per usual.
Thanks for this. I don’t think public broadcasting funding would have lost in a referendum, but I think you make a big mistake if you reassure yourself by laying this off to one person. Many in GOP congressional and think tank leadership have sought this outcome for many years. Quasi-public institutions require broad-based support to operate effectively, abd that stopped in this case some time ago.
In think 1500 public broadcasting stations will collapse down to a few hundred. Priority should be given to rural stations that serve broad geographic regions. Those should be funded at 100%.
We don't need overlapping stations in the major markets. WETA, WNET, GBH, for example, dominate their respective cities and they should be the only ones in those broadcast areas. We have 4 PTV stations in the DC area, we only need one. This will ruffle local feathers, but that's not relevant at this time, narrow interests have to give way to the maintenance of a viable system.
I don't like the ethic of attacking public broadcasting because it's based on know-nothingism and hatred. Public broadcasting is not "elite" nor "liberal" at all. It's nuanced and that nuance makes its opponents believe that its weak-kneed and "inclusive." Because "inclusive" is now a dirty word.
What I don't mind about this current circumstance is the chance, as you say, to reinvent. I wish had been done for the rights reasons - a reevaluation has been needed for a long time. The current system is positively Soviet in its redundancy. In a digital world we don't need this many analog stations. Some communities need them and that should be honored. The rest should be trimmed away.
Most of all, don't see streamers as substitutes in any way. They are not buying nor commissioning PBS-type content. They program based on an algorithm, led by a group of twenty-somethings who came out of reality TV. They are not interested in thoughtful content in the slightest.
The creation of high quality programming with the fewest stations possible, that should be the goal.
On eliminating market redundancies, seems like we are much farther today from any way to enforce this, other than market discipline, than we were before.
On the quality of the best streaming content (NOT the average), must respectfully disagree.
I work with the streamers all the time. There is no more "documentary" per se. It's all been combined into "unscripted" - bringing together reality television and nonfiction. The execs are primarily from the reality side as that's where the business models have been the most successful.
Market redundancies will bring down the system when the cuts hit. If they don't eliminate stations that overlap in their broadcast area, there will be no system.
So PBS becomes just another content creator? Perhaps acting as agent for some of their current content that airs on Masterpiece Theater or that they stream online like the Walter Presents shows.
PBS Appalachia, in Bristol, VA, is housed in a casino and is solely online. They’ve produced some excellent content that’s been rebroadcast nationally. They are affiliated with a traditional broadcast PBS, Blue Ridge PBS, in Roanoke, VA. Is the regionally based but online only model the only feasible future? https://www.pbsavirginia.org
I think there need to be, are and will be quite a few different viable models. More experimentation to identify these in a post-federal-funding world is urgently needed.
25 years into the interactive era, media and politics are still stuck in outdated 20th century broadcast mode. The function of journalism has moved beyond the reporting of facts and the presenting of opinions (everyone has those). The mission is now about convening the audience and leading it to consensus for action on solutions to major issues. We must move beyond endless conversations and feeds that go nowhere, and add value above the social layer. If you are not actively fostering consensus, you are just adding noise.
On the nose. But another key second order effect is that as the big urban public broadcasters circle the drain they are going to "fix the problem" by saturating the market with incessant individual fundraising pleas and a full court press with wealthy folks, foundations and journalism support orgs, making it even harder for innovative small/mid players like us (I'm at The Invisible Institute) to raise money. These places have still have huge lists, large, super-connected boards, and are broadly seen as too big to fail. A competitive market for funds is good for everyone. A market with the above dynamics, serves no one well.
Good question. -- I think I would ask big philanthropy, and the multitude of press support organizations to explicitly adopt the point of view you articulate in your piece and change their behaviors accordingly. By design, the innovators in Chicago have tight budgets and flexible models. A few $100k has way more impact at a medium size shop than it does at an ailing public giant who burns through that in a day or week.
I'd also ask the big public players to more deeply embrace partnership on every dimension with the rest of their local ecosystem.
Thanks again. The key, I think, is not “small is beautiful,” but insisting on innovation and creativity. “Help us shrink more slowly” should not become an effective fundraising pitch.
Reinventing national programming in a fractured streaming landscape only shifts the risks from public funding to the platforms. One thing is true about Netflix, YouTube and even Substack. You don’t own your audience. At any point, a platform can take down your post, video, song etc. A VC fund can pull funding, a search engine can change the algorithm. That’s the risk. It would be interesting to see CPB undertake something in the way of distribution that leverages their stations as distribution to regions. More Walmart and Amazon thinking, then eyeball counting. Apple created genius bars and stores when it needed to reinvent itself. CPB needs to really embrace something different other than the tote bag support system.
With respect, there won’t be a CPB— it has just lost it’s funding. This is a perfect example of why things need to be more fundamentallly re-thought.
It’s true that streaming and other platforms have risks and limitations. But the enormous risk of depending on political actors who have concerns other than those of the actual and potential audience should be particularly clear today.
Well documented and well said - points that my wife, Janet, and I have been saying to public media clients going back 15 years. I also was "the digital guy" at various newspapers who was told that the Internet was the new CB radio, that all the inserts were going to come back by Christmas and that if I broke news on the website before the newspaper was delivered at 7 a.m. the next day that I would not be allowed in news meetings. (That one got me barred from The Sacramento Bee news meetings.)
Your piece also makes me wonder - one day after Press Forward announced its $22mm grants, many of which are to small startups with very little audience - why philanthropy doesn't lean into news organizations that already have large audiences but face shifting economics. But then, as my wife told Jay Rosen when he scolded foundations at a Block By Block conference about where they "should" spend their money, "No one ever profited by telling a funder how she should spend her money." So be it.
That said, my main concern is not about Ken Burns, but about public safety. Public media runs emergency alert frequencies such as Florida Public Radio Emergency Network (FPREN) across the country, which are vital communication lines during natural disasters. We are now in hurricane season, FEMA has been gutted and services such as FPREN are in jeopardy. That trio is a catastrophic combination, and two of those are unforced errors.
Thanks, Rusty. It may be true that there is no profit in suggesting what funders should do, but my own view (and implictly yours, I think) is funders get far too littlle input on their decisions rather than too much-- mostly because they almost never geuninely ask. Second Rough Draft occasionally tries to do its small part to redress that balance a bit.
Such a vital piece, Dick—thank you for pulling no punches. The question isn’t just whether public broadcasting is struggling—it’s whether the institutions around it are willing to reimagine what public service actually demands right now.
I’ve been wrestling with a related concern from the education side. Last month, I wrote an op-ed for The Philadelphia Inquirer titled:
“As STEM faces a funding crisis, we’re dismantling public broadcasting — our best educational safety net.”
https://share.inquirer.com/HVbM0h
At a time when science literacy, civic education, and access to trusted information are collapsing in many communities, gutting PBS and NPR is more than a media problem. It’s a public infrastructure crisis.
Chilling image. Always succinct and on target. Thanks.
Well said!
I dunno - I kind of stopped here - "You would think it obvious that the very public vote of no confidence in an ostensibly quasi-public institution by the people’s elected representatives—no matter how much you or I may disagree with them—would be enough to indicate the need for some new industry leadership." That's nuts. Was there a vote of "no confidence" in health care for 14 million people, or in life saving interventions globally that will lead to the death of millions? No - as is quickly crystallizing, it's the fever dream of authoritarians and racists turning our country into a pariah. Yes to new leadership and creative solutions - but "no confidence?" Nah
I'm sorry, but when an institution ostenbly operating on behalf of the broad national public is specificallly defunded, after 58 years, by the duly elected representatives of the people, I think we need to reckon with that.
I agree with you that they are making a terrible mistake. But in this instance they are doing it entirely through democratic means. I beg people who care about public broadcasting-- as I do-- to grapple more honestly with how we have gotten here, and what it says about the way the system has been managed, as we chart the best way forward.
This is a sharply articulated piece. You’ve laid out the stakes with clarity and urgency. This truly isn’t just a reversal, and I appreciate your framing of the current crisis as a pivotal opportunity rather than a nostalgic campaign to restore what was. Your call for coherence and reinvention over piecemeal fixes hits home, and I find myself nodding along with the emphasis on public engagement that stretches beyond the traditional donor base.
That said, I wonder if we’re underestimating the potential of smaller, decentralized efforts. Local podcasts, micro-newsrooms, or community-driven audio experiments could be part of the reinvention you’re calling for. While a unified strategy is ideal, I think there’s also power in creative fragmentation. Perhaps letting new forms evolve organically, then connecting the dots.
I’ve been thinking through these ideas in my own way too, especially from the personal angle of how public media shaped me growing up. I ended up writing a piece that leans more into memory and feeling, but it’s driven by the same urgency.
Good points all. Many regional affiliates are already exploring streaming alternatives of existing programming and adding new programs to their streaming library. But - and this is a big But - I completely disagree with your premise for the current defunding. There was absolutely no very public or overwhelming rejection of the current offerings in public media. The rescission of public support was wholly orchestrated by the one person in charge, and his motive was wholly rooted in retribution and revenge. Per usual.
Thanks for this. I don’t think public broadcasting funding would have lost in a referendum, but I think you make a big mistake if you reassure yourself by laying this off to one person. Many in GOP congressional and think tank leadership have sought this outcome for many years. Quasi-public institutions require broad-based support to operate effectively, abd that stopped in this case some time ago.
But not with Democratc values!
In think 1500 public broadcasting stations will collapse down to a few hundred. Priority should be given to rural stations that serve broad geographic regions. Those should be funded at 100%.
We don't need overlapping stations in the major markets. WETA, WNET, GBH, for example, dominate their respective cities and they should be the only ones in those broadcast areas. We have 4 PTV stations in the DC area, we only need one. This will ruffle local feathers, but that's not relevant at this time, narrow interests have to give way to the maintenance of a viable system.
I don't like the ethic of attacking public broadcasting because it's based on know-nothingism and hatred. Public broadcasting is not "elite" nor "liberal" at all. It's nuanced and that nuance makes its opponents believe that its weak-kneed and "inclusive." Because "inclusive" is now a dirty word.
What I don't mind about this current circumstance is the chance, as you say, to reinvent. I wish had been done for the rights reasons - a reevaluation has been needed for a long time. The current system is positively Soviet in its redundancy. In a digital world we don't need this many analog stations. Some communities need them and that should be honored. The rest should be trimmed away.
Most of all, don't see streamers as substitutes in any way. They are not buying nor commissioning PBS-type content. They program based on an algorithm, led by a group of twenty-somethings who came out of reality TV. They are not interested in thoughtful content in the slightest.
The creation of high quality programming with the fewest stations possible, that should be the goal.
Thanks so much.
On eliminating market redundancies, seems like we are much farther today from any way to enforce this, other than market discipline, than we were before.
On the quality of the best streaming content (NOT the average), must respectfully disagree.
I work with the streamers all the time. There is no more "documentary" per se. It's all been combined into "unscripted" - bringing together reality television and nonfiction. The execs are primarily from the reality side as that's where the business models have been the most successful.
Market redundancies will bring down the system when the cuts hit. If they don't eliminate stations that overlap in their broadcast area, there will be no system.
So PBS becomes just another content creator? Perhaps acting as agent for some of their current content that airs on Masterpiece Theater or that they stream online like the Walter Presents shows.
PBS Appalachia, in Bristol, VA, is housed in a casino and is solely online. They’ve produced some excellent content that’s been rebroadcast nationally. They are affiliated with a traditional broadcast PBS, Blue Ridge PBS, in Roanoke, VA. Is the regionally based but online only model the only feasible future? https://www.pbsavirginia.org
I think there need to be, are and will be quite a few different viable models. More experimentation to identify these in a post-federal-funding world is urgently needed.
25 years into the interactive era, media and politics are still stuck in outdated 20th century broadcast mode. The function of journalism has moved beyond the reporting of facts and the presenting of opinions (everyone has those). The mission is now about convening the audience and leading it to consensus for action on solutions to major issues. We must move beyond endless conversations and feeds that go nowhere, and add value above the social layer. If you are not actively fostering consensus, you are just adding noise.
On the nose. But another key second order effect is that as the big urban public broadcasters circle the drain they are going to "fix the problem" by saturating the market with incessant individual fundraising pleas and a full court press with wealthy folks, foundations and journalism support orgs, making it even harder for innovative small/mid players like us (I'm at The Invisible Institute) to raise money. These places have still have huge lists, large, super-connected boards, and are broadly seen as too big to fail. A competitive market for funds is good for everyone. A market with the above dynamics, serves no one well.
Thanks for this, Stu. What would you propose? Hard to ask those who just lost this funding not to ask their lists to help out.
Good question. -- I think I would ask big philanthropy, and the multitude of press support organizations to explicitly adopt the point of view you articulate in your piece and change their behaviors accordingly. By design, the innovators in Chicago have tight budgets and flexible models. A few $100k has way more impact at a medium size shop than it does at an ailing public giant who burns through that in a day or week.
I'd also ask the big public players to more deeply embrace partnership on every dimension with the rest of their local ecosystem.
Thanks again. The key, I think, is not “small is beautiful,” but insisting on innovation and creativity. “Help us shrink more slowly” should not become an effective fundraising pitch.
Reinventing national programming in a fractured streaming landscape only shifts the risks from public funding to the platforms. One thing is true about Netflix, YouTube and even Substack. You don’t own your audience. At any point, a platform can take down your post, video, song etc. A VC fund can pull funding, a search engine can change the algorithm. That’s the risk. It would be interesting to see CPB undertake something in the way of distribution that leverages their stations as distribution to regions. More Walmart and Amazon thinking, then eyeball counting. Apple created genius bars and stores when it needed to reinvent itself. CPB needs to really embrace something different other than the tote bag support system.
With respect, there won’t be a CPB— it has just lost it’s funding. This is a perfect example of why things need to be more fundamentallly re-thought.
It’s true that streaming and other platforms have risks and limitations. But the enormous risk of depending on political actors who have concerns other than those of the actual and potential audience should be particularly clear today.